This website has been around in some form or another since the year 2000.. I can recall covering horror news of the early 21st century during the wild west days of the internet. Back then, anything was possible. And fun! There was no social media to come and ruin a good time. Instead websites offered mysteries, oddities, awful designs, and personal touches from the owners who created them.
We devolve sometimes here into needless nostalgia. Perhaps today was one of those days.. But it happens during long cold walks in lonely parks with trees adorned with papers reminding people to wear masks.
Quite the scary concept.. Why not drop it in a year like 2020 when all things scary seem to reign supreme, right?
Stories like this appearing in Bloomberg News, an article stating that the biggest effect of the COVID-19 pandemic will be social unrest and societal upheaval. We are seeing it in European countries where governments have decided to phase in to lockdown part 2, while in the United States governors are treading waters carefully due to pandemic malaise.. President-Elect Joe Biden may face a weighty choice as the death tolls mounts by the time he is sworn into office. If Donald Trump ever leaves.. 🙂
So just picture the rebellion that would occur if we found out the world was potentially going to meet a costly fate in 2068. A doomsday date to remember.
2068 SEEMS far away, right?
So did 2020 back in the year 2000 when I first FTP’ed up the Horror Report onto the World Wide Web.
Presumably if Apophis does hit, and I live to a ripe old age of 88, I will see calamity befall our home planet. My son would have a better shot at seeing at when he is 57 that year..
It’s funny to consider.. I did some research tonight because I knew that I spread content many years ago about Apophis when it was first discovered. I hit the jackpot on the Wayback machine from the year 2005.
The Horror Report reported this on on February 15, 2005: A giant asteroid the size of three football pitches will make the closest flyby of Earth in recorded history for an object of its size, scientists said yesterday.
Of course the same day we said,
“There’s a concrete dildo floating around out there somewhere: Ouch: Vandals attack nude statue and chisel off penis…“
That same year, Apophis had yet to get its cool name. It was just called 2004 MN4 when Space.com reported that the flyback of the massive asteroid would be visible to the naked eye across the planet:
Space.com pointed out that the asteroid will be 22,600 miles from Earth’s center when it flies by on April 13, 2029.
Oh.. that is a Friday by the way, so appropriate.
The 2036 flyby was also feared by many.. Early reports indicated that this would be the date of the collision with the planet. In 2013 those reported were discounted.
WHEW, space journals wrote then..
But now new information about this rock is becoming known, and with it the renewed sense of potential danger.
Although the probability of an impact from asteroid Apophis for 2029 and 2036 has been ruled out, the new findings suggest that there might be a very small chance of impact in April 2068. Previous calculations made in 2016 had all but ruled out the probability of an impact on 2068. The chance of an impact was seen in 2016 as vanishingly small, at just 1 in 150,000 odds of impact, or a 99.99933% chance the asteroid would miss the Earth. The new findings might slightly change these numbers again, as new calculations are made using both the recent data and new observations that will be made very soon.
So rest easy tonight. This is not the night of the mighty Apophis — we have more Earthly things to worry about with a virus raging and political distractions causing immense and true division.
But be warned.. a giant killer stalks. It may pass by through our friendly skies safely in 2068 and all of these predictions will be naught.
Or we will look back at 2020 and relish in the thought of just how great it was after all.