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So about 11 years ago,

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I gave a talk in California
at the TED Conference.

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And it went really well.

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It was called "10 ways
the world could end tomorrow."

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But it also went viral

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at a time before
things started going viral,

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and it wasn't in a good way.

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It ended up on thousands
of nutty websites.

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These are the kind of websites for people
who think "Men in Black" is a documentary.

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(Laughter)

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It's the kind of websites
for people who actually believe

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the Mayan calendar does predict doomsday.

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So if you'd googled me before this talk,

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you would have seen
maybe nine or ten references to me

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as a science magazine editor.

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Three weeks after the talk,

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there were 418 references

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linking "moi" to little
green men from Mars.

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Now, coincidentally,

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I was teaching my mother
how to use a computer at the time,

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(Laughter)

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long distance,

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and I was teaching her about Google.

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So guess who she googled first.

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(Laughter)

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So ...

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(Laughter)

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['Steve, are you in trouble?']

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I started worrying about
my reputation a little.

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And I decided to call
Chris Anderson, the TED curator.

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I knew Chris would not want TED speakers

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to be co-opted
by every nut job on the web,

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and maybe he could get his friends
Larry and Serge at Google

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to erase all this.

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I was a little disappointed.

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['Hmmm, sorry about that']

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Didn't exactly get the sympathy
I was looking for.

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Chris thought it was funny.

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But he did ask me to do another TED Talk,

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and I jumped at the chance
because I saw it as redemption.

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I could do "10 reasons
to be optimistic about the future."

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And I did. It was a great talk.

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Honestly, my best talk ever.

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Full of surprises.
Lots of interesting science.

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But it didn't go over so well.

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Everybody wanted another 10 ways
the world could end suddenly.

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['Why didn't you do 10 more ways
the world could end?

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And what about global warming?']

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And no one posted the optimistic talk.

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So when Mike and Linda asked me
to give a talk at TEDx

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these many years later,

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I had lots of good ideas.

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But guess what they wanted.

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[8 Ways the World Could End Tomorrow]

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And that's why we're here.
Dr. Doom and Gloom.

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So let's begin the 2013 countdown.

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[#8 - A pandemic is coming]

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Okay, you're looking at N1H1.

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It's the original flu virus
that caused the last great pandemic,

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the Spanish flu of 1918,

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which infected 50%
of the world's population at the time,

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which was a billion people,

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and probably killed
one out of every 10 people.

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[~100 million deaths]

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But here's the interesting thing about it,
it came in three waves,

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three different waves
pretty much about six months apart.

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And the second wave killed
every single person who got the flu.

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And that is how bad flu can be.

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Now, here we are in 2013,

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and in barnyards all over China
there are ducks and pigs and chickens

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in close proximity.

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And that's actually
where influenza originates.

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Now, viruses have gotten
so good at mutating,

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and in these barnyards mostly,

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that you and I have to get
a flu shot every year

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to protect against this.

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Although I will tell you
something interesting.

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Less than half of the population
of the United States

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does get a flu shot every year.

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But that is not what keeps the Centers
for Disease Control up at night.

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What they worry about
is something called a recombinant flu bug.

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And here's how it works.

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There are two kinds of viruses.

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There are viruses that infect animals,

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and animals pass them
easily to other animals.

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And then there are viruses
that infect humans,

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and they pass them easily to other humans.

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When a human has something
like the Hong Kong flu,

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or in 2009 that H1N1 that came back,

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and they go to the market
and they buy a chicken

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that happens to have
one of these animal viruses,

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and they take it home
and they don't cook it properly,

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and they eat it,
they get the animal virus.

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And now inside that person
are two kinds of viruses:

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a virus that transmits easily
from human to human

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and a virus that transmits easily
from animal to animal.

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But in almost all cases,

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that animal virus is far more toxic
and far more of a killer.

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Now, in just the last few weeks,

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a new very deadly animal flu
called H7N9 has popped up.

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About 100 people are infected.

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A lot of them have died.

