The imagery of a meteor streaking across the Russian sky is indeed striking:
As Ingrid Lunden of TechCrunch points out, much of the video has been shot by ordinary people — specifically with dashboard cameras:
The dash cam has become a familiar presence in Russia. It’s grown in popularity as a way for drivers to help protect themselves in cases where they have car accidents, or have been pulled over by corrupt police and demanded to pay “fines” for alleged illegal driving, by recording what it is that actually happened.
A larger meteorite could leave (some of) us the problem of bootstrapping society.