Viraldice: A Massive Asteroid You Never Heard About Skimmed Past Earth in What NASA Is Calling a ‘Near Miss’ — on Christmas Day

emember New Years 2000 – the long awaited millennium?

The world was supposed to end that day. Conspiracy theorists, foil hats and religious nuts everywhere loudly and stridently proclaimed the end of the world, and even internet denizens were on board with them, predicting a global internet meltdown termed Y2K.

The Y2K theory, as explained by Time, posited that computers worldwide would crash, causing mass hysteria and triggering the end times because, “many computers had been programmed to record dates using only the last two digits of every year, meaning that the year 2000 would register as the year 1900, totally screwing with the collective computerized mind.”

The whole specter of Y2K was so frightening, one of my relatives preemptively hid in the bathtub with jugs of water and canned food, because she was sure that was what we would need when the clock struck 12 and that fateful hour came to pass.

Fortunately, the end of times scenario predicted by hackers and the like did not happen.

Except for a few blackouts and some “problems in data-transmission systems” in a few Japanese power plants, the aughts arrived with barely more than a hiccup.

Unfortunately, Y2K wasn’t the only doomsday scenario we’ve had to encounter recently. There was also 2012 – remember that? – the day the world would purportedly end, according to the Mayan calendar.

That too came and went without incident, although we got a lovely movie to hate-watch out of it.

The point is, human beings are fascinated with thoughts of the end of the world. Life is fleeting, and the idea that our species might perish in a singular extinction event is one, apparently, that frightens the bejesus out of people.

This Christmas Day, one such extinction event very nearly happened – and nobody even knew about it.