An asteroid hits NY...a simulation! What would really happen?

In a NASA simulation of a fictional scenario, New York City was hit with an asteroid packing 1,000 times the destruction of the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The exercise, which was part of the "National Near-Earth Object Preparedness Strategy and Action Plan" published by the White House, played out at the the 2019 Planetary Defense Conference in College Park, Maryland, last week. It was a worst-case scenario showing what would happen if a giant space rock crashed into Earth in 2027. Paul Chodas, the NASA engineer who designed the exercise, told AFP the simulated asteroid and its terrifying outcome is "highly unlikely" but he wanted "the issues to be exposed and discussed."