“When a small piece of rock would fall on the Earth 100 years ago it could have caused minimal damage and would have stayed largely undetected, but Friday's accident fully demonstrated how vulnerable the technological civilization of today has become. It is high time Russia should start heavily investing in building an advanced space danger monitoring and warning system and above that a system capable of destroying such super bombs falling on us from the skies.”

—Moscow State University’s Vladimir Lipunov • Discussing, in his role as head of the school’s Space Monitoring Laboratory, why more must be done to protect people from chunks of rock falling out of the sky. “We should be thankful to fate that this meteor in fact was a blessing in disguise and instead of destroying a significant part of Russia with quite dire consequences to the rest of the world, it sent us a clear warning signal by simply blowing up a bunch of windows and lightly injuring over one thousand people,” he added. Other scientists, as well, are arguing that yesterday’s meteorite incident is worth adding fresh layers of protection—despite, well, the incidents being relatively infrequent.