Russia, China, and other nations immediately collaborate to construct a rocket (or series of rockets) to try and redirect the asteroid, using parts from other space missions that are now irrelevant in the face of the threat. The Western world starts up the propaganda mills about how this rocket is actually intended for space combat against Western satellites, with fake whistleblowers from the program to "confirm" this. They go about making an alternative rocket, designed with AI.

After four months, the Western-made rocket is on its third round of redesigns and a trillion-dollar grifting industry has begun in which you can reserve a digital spot on the rocket. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are at all-time highs. A full 65% of the Western population doesn't believe in the asteroid, citing the fake news over the coronavirus pandemic, which only killed a few million people and led to the indirect deaths of millions more and thus nobody should have shut down for it, and how they no longer trust scientists to do the right thing. The American government is actively trying to sabotage the Eastern-made rocket and has admitted to this at least five times on national television as they regard it as such a massive risk to their imperial dominance.

The Chinese-made rocket flies off a couple weeks before the deadline and succeeds, knocking the asteroid off course with a projected impact now delayed by a couple hundred years. By this point, a solid 75% of the Western population believes the asteroid never existed and was a conspiracy to spread fear and panic across the world for some dastardly reason. The Western state media expresses surprise that the Chinese rocket could even fly because they haven't adapted their view of China since 2004. They start off a war with Taiwan to try and capitalize off a projected Chinese weakness and to try and distract from the major W of saving all life on Earth. Taiwan is completely encircled within a week and the American fleet and airforce is revealed to be a complete paper tiger, such as they currently are in Yemen. America blows up Taiwan's chipmaking fabricators and two months later, China reveals that the rapid technological advances that they made during the rocket-building campaign means they don't even need those factories anymore and replacements will be there in a year's time.

Due to the massive economic hit, severe treat withdrawals and the asteroid aftermath, Western society has melted down into utter chaos. The petit-bourgeois are starting up actual cults and are lynching minorities again. The working class is trying to keep everything going despite all unions and strike activity being outlawed as the new state narrative is that unions were invented by evil communists in 2020 to weaken America. 80 hour work days are seen as not only normal, but slacking. Rates of childbirth are at absolute record lows as nobody can support families anymore. The capitalists at the top are still trying to maintain the pre-Taiwan levels of profit and financialization is in full overdrive. Industrial intiatives are proposed by President Rittenhouse, who we had to elect to keep Trump out of office. There are ongoing genocides of minority refugee populations accused of being sent by China and Russia and Iran to destabilize our glorious civilizations throughout America and Europe and the death tolls are in the millions, but Trump might have tweeted during them and so he is clearly the greater evil here. The concentration camps are the only successful industries. There are cryptocurrencies and funko-pops based on how many people of a certain minority are murdered that week and those interned still have to pay rent for their rooms at the concentration camps.

Eventually, the lack of non-grifter industrial activity means that when the electrical grid breaks down, there are no transformers nor cables to replace them. Untold horrors occur throughout the vast swathes of America that remain disconnected from power. China has, by this point, already transitioned to a socialist society and is drawing up plans far in advance to deal with the asteroid when it returns. Russia briefly turned fascist for a few years after Putin was killed by Prigozhin's son out of revenge but foreign pressure resulted in the collapse of the dictatorship and a slow, cautious march back towards socialism is enacted by the replacement party. Most of the comprador regimes in the Middle East fell, resulting in an Islamic-socialist initiative which includes a now freed Palestine. South Korea was overthrown by a revolution and there are talks about how to once again join them and the DPRK together. Various countries in Africa were frantically and chaotically invaded by Western powers to try and guarantee access to cash crops and minerals to keep some semblance of treat supply going, but the damage is being repaired. Europe is back to fighting each other in massive wars over neo-fiefdoms and nobody else in the world really gives a shit about them so long as they keep to themselves; caucasians are a primitive and warlike race, after all.