An apocalyptic asteroid and a shortage of french fries: Embracing the peace that ‘surpasses all understanding’

This headline is an uplifting way to begin your Friday: “Apocalyptic asteroid strike that could wipe out humanity is ‘only a matter of time,’ top scientist warns.” Professor Alan Fitzsimmons of Queen’s University Belfast told the BBC, “We will get a serious asteroid impact sometime. It may not be in our lifetime, but mother nature controls when that will happen.”

Here’s another news item to make your day: we may be facing a french fries crisis. 

Crop damage due to cold and wet weather is causing a shortage of potatoes in North America. As a result, the US Department of Agriculture expects the nation’s output of potatoes to drop 6.1 percent compared to the previous year. Consequently, prices may rise and we may see a shortage of French fries in the near future. 

Here’s my question: Which of these stories feels more real to you? 

A “city-killer” NASA missed 

We’ve been warned about “killer asteroids” before, but humanity still survives. 

Fortunately, NASA assures us that it “knows of no asteroid or comet currently on a collision course with Earth, so the probability of a major collision is quite small. In fact, as best as we can tell, no large object is likely to strike the Earth any time in the next several hundred years.” 

Here’s the problem: the space agency could be wrong. 

They didn’t spot the “city-killer” asteroid that narrowly missed Earth last July until just hours before it shot past us. The manager of NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies admitted, “This object slipped through a whole series of our capture nets, for a bunch of different reasons.”

When it comes to killer asteroids, it just takes one. But no one knows when—or if—that one will arrive. 

“The worst natural disaster in the history of North America” 

The french fries crisis, on the other hand, is a real-time problem. We may not be astrophysicists qualified to calculate the…