"If people knew that a fragment was going to hit the Earth, I wonder about the mass hysteria that would result. Where would you go? People would say, where can we hide, what can we do?"

"There's going to be a lot of feeling of helplessness and powerlessness and people are going to have to deal with the fact that they're not going to be able to do anything to prevent it."

"Scientists estimate there are…2000 Earth-crossers out there…If one of them were on a collision course with Earth, we wouldn't get more than a few months warning."

"Experts estimate that there are as many as half a million Earth-crossing asteroids and comets that have yet to be discovered…Current surveillance techniques discover an average of twelve new potentially threatening Near Earth Objects per year. But with an estimated two thousand NEOs uncharted, the chances of one entering our orbit undetected are extremely high…It is not a matter of if it will happen, but when. But even if we can detect an Earth-bound object months or years before impact, what can be done to avert a deadly collision?…Many of the leading researchers and scientists in the field fear that without additional funding current projects may be too little too late."

"At the moment Earth is defenseless against a large comet or asteroid headed for the planet. Scientists and other star warriors are exploring a variety of defensive schemes."

"Experts warn that space based weapons would have to be perfected if we hope to defend against a heavenly body on a predicted collision course with Earth."

"Most people have a misconception of our capability to shoot down an incoming asteroid. We can track it through space and we'll know where it's going to land, but we have no weapon capable of going into space to intercept this particular object and try to destroy it or veer it off course. That capability simply doesn't exist at this stage."

"If today we were to discover an asteroid, about all we could do is try and launch a nuclear warhead on currently existing launch technology. We have no operational capability to deal with an incoming object at this time. If you're assuming that, if there's an incoming object, somebody's going to get a call and say, 'Don't worry, we'll take care of it,' you're assuming that that somebody is in the government, and there's nobody to answer the phone."

"The most likely warning we would have for the impact of an asteroid is just the same as the warning the dinosaurs had - ZERO!"

"If a comet should appear from behind the Sun, we might only have a one or two year warning."

"The thing about the Shoemakers is they are one of the three or four little groups of astronomers who more or less on their own are finding these near-Earth asteroids. But we need a significant program, this is a serious issue."

"Earth has a better chance of a fatal collision in orbit than you do on the highway. Swarms of unidentified asteroids are lurking throughout the solar system. The most likely warning is zero. There are more people working in your average McDonalds than there are astronomers patroling the heavens."

Today two programs in the United States watch for asteroids: Spacewatch, in Arizona, and Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) in Maui. These telescopes cover less than 10 percent of the sky each month.

"In about an hour and a half we take three pictures of the sky, each about as big as my finger held out at arm's length, over six or seven hours we might cover an area of sky about as big as my whole hand. It's interesting to think of how little area we actually cover of the sky compared to the whole sky that's up there, and yet we're able still to find many hundreds of asteroids each night."

"Only a few astronomers are engaged in the search for potentially threatening comets and asteroids, in fact the total number of people working on this problem is less than the staff of one McDonalds."

"There are potentially thousands to millions of these Earth crossing asteroids that are ready to shove in the right direction to collide with our Earth, and they're going to, there is no question."

"In the last 20 years we have identified 180 impact craters on Earth. If you could strip away Earth's jungles and oceans, scientists believe we would find another 2000 craters."

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