As far as deadly apocalypse scenarios go, perhaps the worst is a gigantic meteor impact. After all, a meteor wiped out most of the dinosaur species, and at any moment another such meteor could come for us. While a big meteor impact is unlikely, it’s a serious enough risk that NASA, FEMA, and a handful of agencies from other countries are developing an exercise to better prepare for it.

The exercise will take place at the 2019 Planetary Defense Conference, where representatives from several different countries will be tasked with planning a response to a hypothetical asteroid. The conference planners have invented an asteroid they’ve named 2019 PDC—which they have taken great pains to reiterate is entirely fictional—and will task conference attendees with responding to the threat.

According to the conference website, the asteroid was ‘discovered’ on March 26 on a near pass of the Earth. The asteroid was only visible for a few days, so astronomers were unable to precisely determine its orbit. The only thing they could determine is that 2019 PDC will make a close pass of the Earth in 2027. By the start of the conference, the asteroid’s orbit will be well-known enough to give it a 1 percent chance of hitting the Earth.

That’s the situation that will greet attendees when they arrive at the conference, and it’s up to them to decide how to proceed. The object of the exercise is to give experts from a wide range of fields, like astronomy and disaster prevention, a chance to talk to each other and practice working as a team. In particular, it gives the scientific agencies like NASA a better understanding of what details are important to disaster management teams.

The conference starts on April 29 and lasts until May 3. You can follow along with the developments at every day of the conference here.

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