First, thank goodness no-one was killed outright, though I did read someone had a spine injury. Recovery hopes for all.
Second, the whole town could have been immolated from the force of the explosion, but the detonation happened just high enough only some came to the surface.
Lastly, had that happened, and we didn’t have dash-cam video to explain it, would Islamists have been the first blamed? Russia has had a bad time with them (though the US led war has seemed to concentrate their attention on us), but there’s no love lost. Nobody predicted this asteroid, so there wouldn’t have been an extraterrestrial source to blame. A million dead (Russians, sorry I’m not good at current old-USSR nomenclature) would be motivation for reprisal…
The curse about living in interesting times has landed on us, and we dodged a bullet this time.
Update: this is at least somewhat because I have read Tom Clancy’s Sum of All Fears
