Armeggedon II: Revenge of the Stats

Ok, so there's this: "Based on available data, astronomers give Apophis - a 1,000-foot wide chunk of space debris - a 1-in-15,000 chance of a 2036 strike. Yet if the asteroid hits, they add, damage to infrastructure alone could exceed $400 billion."

No problem; just a math problem. 1/15,000 = .0000667. So $400,000,000 * .0000667 = $26,680. That's not much money. If we can stop Apophis--which from now on I will call THE KILLER ROCK FROM SPACE--from approaching Earth for that amount, then it's a good bet. If not, we "hope for" the 14,999 to 1 odds in 2036.

I'm not a rocket scientist, but I doubt we can "nudge" THE KILLER ROCK FROM SPACE for an elementary school teacher's annual salary. I mean, the refitting of the shuttle after the Columbia disaster cost something like one billion dollars (and didn't work, as it now appears). I don't think that the gang at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory will show up in the morning for coffee and doughnuts for $26,680.

Update: Noticed that the article merely reports the damage to infrastructure ($400 B). Not human life. So the cost of doing nothing is higher than $26,280. How much higher? Well, we'd need casualty figures and a dollar value, per life.

Still, I'm betting that the probability of some pretty bad things in 2036 are greater than .000067. (That's zero, btw, without some serious and questionable rounding. Not unlike the number of calories in a can of Diet Coke.)