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And this is one that the CDC
is really worried about,

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and we could be looking
at another worldwide pandemic

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like the Spanish flu

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if a human being
who has a human-type virus,

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that transmits easily to people,

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happens to eat one of these animals.

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Now, there are solutions to this,

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but we live in a very
different world from 1918.

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There are 80,000 commercial jets

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that take off every day
full of passengers.

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It would take a flu virus
about two weeks to circle the globe.

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Private producers cannot make
enough vaccine fast enough to save us.

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The only thing that we can do

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is what the Australian
government has done,

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which is to create laboratories

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that are ready to go on a moment's notice

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to create vast quantities
of flu [vaccine].

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We should do this.

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Second, we need to make
a simple dip stick test.

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You go to the drug store, you buy a swab,

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you put it in your mouth.

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If it turns blue, you have the flu.

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How many times
have you gone to the doctor:

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"Do I have the flu?
Do I have a bacterial infection?"

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Half the time they don't even know.

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When a pandemic comes,
you want to know if you have the flu,

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and you will not be able to find a doctor.

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Thirdly, we need to invest
in a really good public health system.

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We've actually been firing
about 50,000 public health workers

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in the last three years.

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You know, 40-50 years ago,

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this country built
thousands of bomb shelters

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because we thought nuclear war
was a real threat.

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If we can do that,
we can build a public health system

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that will take care of us in a pandemic.

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Number seven.

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(Applause)

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Isn't that beautiful?

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That's a mass coronal ejection
coming off the sun.

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It makes something called a solar flare
look like kindergarten.

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[#7 - The sun brightens]

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It shoots uncountable numbers of atoms

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that have been broken apart
into little particles

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and radiation out into space.

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Almost all of these blasts
miss the Earth

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because the sun is like
this huge yellow beach ball in space,

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and we're like this little tiny BB
at the end of the auditorium.

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So no matter which direction
the sun sends these out,

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it's very unusual
for us to get a direct hit.

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However, happened last August,
and it happened a month ago.

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And you would not have been wanting
to have been in an airplane at that time.

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In 1859, a coronal mass ejection
took the brand new US telegraph system

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and basically melted it.

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It started fires.
It shocked the operators.

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And the wires disppeared.

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Most of the time our magnetic field
in our atmosphere

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protects us from coronal mass ejections.

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But a severe direct hit

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would take out the entire
world's power grid at once,

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and all the satellites in orbit,

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plunging us essentially
into a 19th-century existence.

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It would take 20 years
to restore half the grid

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because we do not have back-up.

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Try to imagine life without electricity.

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Almost all cities
would become uninhabitable.

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We build sky scrapers
80 stories high and up

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and two stories underground.

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We need to create safety zones
beneath our buildings.

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We should be building down eight stories
for every 80 stories up,

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and we should make that
part of our building code.

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The state of New Jersey
is rebuilding 20,000 bridges in the state

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because they know there will be
a massive earthquake on the East coast

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sooner or later.

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If we can do that, we can have different
building codes for our buildings.

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We should also view transformers and wires
as vulnerable and expendable,

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and we should have hardened,
underground power plants

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ready to go in an emergency.

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[#6 - We develop a new life form]

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This is a synthetic genome
invented by the Craig Venter Institute

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and inserted into a bacterial cell

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to create what I would call
a new life form.

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This life form never existed before,
and it can reproduce.

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It was done three years ago,

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and the goal is noble.

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It's to produce
anything we want from a cell.

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Takes in certain things,
puts out stuff that we want.

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For example, they could make
synthetic vaccines.

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Or they could turn carbon dioxide
into usable fuels.

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Now, what could be wrong with that?

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Our history is littered with examples
of bad things that got out of secure labs

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and things that go amok
when we try to tamper with Mother Nature.

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And here's a low tech example.

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We brought kudzu here from Japan
to control soil erosion.

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Didn't work out so well.

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And meanwhile, labs around the world
are experimenting with biotech

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in ways you cannot imagine.

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You can create a perfect
in vitro male baby

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with blond hair and blue eyes,

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and you can make modified corn
do anything you want.

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Now, is genetically modified corn
saving us from famines?

