Doom By Asteroid!

To this day I can't hear Richard Kiley's voice without getting short of breath. I hold nothing against him personally, it's just his voice has come to be, in my mind, the voice narrating the Apocalypse. The only bad thing about the 90's was that with the new millennium fast approaching, out of the woodworks came all the doom sayers, and following close behind them, the scientists backing them up. Hollywood and science teamed up to inform us that... some serious shit was about the hit the fan, so we better buy out all the stores just to be safe.

After all, weren't we all treated to documentary after documentary, blockbuster Roland Emmerich movie after Roland Emmerich movie, low-budget Roland Emmerich rip off after low-budget rip off, all foretelling Earth's sure destruction through multi-character plot lines? There was nothing our parents loved to watch more than people running for their lives as New York City went up in flames, and nothing I hated more than being forced to watch it too, and I don't even live there!

Anyways, I single out the voice of Richard Kiley especially, for his narration of the 1996 Discovery documentary "Three Minutes to Impact,"--a film that planted the seed into this brain that not only are we going to get hit by an asteroid "the size of Texas", but it will hit a metropolitan area (preferably a world landmark), and it will hit sometime soon enough for people to still be driving around '96 Corollas (as featured during the animated impact scenes). And seeing as how people are still driving '96 Corollas, I can only to assume that doomsday is long overdue! Is it time for a change of pants yet?

Let's be honest here. The first thing anyone thinks when they see asteroids plummeting into Paris, London, or New York is, "thank God that's not close to me."

Every two minutes of this thing I was squished up on the edge of the couch, begging the scientists, "say it isn't so! Oh, say it isn't so. Say it won't happen to me!" And sure as the Apocalypse itself, they just kept retorting, "Oh yeah, it's a mathematical certainty. We will be hit again, in fact, fairly soon too!"

I think the 90's wore my disaster reflex out though. I've seen so many of these things pummel into New York, Vegas, Paris, Rome, London...etc., throughout my childhood, that I don't think the real thing is even going to shock me much. Let's get our hopes up that if it's going to happen though... it'll happen to all those sorry saps living in cities far, far away from me. I'm calling you out, Aprophis.