Originally published 8 June 1998
Patient: Doc, you’ll remember me. I am the fellow who was here a little more than a year ago—worrying about rocks from the sky.
Doctor: Hmm, yes, I remember. You had an obsessive fear that the Earth might be struck by an asteroid or comet.
Patient: Yeah, that was me. You told me not to worry. You…
Doctor: Since your visit I have had a number of patients who are worried about rocks from the sky. I wrote a paper about it for the American Psychological Association. The Chicken-Little Syndrome, I call it. An irrational, compulsive fear that the sky is falling.
Patient: Listen, Doc. The last time I was here you tried to convince me that my fears were irrational. But look what’s happened since then. A good-sized chunk of something hit the Greenland ice cap in December. Then astronomers discovered a mile-wide asteroid on collision course with the Earth. Asteroid 1997 XF11, they called it. Gonna hit us smack dab in the year 2028.
Doctor: Astronomers have issued a revised orbit for that object. The last I heard it will miss the Earth by a million miles.
Patient: Half-a-million. The revised distance is half-a-million.
Doctor: Whatever.
Patient: Or so they say.
Doctor: What do you mean?
Patient: Did you see the movie Deep Impact? An astronomer discovers a comet on collision course with the Earth and the government covers it up, for fear of panic. Don’t you wonder why the media story on XF11 was changed so quickly?
Doctor: According to the press, it was because astronomers found images of the asteroid on old photographic plates, which made it possible to more exactly calculate the orbit.
Patient: Yeah, well, that’s what they say…
Doctor: Ah, suspicions of conspiracy. A typical paranoid manifestation of the Chicken-Little Syndrome.
Patient: Doc, Doc, it’s a dangerous world out there. Stuff is flying around all over the place. Did you ever hear of the Spacewatch Project? A group of astronomers are systematically scanning the sky for what they call PHAs — potentially hazardous asteroids. I’ve heard that as many as 2,000 PHAs are thought to exist. Only a few hundred have been charted.
Doctor: You understand, of course, that you stand a better chance of getting flattened in the street by a bus than being zapped by an asteroid or comet?
Patient: If my fear was rational, would I be here? Doc, I’ve seen the movie Deep Impact a dozen times. I’ve watched my tape of the TV movie Asteroid so many times I’ve lost count. When the movie Armageddon comes out next month I’ll be first in line. I lay awake at night waiting to hear the boom of an impact, the roar of a tsunami.
Doctor: Perhaps you are working out some repressed fear you developed as a child. Stretch out on my couch. Tell me about your father…
Patient: In the past five years, the astronomers say nearly 20 asteroids have passed within a million miles of Earth. Almost surely some slipped by unseen. That means in a typical lifetime maybe 400 of them pass within that distance…
Doctor: A million miles?
Patient: A million miles compared to the Earth is like the size of a big room compared to your head. How would you like to stand in a room while 400 bullets are whizzing around you every which way? You’d be spooked, traumatized…
Doctor: Uh, now let’s keep this thing in perspective.
Patient: The closest known recent PHA came within 60,000 miles of Earth. That’s like a bullet passing six feet from your head!
Doctor: Did your father ever strike you out-of-the-blue? Did you mother ever throw things at you?
Patient: The impacting comet in Deep Impact is the size of a small mountain. Astronomers estimate that something like that will hit the Earth every 10,000 years. It’s been at least that long since we’ve had a major impact. We’re overdue!
Doctor: Did plaster from the ceiling ever fall into your cradle?
Patient: Doc, you’re not listening. The tidal wave in Deep Impact is the least of it. If one of these things hits, forests will burn up as fiery debris blasted into space falls back to Earth. Skies will turn black with soot and dust, perhaps for years. The darkness will cause global freezing, followed by global warming due to carbon dioxide from vaporized rock. The ozone layer eliminated! Poisonous gasses in the atmosphere! The collapse of the food chain! Mass extinctions! Maybe earthquakes…
Doctor: What about your older siblings? Let’s talk about your older siblings?
Patient: The collapse of financial markets and governments! The end of civilization as we know it!
Doctor: Ahem. Excuse me…
Patient: The sky is falling! The sky is falling!
Doctor: Your hour’s up. I’ll see you again next week. In the meantime, stay out of the movie houses.
