Incoming!

2 April 2017, 01:07 | Updated: 2 April 2017, 01:11

asteroid

An enormous asteroid flew closer to Earth than the moon this week.

The object, given the clunky, unlovely, slightly threatening name of 2017 FJ101, zipped past within 202,000 miles of planet Earth.

The moon orbits around 238,855 miles away, so a piece of space rock the size of a bus came around 36,000 miles closer to the Earth than the moon.

Not even Ken Livingstone's bendy London buses were that dangerous.

The White House released an official document describing the plan if a meteor or asteroid was to head our way, it said "We're going to build a wall, a beautiful wall and we're going to get E.T. to pay for it."

The document is called the 'National Near-Earth Object Preparedness Strategy'.

It says the US government seeks to improve the nation's preparedness to address the hazard of near-Earth object (NEO) impacts by claiming that they are not real, that scientists do not agree that they are a "thing" and that if the President did not see it on Fox News then we can't be hurt by it.

Actually, that's not true, I made that up.

Dealing with a threatening asteroid would involve sending up a rocket to attack it, and as rockets are giant phallic thrusting objects, Donald Trump is VERY keen on having his name on one.

At the end of last year, Nasa warned we are not prepared for an asteroid strike.

Nasa's Dr Joseph said: 'The biggest problem is there's not a hell of a lot we can do about it at the moment.'

This is the sort of thing you do not want to hear from a scientist that is responsible for saving mankind.

He said: 'They are the extinction-level events, things like dinosaur killers; they're 50 to 60 million years apart, essentially.

This was more comforting, but then he added:

'You could say, of course, we're due.'

So, there's nothing we can do about it and it is just pure luck whether we all survive or we all die, which sounds like our prospects under a Trump presidency.

We might all die if he starts World War Three because Kim Jong-un starts a Twitter fight about who has crazier hair.

Of course, we might all survive if the donut in the Whitehouse can be distracted by something shiny for the next 4 years, while the grown-ups take charge.

Maybe a small asteroid will hit Mar-a-lago and do us all a favour, except that would put Mike pray-the-gay-away Pence in charge of the free world.

All things considered, I think at this point, maybe an extinction level event would be better.

Wipe the slate clean and start again.

Who's with me?