NASA's plans to deflect an asteroid plus what happens if one hits NYC

Happy Monday the 13th!  Because it's exactly one month after Apophis Day, I decided to return to the subject of asteroids and planetary defense instead of posting another Garfield cartoon.  I begin with 7 Ways to Save Earth from a Killer Asteroid from Space.com.

Gravity tractors, rocket engines, lasers, nukes and more could be used to deflect a potentially hazardous asteroid.

One the one hand, as one of the commenters to the video wrote, it's good to have a plan, actually seven of them.  On the other, if none of those work, USA Today describes what could happen in Asteroid simulation sparks scary outcome for New York City

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 "1,000 times the destruction of the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima" is no exaggeration. The meteor that exploded over Russia six years ago was twenty times more powerful than Hiroshima and that space rock broke up miles up in the atmosphere.  On the other hand, this hypothetical event would be comparable to the impact that created Barringer Crater AKA Meteor Crater in Arizona, which yielded ten megatons when it blew up.

Just the same, it's good to know that NASA is working on a plan to protect Earth from asteroid impact.  That makes for a good opportunity to recycle this meme.