I may have asked this before but think it was on another thread and can't remember the answer.
If some big asteroid or such like was suddenly discovered to be hurtling straight towards earth and was gonna hit us straight on (i.e its just big enough thing to wipe out earth) then I have a few questions:
1. How much notice would the top dogs at NASA get? i.e a month, weeks, days etc?
2. Would they keep it hush hush?
3. Is there anyway to prevent it hitting i.e altering it's course/blowing it up etc
4. Is there currently some sort of emergency protocol for this to preserve human life?
5. If yes to above, what would this likely be? Do they have a big rocket on standby that they would fill with intelligent folk and get them the fcuk out of there?