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I see it as a threat to the only
purely wild corn genome left in the world

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that grows in Mexico.

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Look at number one here:
watch closer, regulate more.

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Watch closer, regulate more.

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00:10:47,734 --> 00:10:52,808
No single federal agency or a single law
governs this vast new world.

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Instead, there's
a hodge podge of regulations

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from the Food and Drug Administration,

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the United States
Department of Agriculture

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and the EPA.

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00:11:00,897 --> 00:11:04,079
We need a new single agency
of the government

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to bring order to this.

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00:11:07,422 --> 00:11:11,409
Meanwhile, less watched people
are entering this field all the time,

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and amateurs will follow.

216
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Kickstarter just got its first proposal
for a synthetic life form:

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a plant that would glow at night

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so we can sprinkle
its seeds along roadsides

219
00:11:25,692 --> 00:11:28,140
and eliminate street lights.

220
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Remember, genetically modified crops

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are not driven by a need
to produce a better world

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and to save people from starvation,

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they are driven by money.

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And synthetic biology is about money too.

225
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Now, for a little humor.

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[#5 - Robots take over]

227
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I'm going to tell you this.
You're not going to believe it.

228
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Computers will be smarter
than us in 20 years.

229
00:11:57,957 --> 00:11:59,191
You know this stuff.

230
00:11:59,191 --> 00:12:02,067
You know that Deep Blue can play chess

231
00:12:02,067 --> 00:12:04,375
better than anyone
on the face of the planet,

232
00:12:04,375 --> 00:12:05,964
and you know that the Google car

233
00:12:05,964 --> 00:12:08,735
can drive itself
better than you can drive it.

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00:12:08,735 --> 00:12:09,771
[Solutions]

235
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It's hasta la vista time.

236
00:12:12,254 --> 00:12:14,850
Time to wake up and smell the silicon.

237
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If you want to get ahead of this curve,
you are going to have to become a cyborg.

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00:12:20,333 --> 00:12:22,183
(Laughter)

239
00:12:22,332 --> 00:12:25,190
Number four: A lot of volcanoes go off.

240
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These things are huge trouble.

241
00:12:28,623 --> 00:12:31,735
We do not live on a nice,
stable solid planet.

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It is mostly molten rock and iron

243
00:12:34,384 --> 00:12:38,520
and it probably has a nuclear reactor
in the center of it that keeps it hot.

244
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We're, like, on these life rafts

245
00:12:40,840 --> 00:12:44,479
floating over all this molten rock.

246
00:12:44,584 --> 00:12:48,208
Earth's crust is so constantly
folding in on itself

247
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that we cannot find a stone
on the surface of the Earth

248
00:12:51,469 --> 00:12:53,859
that is as old as the planet.

249
00:12:55,749 --> 00:12:59,443
Ninety-eight percent of all the species
on Earth have gone extinct.

250
00:12:59,764 --> 00:13:02,471
And volcanoes are the biggest reason why.

251
00:13:02,722 --> 00:13:06,859
Of the 11 biggest extinctions,
four were caused by volcanoes.

252
00:13:07,325 --> 00:13:10,638
A new study that links
the late Traissic extinction

253
00:13:10,638 --> 00:13:13,258
of volcanic eruptions and outflows -

254
00:13:14,008 --> 00:13:18,150
or a new study links
this amazing extinction of life,

255
00:13:18,150 --> 00:13:20,045
95 percent of life on Earth -

256
00:13:20,045 --> 00:13:23,836
to volcanoes that essentially stretched -
and it all went off at the same time -

257
00:13:23,836 --> 00:13:26,547
essentially stretched
from what is now New Jersey

258
00:13:26,547 --> 00:13:28,239
to what is now Morocco.

259
00:13:31,338 --> 00:13:33,998
In our past, Earth
has opened up many times

260
00:13:33,998 --> 00:13:35,977
and flowed out for centuries.

261
00:13:35,977 --> 00:13:39,522
India is an outflow of volcanism.

