Don't Look Up

The fiction defines the nightmare. The table scores what reality has already built — each symptom checkable, each status sourced, the absences counted as honestly as the arrivals.

The symptoms

	symptom	the evidence	as of
—	A planet-killer with real impact odds is on the booksabsent	This does not exist. Apophis, the most-watched hazardous asteroid of the century, was removed from impact-risk tables in March 2021 after radar ruled out any Earth impact for at least 100 years; 2024 YR4, the only recently risk-rated object, was cleared for Earth in February 2025 and for the Moon on 5 March 2026. No known object currently carries an impact rating above background. [source]	2026-03
—	Civilization-scale objects can approach undetectedabsent	The sky is watched. As of August 2025 NASA's CNEOS counted 874 near-Earth asteroids larger than 1 km — over 90% of the estimated population, typically tracked decades in advance, versus the film's six months. The Rubin Observatory, observing since June 2025, reported over 11,000 new asteroids from its earliest data (confirmed April 2026), including 33 near-Earth objects, none hazardous. [source]	2026-04
—	Humanity has no way to move an asteroidabsent	Deflection is demonstrated, not theoretical. NASA's DART spacecraft struck Dimorphos on 26 September 2022 and shortened its orbit by 32 minutes — roughly 25 times the pre-defined success threshold — confirmed by NASA on 11 October 2022 and refined in Nature in March 2023. It was the first deliberate alteration of a celestial object's motion. [source]	2023-03
—	No institution owns the problem; the warning chain fails when testedabsent	NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office has existed since 2016, and the chain was exercised live: 2024 YR4 went from discovery in December 2024, to a ~3% Earth-impact estimate, to a formal Earth all-clear in February 2025, to a Moon all-clear via retasked James Webb observations on 5 March 2026. Telescopes were mobilized, probabilities published openly, and the number was walked to zero without panic. [source]	2026-03
◐	A short-warning blind spot: sub-kilometer asteroids and long-period cometspartial	Only about 44% of the estimated 25,000 near-Earth asteroids over 140 m were catalogued as of NASA's Inspector General review of June 2025, and long-period comets — the film's actual antagonist — can arrive with under two years' warning (Siding Spring gave Mars 22 months) against interceptor build times of roughly five years. The purpose-built NEO Surveyor telescope survived a proposed 47% NASA science cut — rejected by Congress in January 2026, 397–28 and 82–15 — and is slated for launch in 2027–28. [source]	2026-01
✅	The audience has left: mass attention too fragmented for shared alarmpresent	The Reuters Institute's June 2026 Digital News Report puts selective news avoidance at 42% globally, up from 29% when measurement began in 2017, with interest in news falling for five consecutive years. Trust in news sits at a record low and social media has overtaken television as the primary news source. [source]	2026-06
✅	Government announcements arrive pre-disbelievedpresent	Pew's December 2025 trend series finds 17% of Americans trust the federal government to do what is right always or most of the time — near the lowest ever measured, against 73% in 1958. Only 2% say 'just about always.' [source]	2025-12
✅	Whether to believe the scientists is a party questionpresent	Pew's January 2026 science-trust report shows 90% of Democrats but 65% of Republicans with at least a fair amount of confidence in scientists — a 25-point gap. The partisan split on whether science's effect on society is positive (76% vs 51%) stood at no more than 7 points before the COVID-19 pandemic. [source]	2026-01

The honest read

The hardware half of this nightmare is in unusually good shape, and that should be said plainly: the kilometer-class objects are catalogued, deflection was demonstrated in 2022, and when a real candidate appeared in December 2024 the warning chain worked — quietly, publicly, to zero. What the film gets right is the audience, not the sky: 42% news avoidance, 17% trust in government, and confidence in scientists sorted 25 points by party. The base rate is also on our side — Chicxulub-class impacts occur on the order of once per hundred million years, and nothing known is inbound. The real barrier this file tracks is whether a fragmented public could hold attention on any slow emergency; the comet is merely the cleanest test case ever written for it.