Originally posted by Boomer1941
If NASA or the Federal Government knew an asteroid hit was eminent, huge and unstoppable don't think for one minute the populace would get a warning.

All information about new asteroid discoveries is published before anyone can even be sure if a potentially hazardous asteroid is a real and unstoppable threat or just another near earth asteroid. Amateur contributions help determine the exact orbit and find the true threat level posed. If it turned out that an impact was inevitable the basic information would already be in the hands of amateurs before anyone could even think to censor it. There has been at least one instance where it was believed that an impact threat from a newly discovered asteroid was very high and imminent, and it was an amateur who ruled out the possibility of impact shortly before the news went all the way up the chain of command.