262
00:13:39,741 --> 00:13:42,968
Volcanic activity fills the sky
with soot and hot ash

263
00:13:42,968 --> 00:13:45,037
and buries every living thing

264
00:13:45,037 --> 00:13:48,189
and blocks the sun for so many summers,

265
00:13:48,189 --> 00:13:51,739
the plants on land
and plankton in the sea die,

266
00:13:51,739 --> 00:13:54,505
and when they die, we die.

267
00:13:55,307 --> 00:13:59,289
Volcanoes can also produce
so much carbon dioxide

268
00:13:59,289 --> 00:14:03,712
that they will massively warm the planet
and create a runaway greenhouse effect,

269
00:14:03,712 --> 00:14:06,830
which is the opposite
of what we often expect from them.

270
00:14:07,546 --> 00:14:13,604
In Holland, they grow most of their food
in greenhouses with synthetic light

271
00:14:13,604 --> 00:14:15,307
24 hours a day.

272
00:14:15,307 --> 00:14:16,930
We can do that.

273
00:14:17,827 --> 00:14:21,625
When I was putting this talk together,
I just had this weird idea.

274
00:14:21,625 --> 00:14:25,638
I went to Amazon, I looked to see how much
they were and how good they are.

275
00:14:25,638 --> 00:14:29,293
Gas masks are the cheapest
insurance you can buy.

276
00:14:29,293 --> 00:14:30,932
They don't take up much space,

277
00:14:30,932 --> 00:14:33,546
and they get you through
a lot of hard times.

278
00:14:34,179 --> 00:14:39,066
And finally, the ultimate solution
to living on a planet like ours,

279
00:14:39,066 --> 00:14:41,884
which really is unstable
and will not last forever -

280
00:14:41,884 --> 00:14:45,862
in four and a half billion years,
the sun will take us in -

281
00:14:46,443 --> 00:14:51,206
our species will eventually die
if we do not colonize other planets

282
00:14:51,655 --> 00:14:53,642
in other solar systems.

283
00:14:54,055 --> 00:14:57,679
Number three: a runaway greenhouse effect,
I just spoke about that a little,

284
00:14:57,679 --> 00:14:59,609
or an ecosystem collapse.

285
00:15:00,628 --> 00:15:03,307
Okay, no surprise, we're heating up.

286
00:15:03,307 --> 00:15:09,063
In 1990, the mean atmospheric temperature
of Earth was 14 1/2 degrees centigrade.

287
00:15:09,063 --> 00:15:12,892
In 23 years, we've gone up
3/4 of a degree.

288
00:15:12,892 --> 00:15:16,529
Never in the history of this planet -
we know from ice cores -

289
00:15:16,529 --> 00:15:19,313
has carbon dioxide risen so fast.

290
00:15:19,313 --> 00:15:23,417
When we get to 16 1/2 degrees -
that's 1 1/4 degrees from where we are -

291
00:15:23,417 --> 00:15:26,314
we will lose control of our climate.

292
00:15:26,479 --> 00:15:28,049
Or let me put it a different way:

293
00:15:28,049 --> 00:15:30,502
It will become extremely unpredictable.

294
00:15:31,255 --> 00:15:33,412
Every major extinction in Earth's history

295
00:15:33,412 --> 00:15:37,213
has been characterized
by rapid increases in CO2.

296
00:15:37,213 --> 00:15:41,900
And we're now in an unprecedented period
of increases in CO2.

297
00:15:42,323 --> 00:15:44,056
Normally the atmosphere releases

298
00:15:44,056 --> 00:15:46,706
about 10 percent of the heat
we get from the sun.

299
00:15:46,706 --> 00:15:50,206
But as we heat up,
more and more water turns to vapor,

300
00:15:50,206 --> 00:15:52,662
more global warming methane
and other gases

301
00:15:52,662 --> 00:15:55,672
are released from the northern
and southern permafrost,

302
00:15:55,672 --> 00:15:58,744
and at some point
the Earth works like a greenhouse -

303
00:15:58,744 --> 00:16:00,477
gets into a feedback loop

304
00:16:00,477 --> 00:16:02,653
that eventually will turn us into Venus,

305
00:16:02,653 --> 00:16:07,214
where the average daytime temperature
is 900 degrees Fahrenheit.

