Editor's letter: Keeping Chicken Little at bay

last updated 8 January 2015

It’s a good thing that you and I are not worrying types. Chicken Littles are undoubtedly now losing sleep over the 10-ton asteroid that came out of a clear blue sky over Russia last week and exploded with the force of a small nuclear device, on the same day that a much larger asteroid—big enough to obliterate a city—missed Earth by a hairbreadth. Our solar system, astronomers say, contains a million asteroids of worrisome size, and most of them haven’t been tracked. But why worry? The chances that any one of those massive, flaming rocks will come down on your head or mine on any given day are really, really tiny. Que sera, sera.

Once you allow yourself to worry about asteroids, your head becomes crowded with all sorts of possible disasters. Like the looming sequester, which some alarmists say will render our military toothless and impotent, and others warn will tip the weak-kneed economy back into recession. We’d worry about climate change and biblical droughts and floods. Then we’d have to move on to the threats by North Korea’s chubby dictator, Kim Jong Un, to nuke the U.S. And then there’s Iran’s pursuit of its own nukes. Here at home, societal collapse, anarchy, and mobs of looters are all just around the corner, according to Wayne LaPierre of the NRA (see Best columns: The U.S.). If we let those thoughts in, next thing you know, we’re worrying about Chinese hackers stealing your identity and shutting down the electrical grid. Then come the nightmares about being stuck on a cruise ship with 3,000 people and no working toilets. Let’s buck up, people. All we have to fear is fear itself. And 10-ton flaming meteors coming down on our heads.