Uhh, Guys… We Almost Died of Asteroid This Morning

A stadium-sized asteroid nicknamed ‘Beast’ flew within 777,000 miles of Earth around 2:00 a.m. this Sunday morning. While that may seem like a safe space distance, there are reasons to be absolutely terrified.

First off, this rock was a quarter-mile wide. The size of the freakin’ Rose Bowl. Had it hit us, the resultant force would have been 100,000 times stronger than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

Enough to pulverize any city.

So this fucking thing was big. Ready to be truly frightened? It was only discovered April 23rd. That’s 45 days ago. Something that huge was just cruising through the universe undetected–at a speed of 31,000 mph–ready to merck the tits off whatever came in its way.

We did, however, know almost instantly that it wasn’t going to hit us. Once discovered, asteroids are apparently very easy to track.

“Once it’s within radar distance, the precision is remarkably good on its position and speed,”[Mark Boslough, of Sandia National Laboratories] said. “So the folks at JPL would be able to predict its impact point to within the nearest kilometer and its time to within the nearest second.”

To which I say: SO. FUCKING. WHAT? If we can only spot these things 45 days in advance, what the fuck are we going to do?

Maybe it’s enough time to evacuate a city, but do you really trust OBAMA to do it correctly? His administration had six fucking years to build a healthcare website and failed miserably. MISERABLY. You think seven weeks is enough time to come up with–and execute–a plan to stop an asteroid?

Fuck. No. We gonna die. Soon.

I, for one, welcome it.

You can read NASA’s whole release on the asteroid here.

[Image via NASA]