It came in at speeds that were tremendous, slammed into the ground, blew up, and exploded with the energy of roughly a 20 megaton nuclear bomb a very hefty bomb.

It was currently estimated that there was a 1 in 5,000 probability of a near Earth object named 2004MN colliding with Earth in 2036, the resulting impact being equivalent to a 1,000 megaton nuclear explosion.

They do so with good reason. Consider the potential effects of a 50 megaton nuclear explosion, similar to the Tsar Bomba, detonated in October 1961, which shattered windows 900 kilometers (560 miles) away and sent a mushroom cloud rising above the stratosphere.