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oh, blow it!
Even breaking it into just a few pieces significantly reduces the chance of a cataclysmic explosion.Smaller pieces will lose most of their cosmic velocity as well as ablating a higher percentage of their mass. As long as the pieces hit at below 5km/sec they should not vaporize on impact creating a crater and sun blocking ejecta . If the explosion puts some stresses in to the asteroid, the stresses of atmospheric entry should make it more likely to fragment before impact. At least the moronic argument that multiple projectiles make it more likely to be struck has not been rearing its politically correct head lately.
Quick rough calculation of how many people would receive fatal blows from the meteorite fragments if blown up, assuming everyone is standing outside is a couple of hundred which reduces to only a couple of dozen if helmets are worn on the day as opposed to letting the whole block slam somewhere on the planet or ocean which averaged out for impact over the whole of land/ocean is about 250,000 . Ie, fragmenting reduces fatality risk by a factor of about a thousand and this is with the assumption of standing around outside with no protection.
I say blow it.
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