Sanford opponent wants to avoid Armageddon by finding ‘Planet B’

U.S. Rep. Mark Sanford’s general election opponent thinks it is time “we started colonizing other planets.”

Democratic political activist Dimitri Cherny says humankind needs a backup plan should NASA scientists one day discover an object barreling toward Earth, bringing annihilation with it.

The former long-haul truck driver and die-hard Bernie Sanders fan lists “Finding Planet ‘B’” on his campaign website among eight pieces of legislation that he would push if elected in the coastal 1st District.

However, Sanford is heavily favored to win re-election, and he says he’s not too worried about finding mankind’s next home.

Cherny, 56, suggests diverting some of the country’s defense spending toward locating and, ultimately, colonizing other inhabitable planets. The concept so far has been explored in science fiction and by British entrepreneur Richard Branson, who has launched a space tourism company with plans to colonize Mars.

“I’d put it out there because this is the way I think,” said Cherny, who for years worked on creating data backups for IBM. “I think very long term, and I’m very concerned about the long-term survival of civilization.

“There’s sort of this general feeling that Rome failed and all big empires failed, and America is next.”

Cherny is little known.

His campaign website lists him as one of the founding members of the Black Lives Matter in Charleston and the pro-gun-control group Gun Sense SC. It also says he worked on the effort to remove the Confederate flag from State House grounds last summer.

Cherny acknowledges an asteroid strike is unlikely. But climate change is an equally dangerous threat that “will kill us before anything else,” he added. “We have a civilization-destroying event that is coming right down the pike, and nobody is saying anything about it.”

A post about the topic on Cherny’s website references the movie Armageddon, in which a ragtag band of oil-drillers-turned-astronauts, led by Bruce Willis, land on an Earth-bound asteroid and plant a bomb that saves civilization.

If elected, Cherny said finding “Planet B” would take a backseat to more pressing issues, including improving healthcare and education. “But, from a safety perspective, we have to have the technology and the capacity to protect Earth from civilization-destroying events, as have happened in the past.”

Republican incumbent Sanford said finding “Planet ‘B’ ” is not high on his list of concerns.

“We have a very full buffet of current and very real problems, not just in the domestic U.S. but frankly around the world, that I think at this point are much more pressing considerations,” he said.

The former S.C. governor has a 467-to-1 advantage over Cherny in campaign cash on hand, according to recent federal election filings.

This story was originally published August 26, 2016 at 4:10 PM with the headline "Sanford opponent wants to avoid Armageddon by finding ‘Planet B’."