306
00:16:07,960 --> 00:16:11,256
At the same time we're witnessing
a huge extinction cycle.

307
00:16:11,256 --> 00:16:12,661
In the next 25 years,

308
00:16:12,661 --> 00:16:17,737
we will lose 25 percent of all the species
in the Hawaiian islands alone.

309
00:16:17,737 --> 00:16:20,458
We're devastating our oceans
by overfishing them,

310
00:16:20,458 --> 00:16:23,700
and we're killing
our coral reefs with heat.

311
00:16:23,700 --> 00:16:28,644
Somewhere in the Amazon rainforest
is what I like to call a marginal tree.

312
00:16:28,644 --> 00:16:32,403
We keep cutting down
oxygen-producing trees,

313
00:16:32,403 --> 00:16:35,369
and someday, when we get
to that marginal tree,

314
00:16:35,369 --> 00:16:40,391
we will see the beginning of the collapse
of our oxygen ecosystem.

315
00:16:40,814 --> 00:16:42,880
We are still asleep at the wheel.

316
00:16:42,880 --> 00:16:44,718
Global warming is an emergency.

317
00:16:44,718 --> 00:16:47,315
It's almost incomprehensible

318
00:16:47,315 --> 00:16:51,102
how much CO2 we have to stop
putting in the air in the next 10 years

319
00:16:51,102 --> 00:16:53,165
to stop this process.

320
00:16:53,165 --> 00:16:58,006
And we need to prioritize the animals
and the amount of nature

321
00:16:58,006 --> 00:16:59,504
that we're trying to save.

322
00:16:59,504 --> 00:17:01,268
We can't save it all.

323
00:17:01,268 --> 00:17:04,880
We need to save the species
that help us the most.

324
00:17:04,880 --> 00:17:06,303
[#2 - Nuclear war breaks out]

325
00:17:06,303 --> 00:17:07,445
Now, this is interesting

326
00:17:07,445 --> 00:17:10,227
because 11 years ago,
this wasn't even on my radar screen,

327
00:17:10,227 --> 00:17:14,041
because I don't think nuclear war
was any kind of significant threat.

328
00:17:15,224 --> 00:17:17,768
There's a good reason
every major nation in the world

329
00:17:17,768 --> 00:17:20,531
wants to keep Iran from getting the bomb.

330
00:17:20,531 --> 00:17:24,249
But there's a larger reason
that's really out of our control.

331
00:17:24,249 --> 00:17:28,842
Both India and Pakistan have
more than 100 nuclear weapons each,

332
00:17:28,842 --> 00:17:32,182
far more than enough
to create a nuclear winter,

333
00:17:32,182 --> 00:17:34,135
which will kill us all.

334
00:17:34,282 --> 00:17:37,804
They have fought three wars since 1947.

335
00:17:37,804 --> 00:17:41,197
And India is developing
a nuclear submarine fleet

336
00:17:41,197 --> 00:17:44,636
so it can fire its missiles from anywhere.

337
00:17:46,520 --> 00:17:49,483
President Obama
has spoken about this idea;

338
00:17:49,483 --> 00:17:51,396
it makes tremendous sense.

339
00:17:51,396 --> 00:17:54,283
And there's a huge rap
against anti-missile systems

340
00:17:54,283 --> 00:17:57,895
because if we use it and we knock down
everybody else's missiles,

341
00:17:57,895 --> 00:18:00,711
then we're left
with all the good missiles.

342
00:18:00,711 --> 00:18:05,229
So part of the answer to this problem

343
00:18:05,229 --> 00:18:10,079
may be to develop anti-missle
technology cooperatively

344
00:18:10,079 --> 00:18:13,994
with many, many other nations
and place them where they are needed.

345
00:18:13,994 --> 00:18:16,068
You have to fire an anti-missile

346
00:18:16,068 --> 00:18:20,080
30 seconds after a missile
with a warhead on it is fired

347
00:18:20,080 --> 00:18:24,298
so that it catches it before
it's on the downward curve in space.

