A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Carpe Diem. Life imitates art. Famous sayings, all. Sayings that have stood the test of time and hold infinite amounts of wisdom, even though no one knows what the first two mean.
But if I know anything, which is yet to be determined, it’s that the third one is true – life does imitate art. And so if Hollywood has its way, nature will obliterate us all.
Every year we’re treated to a new blockbuster in which mankind succumbs to earthquakes, massive volcanic eruptions, the Earth’s core overheating, the onslaught of an instant ice age, giant ocean swells, a general rise in ocean levels, the next great boy band, and sometimes all of those at once. But a lot of these terrible movies followed in the footsteps of two giant-asteroid-blowing-Earth-to-bits movies released 15 years ago – Armageddon and Deep Impact.
Two weeks ago, when millions of Russians could see a meteor blasting through the sky without the aid of even a contact lens, we got scarily close to the moment when Hollywood would have been able to say, “See? Told ya.”
But in this instance, Hollywood didn’t have it right for two reasons. One being that the asteroid, this asteroid, didn’t hit Earth’s surface. The other reason is we’re supposed to know when we’ll be crushed by a giant asteroid, but this one seemed to catch everyone with their pants around their ankles (I know what that saying means too).
In the two asteroid movies, we know the gigantic rocks are coming. Scientists see them hurtling towards us. We develop plans. We train people. We question the training. We set the training to musical montages. Then we execute the plan. Well, in one of them anyway. In the other movie, the plan initially doesn’t work, so we have a contingency plan in which the old and infirm are asked to block the young, healthy, high-powered government officials from the asteroid’s impact. Or maybe those people are shuffled underground and the old and infirm get to absorb the impact however they wish. Either way, Elijah Wood escapes death because he has a motorcycle.
The reality is we’ll be as prepared for an asteroid as the dinosaurs were. The question was often asked how so many Russian cameras were able to capture the meteor during the brief time it flew overhead. The answer was NOT because everyone knew that it would fly over Russia on that specific day at that specific time. Not at all, because each of us is as prepared for an asteroid as we are for a traffic light snapping and falling on us while crossing the street.
The answer turned out to be because Russia is a horrible place to live. Sadly it was made an even more horrible place to live because nobody knew an asteroid was coming.
If it’s not too much to ask, I would like to know that a giant asteroid is coming. As a short, skinny man with an average education and a pale, freckly complexion who is past his peak physical condition, I assume I would not be among those chosen to hide in the underground government bunkers, but I could at least start digging my own bunker. Or, since I’m past my peak physical condition, pay someone to dig me a bunker. Since money would no longer be worth anything, I’d probably have to find someone with less of an education than I have. All of this would of course take time. So can someone who majored in asteroid identification please start manning the telescopes?
