During the last US Government shutdown…(was it the last one? I don’t know how often they do these things. It all seems terribly disruptive.) they closed the Asteroid Watch laboratory. That left us at the mercy of flying space debris for several (or more) hours or days.
Not good. Although, should flying space debris have come our way during that time or at any other, I’d be surprised if we could actually do anything meaningful about it anyway. Maybe it’s best not to know. I don’t think I would really want to know.
Either way, tl;dr: we survived.
This time around, things could have been more serious. Because there is definitely something that you can do if there is a tsunami bearing down on you: move away from the coast and get to higher ground. And with the 7.something earthquake just south of Alaska this morning, a tsunami was generated:
Fortunately, as you can see – not a very big one. And yes, we knew about the tsunami despite the shutdown, because although:
The Federal Government is currently shutdown. NOAA.gov and most associated websites are unavailable.
Yes?
…because the information this site provides is necessary to protect life and property, it will be updated and maintained during the Federal Government shutdown.
And that’s great, because the tsunami could have been bigger and then people would have even more need to have been informed. So well done to those guys and gals who are not enjoying what is presumably some sort of free holiday.
But it did make me wonder about the whole asteroid thing again, so I checked and yeah…
We’re basically on our own again.
So, look up!
Or, if you’d rather just live the remaining few minutes of your life in blissful ignorance… er… don’t – your call.