348
00:18:26,689 --> 00:18:29,403
Number one: We cross paths
with a really big asteroid.

349
00:18:29,403 --> 00:18:31,140
This is my favorite.

350
00:18:31,640 --> 00:18:32,791
(Laughter)

351
00:18:32,791 --> 00:18:36,088
Now, there's a possibility I've been wrong
about some of these things,

352
00:18:36,088 --> 00:18:38,912
the possibility some of
these things won't happen.

353
00:18:38,912 --> 00:18:42,418
In the best sense of journalism,
that's my disclaimer.

354
00:18:42,418 --> 00:18:44,291
But I am not wrong about this,

355
00:18:44,291 --> 00:18:46,244
and this is what keeps me up at night.

356
00:18:46,244 --> 00:18:48,103
This is my passion.

357
00:18:48,393 --> 00:18:50,893
Right now, somewhere in space,

358
00:18:50,893 --> 00:18:53,529
maybe in the asteroid belt
between Mars and Jupiter

359
00:18:53,529 --> 00:18:55,952
or farther out in the Kuiper belt,

360
00:18:55,952 --> 00:18:59,032
of large objects
that exist beyond Neptune,

361
00:18:59,032 --> 00:19:01,784
there's a missile with our name on it.

362
00:19:02,435 --> 00:19:06,775
It could break out of its orbit tomorrow,
or not for 100,000 years,

363
00:19:06,775 --> 00:19:08,807
but its fate is sealed.

364
00:19:08,807 --> 00:19:10,805
It will hit Earth.

365
00:19:10,805 --> 00:19:13,211
It has happened before many times.

366
00:19:13,211 --> 00:19:14,996
Get a telescope and look at the moon.

367
00:19:14,996 --> 00:19:17,391
It is covered with asteroid hits.

368
00:19:17,391 --> 00:19:19,867
And you'll see that
in a video in a second.

369
00:19:19,867 --> 00:19:22,988
The Earth is just as pockmarked
with asteroid hits.

370
00:19:22,988 --> 00:19:25,627
It's just that that folding
crust that we have,

371
00:19:25,627 --> 00:19:27,465
that's hidden a lot of them,

372
00:19:27,465 --> 00:19:29,913
and vegetation has covered a lot of it.

373
00:19:30,510 --> 00:19:34,166
A large asteroid took out the dinosaurs
65 million years ago

374
00:19:34,166 --> 00:19:38,016
by creating shock waves
and firestorms across this planet

375
00:19:38,016 --> 00:19:40,286
and created a sky so full of debris

376
00:19:40,286 --> 00:19:43,448
that summer did not return
for at least 100 years

377
00:19:43,448 --> 00:19:45,335
and maybe 1,000 years.

378
00:19:45,524 --> 00:19:50,028
Had humans been alive then,
they would all have been wiped out.

379
00:19:50,657 --> 00:19:52,953
Now, here's some hope.

380
00:19:53,193 --> 00:19:55,691
433 Eros. This is a huge rock -

381
00:19:55,691 --> 00:19:58,249
it's bigger than the one
that took out the dinosaurs -

382
00:19:58,249 --> 00:20:01,592
that orbits in the asteroid belt
between Mars and Jupiter.

383
00:20:02,439 --> 00:20:03,767
At sometime in its future

384
00:20:03,767 --> 00:20:06,318
it will shift from a Mars-crossing orbit

385
00:20:06,318 --> 00:20:07,399
that it's in now

386
00:20:07,399 --> 00:20:09,089
to an Earth-crossing orbit.

387
00:20:09,089 --> 00:20:12,589
It will intersect
with where our planet is.

388
00:20:12,759 --> 00:20:16,703
It is bigger than the asteroid
that killed off the dinosaurs.

389
00:20:16,895 --> 00:20:18,990
But here's where
this thing gets interesing.

390
00:20:18,990 --> 00:20:23,480
We took this photo from a space probe
that left the Earth in the year 2000,

391
00:20:23,480 --> 00:20:27,706
a NASA probe, that was designed
to study asteroids.

