If a Humanity-Ending Asteroid Heads Our Way, Will Anyone Believe Scientists?

Good point: it would be much cheaper to disbelieve scientists so you could ignore it. Until, of course, it's too late. But after that, budgets don't matter anyway.

This is a really good article, calling attention to the Tanis work which most people probably missed.

The show should have had it hitting in 50 years instead of 6 months. If it were due in 6 months, there would be provably not a damn thing anybody could do except dig a hole to hide for 10 or 1000 years until things settle down a little. With 50 years it is just barely conceiveable that something useful could be done if they started immediately.

As long as city lights and satellites don't interfere too much, you should be able to see it yourself by going to a telescope. I suppose the exception would be if it was coming in from behind the sun, or other similar situations where the light hits the opposite side then the one you can see from Earth.

First of all, nuclear weapons are by far more dangerous than some random asteroid with probability of zero. The question should be: if there will be a nuclear mistake launch, will the other side believe that this was a mistake?

Second, the question is pointless. Lets say that we all believe the scientists. And...?

by the toilet paper episode recently, no