That's true, but they also often fall into the trap of exceptionalism.

That's not what would happen. We wouldn't mobilize. We'd fragment. Within days, the prediction would be declared partisan. One bloc would call it settled science; another would call it statistical hysteria. Billionaires would quietly commission private shelters while publicly funding studies questioning whether the asteroid even qualified as "large." News panels would debate whether the projected impact zone was being unfairly politicized. Conspiracy channels would insist the asteroid was fabricated to justify global governance. Others would insist the real asteroid was being hidden. Amateur analysts would flood the internet with homemade trajectory charts proving the professionals wrong. Death threats would arrive in astronomers' inboxes faster than research grants.

No, the o/O is optional (hence in square brackets), only the leading zero is required. All of these are valid octal literals in Go:

0600 (zero six zero zero)

0_600 (zero underscore six zero zero)

0o600 (zero lower-case-letter-o six zero zero)

0O600 (zero upper-case-letter-o six zero zero)

    octal_lit      = "0" [ "o" | "O" ] [ "_" ] octal_digits .