Speaker
Description
Recent recorded instances of asteroid encounters at Tunguska (1908), Chelyabinsk (2013), and other sites show that we are vulnerable to impact hazards and the public are often left ill-informed. More importantly, we have not prepared the public for these threats and how to respond to the wide range of potential asteroid impact hazards, evidenced from the nearly 1,500 reported injuries from the Chelyabinsk air burst. Presently, the knowledge base for most of the public (and likely many emergency managers and public affairs specialists) for asteroid impacts is from Sci-Fi movies and popular culture, which can generate a lot of misconceptions in a real asteroid impact threat. Our goal is to educate emergency managers and public affairs specialists to prevent misconceptions from propagating and to better prepare them for the inevitable challenges around an asteroid threat.
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with NASA and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is developing a Press Kit for use by emergency managers, subject matter experts, media entities, and public figures to develop a common language for communication, the dissemination of information during an asteroid threat, and for general public knowledge.
The Press Kit comprises, first and foremost, a Brand Kit that contains a unified theme of fonts, colors, icons, images, and a logo that can be used in official products and communications for consistent messaging. A set of scientifically accurate “stock” photos and animations will be developed for a wide range of asteroid threats. These can be used for physical and digital products like stickers, social media, and brochures for wide dissemination. We will also develop an informative Fact Sheet and a short video for dissemination in digital and print formats. For emergency managers, sets of “canned” talking points will be developed with oversight from FEMA and subject matter experts to scaffold basic asteroid threats and mitigations well in advance of any such threat. This can be used as a baseline from which to develop detailed, key talking points for actual threats instead of having to re-develop the scaffold for each future (inevitable) event. We expect this product to be complete by March of 2026.