2022, animals, Fantasy, Media, Movies, Nature, Science, space, Uncategorized

Too Late?

48 Comments

Asteroid 1994 PC1 whizzed past us yesterday at 43,000+ miles per hour.  Apparently compared to the asteroids that swing by almost every day, 1994PC1 is fairly large to be so far outside the asteroid belt.  NASA has been watching it for years (I’m guessing from it’s name, since 1994) and since none of us got warnings about impending asteroid/earth collisions the last few days, they are quite aware that relatively speaking while it’s coming close to us, its closest pass will be five times the distance between us and the moon.  According to scientists “if you aren’t worried about the moon crashing into your house this week, you shouldn’t be worried about this either”.

I guess we might have a closer call with a much larger asteroid in 2028.  That news actually hit the stands back in 1997, just a year after a big scare when 1996 JA1, an asteroid the length of two football fields, passed by at only 300,000 miles with not much warning.  This might account for a bunch of the asteroid movies that came out in the next couple of years (Deep Impact, Armageddon, Asteroid, Judgment Day to name a few). 

I’m not a big disaster film buff (although technically if they divert the asteroid, it’s not really a disaster flick, is it?) but I did see a couple of these.  It’s an interesting concept – pushing off an object that is traveling 43K miles an hour.  And I don’t really follow this stuff closely so I don’t know if there is an object that NASA is actually worried about.  And I wonder, would they tell us if there were?  Not sure what in heck we, as citizens of the planet could actually do to prepare.  I mean, I assume we’re smarter than the dinosaurs, but there sure wasn’t anything they could have done differently.

Which do you worry about more – asteroids or a zombie apocalypse? 

48 thoughts on “Too Late?”

  1. The zombies for sure.

    As you noted, what am I going to do about the asteroid? Duck and cover?

    With zombies, you have some options, so worrying is something you feel like you should be doing and trying to channel into action, and the fact that you might be “doing it wrong” is another thing to add to the worry wheel.

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  2. Neither. I worry more about everything else in the world. 🙂 Keeps me too busy to worry about zombies or asteroids. That said, I don’t worry much about anything. I’ve become more fatalistic as the years go by.

    Chris in Owatonna

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  4. Rise and Shine Baboons,

    Well, really, from 2016-2021 I was so worried about possible genocide, wars, and the national treasury disappearing into the pockets of a certain GOP executive, that zombies and asteroids went off my attention grid. So neither of those. My worry list is more about will my beet and carrot seeds germinate or will I remember to take enough CEUs to get my license each year. I plan to retire entirely in18 months so that one will drop off the list too. Then I can just worry about future joint replacements.

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    1. Oh, yes, and with the game, WORDLE, now I must worry about what if I do not get the word in six tries. What would that imply about my mental state? Is it the onset of dementia if I do not get the word?

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      1. Not at all. A lot depends on your initial guess, and that can be a matter of luck, especially if the target word does not conform to the expectations of letter probability—and probability can only help intermittently. I can imagine that if the target word were something like “pudgy”, it would be entirely possible to make your first three guesses without hitting a single correct letter.

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        3. I thought about it and realized that, starting from adieu, it would be possible to get to lynch in two more guesses. First I would guess something that uses only the two missing vowels, like “story”. That would tell me that “y” was a letter but not at the end. There are so few words with y as the sole vowel, it would be possible to guess the correct word.
          Trickier from adieu would be a word with o as the only vowel.

          Liked by 4 people

  5. I was on a panel at a convention–I think it was MarsCon 2012–that was about apocalypses (remember the Mayan Prophecy?). I’d read a great book, “Apocalypse Not” by John Michael Greer, which discusses dozens of failed end-of-the-world prophecies, and wanted to talk about it, but no one seemed interested. A guy on the other end of the table pulled the conversation onto zombie apocalypses, and there it stayed for the rest of the hour. So if I was going to worry about any apocalypse, it’d be asteroids, because I don’t want to hear one more word about zombies!

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    1. I saw a funny little cartoon just a few days ago. Two Mayan guys in a room, one with a big stone disc with the Mayan calendar on it. That guy says “I ran out of room once I got to 2012”. The other guy says “that’ll freak somebody out someday.”

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  10. Asteroids are pretty scary but I don’t worry about them. There are so many zombies around these days, they just don’t bother me anymore. Domestic terrorism? Scariest thing I can imagine.

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  12. the asteroid that is driven by zombies searching for planets to crash into so they can feast in the dead bodies of the planet
    earthlings are a bit spongy but the other critters on the planet are good
    birds fish forest elk deer and bear along with squirrels monkeys cattle and hippos makes it a good 2 or 3 years stop before moving on to the next solar system
    they have been doing this for 15 million years and are pretty adept
    they have developed asteroid deflector deflectors that make them impossible to deter
    but there’s no sense worrying since you can’t stop it. just hope it’s after you and your grand children great grandchildren and their great grand children have all moved on and enjoyed the fruits of this mortal coil

    zombie asteroids they’re a bitch

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  15. I am a worrier… about some things. And I feel like the older I get the more things I worry about. Most of them completely illogical; but try to convince the brain or the heart about that!
    I try to keep it all in perspective. But sometimes at 2AM… well, you know.

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  18. I just did a search for songs about worry and angst, and there are tons – only ones I recognized were the Beatles’ Help, and The End by the Doors (remember that? It goes on for 11 + minutes). The two posted here seem to not be on their radar… : )

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  20. Pingback: Too Late? – Nelsapy

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