This Saturday night of our lives could have been very different if a celestial killer was on just a little different path.

Asteroid 2002 NN4 flew pass by Earth on Saturday at 11:20 p.m. ET..

We are safe. The world did not end.
Disaster did not unfold. At least not due to this asteroid.

And we can count ourselves lucky about that.

While it was about 3.2 million miles away from our planet, 13 times further away than the moon, if it was not things could have been dire. It is the size of six football fields.

Sure, not the BIGGEST killer in the universe .. but a big one nonetheless…

X X X

After this week’s tumult, chaos, grief, virus, and protest, we are winded.

We are winded from months of chaos around every corner.. Memes are quick to make us laugh, like this one that was posted on the Coal Speaker page after it was reported that Yellowstone was having a number of rumbles:

Joking aside, it’s been a stressful period in American history..

Regardless of which political affiliation you choose to trust in, countless images and news stories have undoubtedly challenged your mental safety net.  The globe itself is living in the midst of a history chapter in a future high school text book being written..

X X X

So this asteroid keeping it classy and moving beyond the planet without violence is something we can at least be thankful about.. For now.

For now because all things are a matter of time. All things are eventual.. Biblical passages remind us that there is nothing new under the sun. Or even under the beautiful Strawberry Moon that is in our planet’s sights tonight.

Under the Milky Way galaxy..

x x x

There is a precious gift we all experience together. The chance for life, the air in our atmosphere.. this perfect little science experience on a pale blue dot somewhere in a solar system somewhere in a galaxy somewhere in a universe. And only God knows what is beyond the universe…

This week’s rallying cry is Black Lives Matter.  Others counter with their own mantra of “all lives matter.”  This vicious debate has been playing out on social media all week. A few horror movie fans have thrown their Jason Vorhees “no lives matter” joke into the mix..

But if an asteroid would really strike this planet, if we were set for fire and fatigue from a huge and out-of-nowhere hit from a space rock, it would be quickly clear that all lives would be fragile.. That all of these systems of government we have created and the ecosystems that have thrived would face a threat beyond anything modern society has prepared for.. After all, this is not Hollywood. And Bruce Willis will not save us while Aerosmith plays the closing credits.

 

TO SERVE MAN

Ronald Reagan commented on 1980s global chaos with an interesting quote that so often gets quoted even today.. Reagan at the UN wondered aloud if antagonisms at the moment would be united by an alien threat:

The Gipper was making a point.. but was right.

The alien threat does not have to be green or blue creatures from the planet Pop Tart. . they don’t have to be equipped with ray guns. They don’t even need to be aliens! It could be the alien rock in the form of a killer asteroid.. Dinosaurs didn’t make it through that alien threat, after all.

 

But back to Asteroid 2002 NN4..

WE are safe from that one..

However on June 8, we have another:

As the WEEK tactfully and factually informs us: 

ASTEROID 2013 XA22

The approach by Asteroid 2013 XA22, which will breach the MOID on Monday, June 8 at 3:40PM UTC, will be significantly closer than that of the 2002 NN4, coming to 0.019 AU (2.93 million kilometres) of Earth. Though it is smaller in size, it has peak diameter of 160 metres. It has a relative velocity of 24,050 kmph.

ASTEROID 2010 NY65

The asteroid 441987 (2010 NY65) will cross Earth on Wednesday, June 24, at 6:44AM UTC and is estimated to breach the MOID at 0.025 AU (3.76 million kilometres) from Earth. It has a peak size of 310 metres in its diameter. With a relative velocity of 46,400 kmph, 2010 NY65 will have the highest among the three large asteroids set to come the closest to Earth during this month.

None of these known asteroids will hit the planet. It’s the ones we don’t know about that cause sleepless nights for space watchers…

Asteroid 2002 NN4 was discovered on July 9, 2002. It was during the post 9/11 pre-Iraq war mid-summer night’s heat..

On my old website, I decided to reprint a representation of what my July 2002 midsummer night’s nightmare was… And to this day I have no clue what this rambling diatribe meant. But it sure seems to make sense in our modern era!

 

March on, march on!
Triumphant.
Let the music roll
The bombs bursting in the air of the hateful
The tide running low and then high, bringing in pond of the ocean on the rivers of the barge
The maiden is singing through the window at her bride to be.
The widow is singing at the graveyard of her husband that was.
The music rolls on.
March on, March on!
Louder, louder!
Swiftly

Suddenly, the perils of the future become apparent.
Marching down the aisles of the school and college.
The grade school has no boundary, but the high school has pain.
The college has promise but the reality has no gain.

The music rolls on. Slower.
Triumphant none the less.
Chills running down the spines of parents in their seats and in their heavens and hells.
MORE.
Here they come.
Students and gang members and drunks and drug addicts.
Ready to march into the uncertainties of life. More and more.
MORE come down.
More music rolls.
They take their seats.
Surrounded by God and Satan all on one chair.
Chills moving through the bodies of those even without feelings.
A hush comes over the crowd….
Crack open a cold one. Light up a hot one.
The music says the days are numbered
The time is over.
It keeps playing. Rewind. Fast Forward, it doesn’t leave your head.
Blood flowing, grandmothers growing. All in the night. All at the drop of a hat.

The bottle gone empty. The blunt blunted. The police are here.
Students and young adults don’t know where they are because their parents never gave them
direction. Their parents never gave them direction because they lost the path.
The battles that raged were won by no one and fought by everyone. We are lost. We lost. They lost us, now we can’t even find a war to fight.
No one wants to fight a war that is un-winnable

But the march goes on. The beat continues. More and more walk down that aisle for their fateful visit with the hand of time. It gets no easier, does it? IT gets only more painful.
The hand extended, the face stony. The music greets them like a violent storm in the night.
They need to listen but they dread to hear it. The beat marches on with their feet. Platform and leather soled, their hats and tassels turn. They’re finished.

On with life! On with death!
On with hate! And on with crystal meth. It doesn’t get any better, does it? Civil marches and freedoms goodbye. Holy alliances out the window.
Fear and loathing sense their home. Something has gotten into our blood. We are bloodless?

The music rolls on. Coming to a conclusion.; Wind blows and doors slam.
What the hell are we even doing this for?
We’re dreaming the impossible, nightmare visions of reality in our lives.
All this and the march keeps marching, the beat keeps beating.

All this in a midsummer night’s dream…

Horror-Report, July 25, 2002 9:00 pm EDT