With that off my chest, I have another confession. Not only do I enjoy these movies but they stir a kind of excitement within. As the hero runs around helping people and battling whatever force is hell bent on planetary destruction, I realize that I want to be that guy. The thought of being in that situation rouses my sense of adventure.
Well, really the only scenario where that’s going to happen is if we are somehow under attack (otherwise, my life consists of going to work and typing on this laptop). It’s not that I wish for some kind of catastrophe to befall us all so that I can be entertained and live out my fantasy. When the Mayan calendar ended, I wasn’t looking out my window with fingers crossed hoping for the opportunity. I just think that if some kind of Armageddon were to occur, it might be as exciting as a Michael Bay movie. Surely I’m not the only one.
Well, that theory has been debunked. A meteor came crashing through the earth’s atmosphere yesterday morning, causing some minor damage in central Russia. Let me say that again because I probably (hopefully) will never be able to repeat it…a meteor crashed into the earth. There was a sonic boom resulting from the chunk of space rock entering the atmosphere faster than the speed of sound, windows blew out and debris littered the area. As Mike Krumboltz points out in his Yahoo! New blog, the scene resembled the disaster film “Cloverfield.”
As I scan through the video footage (on the same blog) that has already been spread all over the internet, I realize how wrong my assumption was. There’s no feeling of excitement welling up in my chest as I watch this real footage. A fireball streaking across the sky, a blinding flash and a concussive blast smashing windows is just plain scary when you’re not seated in a theater. Thankfully nobody has been reported dead as a result (although CNN is reporting that at least 1,000 people suffered injuries, mostly from falling glass). When I first saw the report this morning, my jaw involuntarily dropped, and the only thing I could say was “no way.” No exhilaration, no entertainment, just uneasiness.
Who says the next one won’t hit the building I’m sitting in right now? There is also an asteroid rocketing past our planet at an uncomfortable speed and proximity, but is apparently unrelated to the meteor. If that’s true (which is hard for me to believe) then that makes this scenario all the more frightening. An asteroid and a meteor on the same day? Eerie. In a video interview on CNN, Bill Nye explains how humans are aware of about 1% of all the asteroids that are out there. That’s frightening, and he went on to say that an asteroid the size of our closely orbiting friend, if it struck earth, could level a major city. He also repeatedly stated that we should all be looking up at the sky.
I know I’ll be keeping one eye raised. It’s an awakening experience to think about how feeble we are in the grand scheme of things. To hear about how we could easily be wiped off the planet with no warning. The disaster flicks are purely fictional but scenarios like that could actually become reality. There’s nothing adventurous about that. But then again, what did Captain Hook say? “To die would be a great adventure.”
Value life today, folks. This planet is a gift.
Mike Krumboltz's Yahoo! News Blog
CNN's Bill Nye asteroid interview
Mike Krumboltz's Yahoo! News Blog
CNN's Bill Nye asteroid interview
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