4% - Wednesday, December 16, 1992 - North Snore News Taking a knockout blow from deep space IN EARLY November, the Swift-Tuttle comet, a six- mile-wide mountain of ice and rock, came tumbling silently and ominously through the solar system at 37 miles per second. Physically, it passed far enough away so that it was barely a flicker in a binocular’s eye: a tiny Mare out in the casmic endlessness. But what a passage it cut through our collective sense of se- curity here on Earth! Not for what happened, but for what can happen. Next time around, astronomers announced, the mountain-sized space iceberg could actually smack right into us, delivering the penultimate Titanic blow. The impact would be the equivalent of something Jike 100 million atomic bombs going off at once. The odds are it won’t happen. But there is going to bea 3% minute time slot on Aug. 14, 2126, when a collision between Earth and Swift-Tuttle could oc- cur, meaning that chances are one in 400. If that doesn’t sound so bad to you (it sounds awful to me), keep in raind that between now and then, there is no reason we couldn't be hit by any number of other gargantuan lumps of space debris. And even if Aug. 14, 2126, turns out to be a lucky day for Planet Earth, sooner or later, some such collision is inevitable. Police launch “WHILE MOST of us make plans to enjoy the coming holiday sedson, police forces throughout the pro- vince are preparing to battle B.C.’s most common crim- inal. Many of these people aren't the hardened, desperate individuals typically associated with criminal activities. Instead, they are likely to be respectable members of society who would never think of themselves as being the subjects of a manhunt — but they become the focus of a massive police opera- tion the moment they decide to Bob Hunter STRICTLY PERSONAL You can only duck bullets for so long before a stray shot gets you. And it is not that it hasn’t hap- pened before. Last week, scientists from NASA and New York University claimed they’d found evidence of a similar collision having occurred 250 million years ago. The result was the extinction of 96% of all then-living species. The planet’s crust cracked, flooding the surface in eruptions of lava, triggering the breakup of a vast southern continent. This particular cosmic ram-job is not to be confused with the other great theoretical collision with a comet which is posited to have created a kind of ‘‘nuclear winter’’ of ash some 60 million years ago, wiping out, among other things, the dinosaurs. Clearly, being hit by a comet is bad news. About as bad as it gets, barring the sun going nova. There’s nothing much we can hope to do about the sun, but a comet is within our range. We are the first species to have evolved on this world of whom this could be stated. It may even be that the planet invented us for this very purpose. At least we would have a function, rather than just being a plague. The solution to a problem like Swift-Tuttle is simple. We send an armada of nuclear-tipped space missiles to intercept the incoming comet somewhere out past Saturn, or maybe even further, either deflecting it from course or destroying it entirely. The ultimate megaproject, to be sure. But the boys down in Los Alamos have already worked cut the trajectories and payloads. It goes without saying that the nuclear industry, the military, and the space industry would be equal- ly happy to land such a colossal long-term contract. Think about this. What it means is that sooner or later the burden of protecting the Earth — or at feast whatever is left of it by CounterAttack crackdown become a drinking driver. That operation continues year- round, but its intensity increases during the Christmas CounterAt- tack period from Dec. 8 to Jan. 3. Although these annual cam- paigns are making progress in reducing this crime wave, drinking drivers still represent an enormous cost to British Columbians in both human and financial terms. @ Last year, 180 people were killed and nearly 5,300 were in- jured in 6,800 traffic crashes caused by drinking drivers. @ Repairing the damage done in those crashes cost the province's | motorists abour 2! cents of every Whether it’s your first, Sifth, tenth, or any anniversary in between, this year, tell her you'd marry her all over again with a diamond anniversary band from Swedish Jeweler. premium dollar they paid 10 ICBC. @ Drinking drivers also cost the provincial economy more than $130 million each year for en- forcement, court, medical services and other costs. One out of every five people in B.C. jails is there for drinking-driving offences. This holiday season, help reduce that price and make the streets safer by choosing not to drink and drive or to ride with a drinking driver. And you can assist the police in their fight against crime by reporting drinking drivers. - ab PL the time we've finished messing up ecologically — will fail to human beings capable of projecting enormous force at a distance in space. This is the one thing we can do that the Earth can‘t do for itself. It makes one wonder, why not get serious about the responsibility now, rather than later? That’s one of the implications of the next coming of the Swift- Tuttle comet — the soft philo- sophical side, so to speak. We are going to have to assume planetary protection duty eventually. Why not start today? Ah, and this leads to a poignant twist. The wonderful! pacifist idea! of total nuclear disarmament has just been rendered untenable. As an old anti-nuker, I hate to admit this, but one has to face new facts as they arrive, especial- ly, I would think, if they arrive from deep space. One of these days — even if it’s not for 134 years — we’re going to need nuclear warheads to shield ourselves. Like it or not, weapons of such vast megatonnage have become one of the tools in the survival kit of the human race. Suddenly, when we talk about future generations we are talking about descendants who will have to have some kind of interstellar nuclear deterrent at their disposal, a sword they can brandish at the sky. The Christian dream of beating the swords into ploughshares harkens back to a simpler age. Today, in the wake of Swift- Tuttle, we know this is a luxury we can’t afford, even if it ever did become politically possible. Obviously, at the very least, a small but powerful stockpile of nuclear-tipped space missiles should be placed under UN con- trol and kept on standby for the rest of human history. I know. As if you didn’t have enough to worry about... 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