How are you feeling? Are you quite relaxed? If it collides with Earth, it could cause a global catastrophe and exterminate almost all life.

Excellent. Glad to hear it. But since you are probably thinking about asteroids right now, why don't you let yourself be completely horrified by the amount of destruction and death that would result if an asteroid were to hit your hometown. Or anywhere else on earth.

Asteroid Launcher (opens in new tab) is a nifty browser tool that lets you pick any location on Earth and have asteroids of various sizes, types, and speeds fall there. This is not only the people at the impact point who are completely vaporized, but also everything else that happens afterward, such as huge fireballs, devastating shockwaves, winds reaching thousands of miles per hour, and the resulting earthquakes. All of these morbid yet fascinating details and the resulting deaths are laid out nicely for you to absorb.

For example, a 2,500-foot diameter asteroid composed of carbon dropped on the small city I live closest to, creating a crater 5.7 miles wide and vaporizing 84,951 people. This site tells us that an impact of this magnitude happens to the earth approximately every 200,000 years (I don't really want to check how long it's been since the last impact). My house is out of impact range, but I scrolled down to the first side effect of a huge chunk of carbon hitting the earth at 38,000 miles per hour: a huge fireball.

For those who were not immediately reduced to ashes, another 500,000 would suffer third-degree burns (and probably die a little later from their suffering), and another million would suffer second-degree burns. (I was horrified to see that I was within the "clothes on fire" radius, so I am taking off my clothes now for safety.) Meanwhile, the shock wave would kill nearly one million more people, flatten buildings within 70 miles, and damage lungs and rupture eardrums for those within another 40 miles. In addition, people within 60 miles would feel as if they were caught in a tornado, earthquakes would be felt as far as 150 miles away, and thousands more would die.

This is from a single asteroid only 2,500 feet across, but with an asteroid launcher, you could make your own asteroid much larger (or smaller), configure it with stone, gold, or steel, and drop it anywhere on the map you want. You can even change the speed and angle of impact. Have fun.

Asteroid Launcher (opens in new tab) is the work of coder Neal Agarwal. If you like to witness the devastation of a giant space rock falling on Monte Carlo, Disney World, or downtown Chicago, Agarwal has created a new version of the Asteroid Launcher, which includes a 10 Years Ago (opens in a new tab) (shows what the Internet was like 10 years ago), Baby Map (opens in a new tab), and Baby Map (opens in a new tab) (shows what the Internet was like 10 years ago). opens in a new tab) (flashes a country every time a baby is born in that country), the Auction Game (opens in a new tab) (guess how much various works of art sold for), and all sorts of cool browser-based tools and games (opens in a new tab).