I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about things that fall from the sky. Mostly, those things were bullets, rockets, and the occasional burst of anti-aircraft flak. You learn to watch the sky differently when you fly low over hostile jungle in an OV-10 Bronco, alone, as FACs do. Every glint of light, every trail of smoke, every sudden shadow means something.

But here’s the thing: the worst thing that ever fell from the sky didn’t happen during my lifetime. It happened 66 million years ago, and it wiped out the dinosaurs.

I’m talking about an asteroid. A rock about six miles wide, moving faster than a rifle bullet, slamming into what is now the Yucatán Peninsula. The impact vaporized everything for hundreds of miles. It triggered tsunamis the size of mountains. It threw so much dust into the atmosphere that the sun disappeared for years. Three-quarters of all species on Earth died.

And here’s the part that keeps me awake at night: it could happen again.

We’re Not as Safe as We Think

Most people assume that big asteroid impacts are ancient history. Something that happened a long time ago, to other creatures, in a different world. Surely, we have technology now. Surely, we would see it coming. Surely, we could stop it.

I wish I could tell you that’s true. But I spent enough time in the military to know that “surely” is a dangerous word. “Surely the enemy won’t attack in this weather.” “Surely the engine won’t fail at 10,000 feet.” “Surely someone else is watching the radar.”

No. When you’re a Forward Air Controller, you learn that no one is watching but you. No wingman. No backup. Just you, the aircraft, and the rules of engagement you have to obey while also making your own decisions. No matter what headquarters says, you’re the one in the cockpit.

Here’s the reality. As of today, scientists have discovered only about 40% of near-Earth asteroids that are large enough to cause a regional or global catastrophe. That means 60% are out there, unaccounted for, moving in the dark. Some of them are on orbits that could eventually cross ours. We just haven’t found them yet.

And even the ones we have found? We don’t have a proven, ready-to-go system to deflect them. We have ideas. We have prototypes. We have one successful test. But we don’t have a planetary defense system the way we have an air force or a navy. Not even close.

That’s like flying over the Ho Chi Minh Trail without a radio or a working ejection seat. You might get lucky. But luck isn’t a strategy.

The DART Mission: A Good First Step

I don’t want to sound completely pessimistic, because there is good news. In September 2022, NASA did something incredible. They crashed a spacecraft, the DART mission, into a small asteroid called Dimorphos. The spacecraft was about the size of a vending machine. The asteroid was about the size of a football stadium.

And it worked. The impact changed the asteroid’s orbit by 32 minutes. That doesn’t sound like much, but in space, that’s huge. It proved that if we see a dangerous asteroid coming with enough lead time, we could theoretically nudge it off course.

I’ve called in airstrikes that were less precise than that. I’ve watched missiles miss their targets by hundreds of meters. What NASA accomplished with DART was a shot that would make any Forward Air Controller proud, right up there with putting fighters on target at a 60-degree dive angle and pulling 4 Gs out.

But here’s the catch: DART was a test. It was one mission, against one tiny asteroid, under perfect conditions. What happens when the asteroid is bigger? What happens when we only have months of warning instead of years? What happens when the first deflection attempt fails and we need a backup plan?

Right now, we don’t have good answers to those questions. And that’s a problem.

The Survivor’s Mindset

In combat, we had a simple rule: hope for the best, but plan for the worst. That meant knowing your Bingo fuel number, checking your systems twice, and always knowing your exit route. It meant running drills for engine failure, fire, and getting shot down. Not because we expected those things to happen, but because if they did happen, we wanted to survive.

That meant going through fighter school, gun school, water survival, POW school, jungle survival school, and a full country checkout before we ever saw combat. You earn your survival one school at a time.

That’s the mindset we need for asteroid defense. Not panic. Not Hollywood heroics. Just boring, methodical, professional preparation.

So what would that look like?

First, we need to finish the survey. We need to find the other 60% of near-Earth asteroids. There are missions in the works, NASA’s NEO Surveyor, for example, but they need funding and political support. Finding the rocks is step one. You can’t deflect what you can’t see.

Second, we need to test multiple deflection techniques. The DART mission proved kinetic impact works. But what about gravity tractors? What about using a nuclear explosion nearby to push an asteroid without blowing it apart? What about slower, more gentle methods for very large asteroids? We need a toolbox, not just one hammer.

Third, we need international protocols. Who decides when to deflect an asteroid? What if the deflection attempt sends it toward another country? What if different nations have different estimates of the risk? These aren’t science questions, they’re political and ethical questions. And we’re not ready to answer them.

I’ve seen what happens when there’s no clear chain of command, when headquarters says one thing and your eyes say another. I’ve had to make the call myself. We can’t afford confusion with an asteroid.

The Cost of Doing Nothing

People sometimes ask me, “Why should we spend money on asteroid defense when there are so many problems on Earth? Poverty, disease, climate change?”

It’s a fair question. And here’s my answer: because asteroid impacts are one of the only natural disasters we can actually prevent. We can’t stop earthquakes. We can’t stop hurricanes. But we can stop an asteroid. We have the technology. We just need the will.

And the cost? NASA’s planetary defense budget is about $150 million per year. That’s less than what Americans spend on Halloween candy. That’s a rounding error in the defense budget. For that tiny amount, we get a fighting chance to prevent the only natural disaster that could end human civilization in an afternoon.

Compare that to the cost of doing nothing. An asteroid just one mile wide would release the energy of a million Hiroshima bombs. It would collapse buildings across an entire continent. It would trigger firestorms, tsunamis, and a nuclear winter that could last years. Global agriculture would collapse. Billions would die.

That’s not fearmongering. That’s physics. And I’ve seen enough of what falls from the sky to take it seriously.

We Owe It to the Dinosaurs

I think about the dinosaurs sometimes. Not as a joke, as a warning. They had no space program. They had no radar. They had no way to see the rock coming. They just went about their business, eating, sleeping, raising their young, until one terrible day when the sky fell.

We are not dinosaurs. We have telescopes. We have computers. We have spacecraft. We have the ability to look up and see what’s coming.

The only question is whether we’ll do something about it.

I flew missions where I had seconds to decide. This isn’t like that. We have years. Maybe decades. That’s a gift. But gifts only matter if you use them.

So let’s use them. Let’s find the rocks. Let’s test the deflection systems. Let’s build the international agreements. Let’s spend the tiny amount of money it takes to insure our planet against the only disaster we can actually prevent.

Because the next asteroid doesn’t have a schedule. It doesn’t care about our politics. It’s out there, in the dark, waiting.

And when it comes, not if, but when, I want to look back and say we were ready. That we didn’t fly straight. That we trusted our training. That we made the call.

Robert E. Barr is a former Forward Air Controller, defense analyst, and author of books on survival, geology, and climate change, including “Will We Survive?” and “Earth’s Gifts from the Past.”