Concerned citizens | From changing leaves to falling asteroids, folks will find a way to worry
I’ve done a radio talk show on Portland’s WGAN for several years, so I think I’m more aware than most about what concerns people these days. As I see it, a lot of people are worrying about a lot of things, and not just politics.
When it’s sunny, people worry about skin cancer. When it rains, people are concerned about water damage. I’ve known people who decide to go to the beach on a beautiful day and then start worrying about what number SPF sun lotion to use. If they pack sandwiches, they worry about the mayonnaise going bad or about mercury in their tuna fish.
There are people who, when they finally get a raise at work, worry about spending too much of it. These are the same types who worry about overpaying for the items they buy, so they join exclusive buying clubs and get everything in bulk. They can’t wait to tell you how much they saved buying green olives in 50-gallon drums.
Come fall, people who want to go leaf-peeping worry that they won’t go to the right place or the leaves they’re looking at won’t be at their peak and they’ll end up wasting the trip. Real worriers wonder where they should buy their gasoline — if they just drive to the next station, they’ll save a lot of money.
I try not to worry about things unnecessarily, but the other day I picked up a copy of Bill Bryson’s book “A Short History of Nearly Everything,” published by Broadway Books. Let me just say if you need to replenish your supply of things to worry about, you might want to pick up Mr. Bryson’s book, too. After reading it, even I started worrying.
In a chapter titled simply “BANG!” Bryson writes about the millions upon billions of asteroids of various shapes and sizes that are zooming around our solar system with no particular place to go and plenty of time to get there. The reason most of us don’t worry about them too much is because, well, we know there’s not only plenty of time but also plenty of space and so heavenly bodies seldom collide. That’s the good news.
The bad news is that every 50 or 60 million years — give or take a day or two — an asteroid a mile wide has been known to plow into this planet that we’ve grown so fond of. What happens then? Let’s just say the results of these collisions were “upsetting.” How upsetting? Well, if an asteroid were to hit us here in Maine some fine day this fall, you could probably forget about your afternoon appointments and even your plans for dinner.
Bryson tells about the small town of Manson, Iowa, which was hit by a two-mile-wide asteroid about 10 million years ago when the town was a lot less built-up than it is today. Scientists think it was the most excitement that town is likely to see again for a while. Other scientists — even though they weren’t there — say it was the biggest event ever to occur on the mainland United States, even bigger than a long, sweltering summer weekend traffic jam in the village of Wiscasset, if you can believe it.
According to Bryson, the crater this asteroid left behind in Manson was three miles deep and 20 miles across and would make the Grand Canyon look like a roadside ditch. Fortunately, there weren’t many people around at the time and as far as we know, there was no FEMA to screw up any recovery effort.
Bryson says an asteroid entering Earth’s atmosphere traveling at “cosmic velocities” — said to be even faster than commuters on I-295 between Portland and Brunswick — would heat everything below it to 60,000 kelvins, or about 10 times hotter than the surface of the sun and certainly hotter than any chili pepper you’re likely to taste. “Every living thing within 150 miles that hadn’t been killed by the heat of entry would now be killed by the blast,” Bryson writes. The PETA folks would be concerned only about the stress suffered by lobsters in the event of an asteroid strike, but the rest of us would also be anxious about relatives and friends and other humans in the vicinity.
So, if you’re looking for things to worry about this fall, I hope I’ve given you a few good leads. Who knows, our 60 million-year grace period may be up.
John McDonald, an author, humorist and storyteller who performs throughout New England, can be reached at mainestoryteller@yahoo.com. Read more of John’s columns here.
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