Things are getting so bad on Earth that there appears to be a growing interest in in Armageddon. What should we do?

The answer is NOTHING, which seems effectively the same thing we are already (not?) doing.

Yes, there are risks created by rogue states in Asia and the Middle East. Yes, the United States might be on the brink of some kind of civil war. Yes, bitcoin and other cryptocurrency might disrupt and destabilize the world’s financial system.

And yes, there are extraterrestrial risks flying all over the universe all the time. (I mean asteroids, not aliens, but who really know what is out there?) We know that it is only a matter of time before another big object collides with Earth. In fact, a near miss by a huge asteroid is stirring up a lot of media attention at the moment.

There is nothing we can do except predict approximately when and where a collision might occur. If such an object is actually going to hit us, we might have about a week’s notice—plenty of time for Trump to find a way to blame the Democrats—but exactly where the impact will occur is almost certainly impossible to pinpoint.

The object is moving at a speed of about 72,000 miles PER SECOND. (In contrast, it takes about six hours to fly from New York to London at 500 miles PER HOUR. An asteroid would cover the 400,000 miles between the Earth and the Moon in a matter of seconds.) If any of us ever sees that object incoming, he or she will not have time to blink, let alone worry.

We all learn that the death rate has remained unchanged for all of human history. One death per person. No one gets out alive.

However, we seem to submerge the knowledge of our mortality in order to look ahead with curiosity and without fear.

It is true that a few people end their own lives, doing so for a wide variety of reasons. But most of us hang on, perhaps out of a never-ending curiosity about the future.

In the case of a global cataclysm (whether man-made or natural) the thing most to be feared is likely not death, but survival. The conditions we would have to live in would likely be so radically different that the overwhelming human thought will probably be a desire to join the fortunate dead.

If Armageddon does occur, just about the only thing that could be of some reassurance would be to have one little pill that would painlessly get the job done. Perhaps the makers of opioids could turn their greedy attentions to a new Armageddon market?

Au REVOIR! And bonne chance.