Researchers have presented a grim reality for all the space junk above us. There is a belief that one of these pieces of junk could unintentionally hit a military satellite. The result would be a war breaking out, even though it would likely begin without provoking.

Currently, the area around our planet contains 21,000 pieces of space garbage of significant size. There is an additional 500,000 additional bits of space junk that are unlikely to cause any problem. Now might be the time to begin looking at some proactive solutions to dealing with this space junk.

Russian space scientists say that there’s every chance one of the bits of space junk could accidentally smack into a military satellite.

Now you know what happens when a military satellite suffers a hit. Someone with a hair-trigger mentality will assume it’s an attack from a foreign power and immediately want to strike back.

The scientists have published a report detailing their fears in Acta Astronautica. In it, Vitaly Adushkin of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow says that space junk poses a “special political danger.”