392
00:20:27,706 --> 00:20:32,184
And this spaceship settled into orbit
around the asteroid.

393
00:20:32,184 --> 00:20:37,672
You can put a baseball in orbit
around me if you're in space;

394
00:20:38,288 --> 00:20:40,028
there's enough gravity.

395
00:20:40,028 --> 00:20:42,941
Now, when the mission ended,
there was a little leftover fuel,

396
00:20:42,941 --> 00:20:44,866
there was a little leftover electricity,

397
00:20:44,866 --> 00:20:47,836
and the mission controllers -
this wasn't part of the mission -

398
00:20:47,836 --> 00:20:50,935
they landed the spacecraft
on Eros successfully.

399
00:20:51,215 --> 00:20:55,841
And since then, we have
intercepted three comets in deep space

400
00:20:55,841 --> 00:20:58,981
that move at 20 miles per second.

401
00:21:00,564 --> 00:21:03,650
Stop and think about
the implications of those missions.

402
00:21:03,650 --> 00:21:05,962
For the first time in human history,

403
00:21:05,962 --> 00:21:09,329
we have the ability
to fly into an incoming asteroid

404
00:21:09,329 --> 00:21:11,175
and change its orbit,

405
00:21:11,175 --> 00:21:13,001
but only if we know it's there,

406
00:21:13,001 --> 00:21:16,206
and only if we have a rocket ready to go.

407
00:21:16,386 --> 00:21:22,552
Most asteroids are found by amateurs
when it's too late to do anything.

408
00:21:22,552 --> 00:21:25,657
NASA is looking for bad guys
in the asteroid belt,

409
00:21:25,657 --> 00:21:28,155
and there are about
20,000 of them out there.

410
00:21:28,155 --> 00:21:30,028
But they can't look in the Kuiper belt,

411
00:21:30,028 --> 00:21:31,147
it's too far away,

412
00:21:31,147 --> 00:21:33,498
and it has 100,000 objects in it

413
00:21:33,498 --> 00:21:37,937
10 times bigger than the asteroid
that took out the dinosaurs.

414
00:21:38,357 --> 00:21:40,289
In only 20 years,

415
00:21:40,289 --> 00:21:44,274
we have developed the technology
to change our fate.

416
00:21:44,274 --> 00:21:49,186
We can intercept an asteroid,
and we can take it out of play.

417
00:21:51,306 --> 00:21:54,709
One day you or your children,
or their children,

418
00:21:54,709 --> 00:21:56,041
or their children's children

419
00:21:56,041 --> 00:21:58,949
will wake up and this news will be real,

420
00:21:58,949 --> 00:22:01,759
the headline on the front page
of The New York TImes:

421
00:22:01,759 --> 00:22:05,469
Killer Asteroid Found
on Collision Course with Earth.

422
00:22:05,846 --> 00:22:08,910
What happens after that
if we're not prepared

423
00:22:08,910 --> 00:22:10,688
is really beyond horror.

424
00:22:10,688 --> 00:22:13,103
Most humans will not die from the impact,

425
00:22:13,103 --> 00:22:15,730
most will die of starvation.

426
00:22:16,161 --> 00:22:18,944
And the price of insurance
to protect us from this

427
00:22:18,944 --> 00:22:22,365
is what we spend on one B2 bomber.

428
00:22:23,342 --> 00:22:26,890
The asteroid problem is stupidly obvious.

429
00:22:27,373 --> 00:22:30,538
A physicist said almost 100 years ago:

430
00:22:30,538 --> 00:22:33,222
"There are two kinds of civilizations:

431
00:22:33,222 --> 00:22:36,482
those who can protect themselves
from an asteroid impact

432
00:22:36,482 --> 00:22:38,139
and those who can't."

433
00:22:38,820 --> 00:22:40,169
We're the former.

434
00:22:40,169 --> 00:22:41,545
What are we waiting for?

435
00:22:41,545 --> 00:22:42,839
Thank you.

436
00:22:42,839 --> 00:22:44,668
(Applause)