So, Hollywood had it right after all.
Chicago (and the rest of the world) really is going to be destroyed by an asteroid.
In the new hot summer hit movie “Deep Impact,” starring a brave if suicidal Tea Leoni who speeds to the beach so she can greet a mile-high tidal wave while hugging her daddy, it is of course New York that we see get destroyed when the Earth is hit by an asteroid.
I don’t know what city is destroyed by an asteroid in the other new hot summer hit end-of-the-world movie, “Armageddon,” but I’m willing to bet it’s not Dubuque.
At all events, Chicago is never destroyed in these asteroid, giant-lizard, deadly-plague movies. It’s always some more glamorous place. They use Chicago for cop movies, so they can have chase scenes on the “L” trains, or for ethnic domestic comedies, so they can have chase scenes in six-flat kitchens.
But now that we’re talking about the actual end of the world, Chicago is finally coming into its own. It’s going to be flattened by a mile-wide asteroid that will blast a crater so big it will engulf the entire Chicago city limits and probably ruffle the waters of the Skokie Lagoons a little too.
At the moment, this is only occurring on television–but it’s real life, science show television. Starting with the demise of Chicago by asteroid at 8 p.m. Monday, The Learning Channel cable network is running a five-part doomsday series called “Ends of the Earth.” It explores five different ways that the world or at least civilization as we know it may go kablooie.
In addition to death by asteroid, they offer volcanic eruptions garnished with earthquakes and tidal waves, horrible plagues in which everybody curls up like mealy bugs after a visit by the Orkin man, terrorist nuclear attacks with unimaginable consequences and sudden climatic changes that will render Miami’s South Beach an underwater development and make El Nino look like a little sprinkle.
Using computers, they show the effects of these things on Miami; Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles; New York (of course); and Chicago, which gets hit with a mile-wide chunk of space rock right smack in the Loop.
The actual computer-generated impact is really a blast, but then it’s over, and there you are (or aren’t). To add some human drama, they have dramatizations of Chicagoans reacting to the imminent approach of the asteroid. Thousands jump into their cars and try to flee on the expressways. Other thousands riot and wildly misbehave.
These tableaux could have used more verisimilitude. The hordes-trying-to-flee-on-the-expressways scene, for example, shows the Dan Ryan jammed up but the cars actually moving, unlike, say, at 5 o’clock any weekday. The rioting and wild behavior is no worse than what you might see after a Bulls victory, or in any Rush Street singles bar.
What’s interesting is that those squished by the asteroid would be the lucky ones, the program says. The force of the impact would be equal to one Hiroshima-sized explosion every second for 13 years.
But it happens all at once. It would throw up a vast cloud of dust and debris all the way into the stratosphere. This would circle the planet for years, darkening the sun and destroying agriculture and civilization. The surviving humans on the other side of the world would perish in small bands, killing each other for food.
Absent the human race, this actually happened a few million years ago with an asteroid that dug out a vast crater miles across, on what is now the north coast of Yucatan, and likely killed off the dinosaurs.
The question is not whether this could happen, they say, but when. It could happen in a few months, or not for 100,000 years, but it will happen. Your chances of dying from asteroid impact are actually greater than your chance of winning the lottery.
This isn’t just TV hype. Last week, I went to a briefing at the U.S. Capitol held by the American Geophysical Union and the American Astronomical Society on the asteroid menace. They had real scientists there from NASA, the Jet Propulsion Lab and the University of Maryland, just like you see in the movies.
They said there are thousands of asteroids lurking out there, orbiting the sun between Mars and Jupiter and some coming near to or intersecting with Earth’s orbit. One of the asteroids, named Mathilde, is as big as the state of Rhode Island. It would wipe out Chicago and the Skokie Lagoons!
According to the scientists, we have studied and cataloged only about 2,000 of these things to the point where we can predict their movements. That’s only about 10 percent of the asteroids that we need to study to have decades rather than weeks or months to ward off a collision.
The scientists have asked for a doubling of research funds for this, as is provided in legislation introduced earlier this year by Rep. Joseph Kennedy (D-Mass.).
The legislation, unlike asteroid Mathilde, is locked up in the House Science Committee. Not a single congressman showed up for the scientists’ briefing. Those who were invited sent young staff aides instead, many of whom looked as though they’d come principally for the free food, though a few mentioned that they had actually seen “Deep Impact.”
Maybe Mathilde will just hit Rhode Island.
