MOSCOW, February 15. /TASS/. Most Russians (63%) consider threats from outer space like meteorites falling to Earth virtually unrealistic, according to the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center that published the results of a survey conducted in early February among 1,600 respondents over the age of 18.
The survey was conducted as part of a joint special project by TASS and the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center marking the tenth anniversary of the fall of Chelyabinsk meteorite on February 15, 2013.
"Today we know a lot about space, including the dangers it may pose. However, the majority of Russians consider asteroids, comets and meteorites crashing down to Earth to be something unrealistic (63% of respondents), while 31% of Russians polled believe the opposite. Such a scenario is more often considered possible by young people aged 18-24 (49%) and 25-34 years (40%), as well as active Internet users (38%), but rarely (25-27%) by older people," the pollsters noted.
The question of whether it is possible to prevent or reduce the likelihood of destruction caused by falling meteorites and other space objects on Earth split the Russians polled almost evenly: 48% believe that such situations are impossible to predict, which means that it is impossible to prepare for them; while 44% of respondents said that such tasks were possible to accomplish.
"The likelihood of a meteorite plunging to Earth this year is estimated by Russians not very high: at 2.88 points out of ten," the pollsters said.
Threat Assessment
The older the respondents were, the more confident they were about the impossibility of confronting dangers from outer space. Among Russians aged 60 and above, 58% of respondents expressed this opinion, yet among young people aged 18-24 surveyed, 36% agreed with this viewpoint. At the same time, 60% of young people believe that the population of Earth is capable of withstanding such challenges. Among respondents aged 60 this position is shared by 33%.
"Education and preferred channels of information also influence perceptions of the ability to counter space threats. Russians with higher education answered positively in 52% of cases, whereas 33% of respondents who expressed this view had incomplete secondary education," the pollsters specified.
Active Internet users turned out to be more optimistic than active TV viewers: they were twice as likely to say that it is possible to prepare for such threats (52% vs 25%). The pollsters suppose that the result could have been influenced by available Internet audiences, including young ones, feature films and books about outer space, where such scenarios often have a happy ending.