Stopping Asteroids Is The New (Old) Reason Why We Need Nuclear Weapons

Asteroid. NASA — MCT

With Need For Nuclear Weapons Questioned, Builders Find A New Target – Errant Asteroids -- McClatchy News

WASHINGTON — When geophysicist H. Jay Melosh attended a meeting of U.S. and ex-Soviet nuclear weapons designers in May 1995, he was surprised by how eager the Cold Warriors were to work together against an unlikely but dangerous extraterrestrial threat: asteroids on a collision course with Earth.

After Edward Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb, urged others meeting at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California to consider building and orbiting huge, new nuclear weapons for planetary protection, some top Russian weapons experts lent their support.

“It was a really bizarre thing to see that these weapons designers were willing to work together – to build the biggest bombs ever,” said Melosh, an expert in space impacts who has an asteroid named after him.

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My Comment:  The logistics and engineering required to put together such a device (nuclear warhead that will strike a fast approaching asteroid) will probably be incredibly expensive and complex. But .... when it comes to government's spending money .... we all know how easy that can happen.