Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 24, 1994 TAG: 9407280017
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Cody Lowe
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It's very different from our thinking about the little ways we're supposed to act to help save our obviously fragile planet. We've reduced that whole matter to slogans: Reduce, reuse, recycle. Save the whale. Save the rain forest. Don't litter.
We know, though, even if we continued to pollute the planet without qualm, wantonly extinguishing plant and animal species, it would take a pretty long time to destroy the globe. I wonder how we would react if we knew a comet - or it's remains - were about the strike the Earth and destroy it in a second?
The prospect of such a cataclysm has provided the plot for countless science-fiction stories. The various "Star Trek" incarnations must have explored a dozen such scenarios, and the idea goes back almost to the beginning of science fiction.
Watching the fiction become reality right in our own suddenly very small solar system is the kind of experience that powers our imaginations. On Jupiter, the impact essentially meant simply a big splash. But, should just one of the comet fragments that hit Jupiter have hit Earth, we're told, it would have meant instant destruction of our tiny planet.
And that would be a story about metaphysics as well as physics.
Some of us face the personal equivalent of the killer comet in our individual lives. Just last week one of my brothers-in-law got the news from his doctor. The cancer is inoperable. It is growing fast. There is nothing to be done but get ready for the inevitable death that is likely in just a matter of months.
No hurtling comet could be any more frightening, except in the knowledge that it would kill all his loved ones with him. He's still in his 40s, so there is no fairness to getting this disease at his age. He's a good man, so there is no rationale for his dying earlier than "bad" people who live on.
There is just the randomness of the threat of death.
So he does what I hope I would be able to do: Keep hoping for a miracle - some unexpected, unpredictable change in course for the deliverer of death - but also be prepared for the end.
He and his family discuss his wishes for medical care. They plan finances. They make peace where there was conflict. They make sure love is expressed.
It seems to me there is little else we could do if a 2-mile wide chunk of ice and rock were threatening the existance of our home. We sure couldn't go anywhere else. We're unlikely to be able to alter the course of such a projectile. We could only wonder what our moment of death would be like and whether we should try to control that with our own hands.
What would suddenly be overwhelmingly important would be our relationships with each other and, for many, with God. Once those are taken care of, other life-and-death decisions are a lot easier to make and live with.
by CNB