Other people are starting to pick up on the theme, first put forth by Jay Manifold (at least as far as I know, in the blogosphere) that asteroid impacts are a larger danger than they appear, because of the possibility of even a small one being mistaken for a nuke and setting off a war.

Wasn't that idea discussed in "Lucifer's Hammer" by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle back in the mid-70's?

That book was about an asteroid strike, but it wasn't about it being mistaken for a nuclear explosion.

Actually, a comet strike, to be precise. But they did discuss the possibility that the comet strike would be mistaken for a nuclear attack in the book, and took precautions to try and prevent it.

Did they? It's been a long time since I read the book.

I happened upon Niven and Pournelle fairly recently, so its still pretty fresh in my mind. There was speculation about it in the book, and in fact, when the comet does strike, China launches at Russia out of fear that Russia will try to move south as a result of the climate changes.

This lends further support to the suggestions I've seen to get a group of science fiction writers together to explore threat scenarios. They're considerably more imaginative than analysts at the CIA.

That's for sure. Unfortunately, scifi still doesn't get the respect it should from the main culture. People who read a lot of it are much better prepared for the future than those who ignore it as "fantasy and adolescent literature."

This was the subject of an H. Beam Piper short story except the meteorite was a piece of anti-matter that hit Auburn NY and eventually started WWIII. Civilization is rebuilding in the southern hemisphere and makes some antimatter, fires it off in a missle to test it, and notices the similarities to the "bomb" that started it all.