Something to Put in Your Calendar for 2032

The number is 0.0016 percent. That’s the chance asteroid 2013 TV135 hits Earth on August 26, 2032—which sounds reassuring until you do the math on the other end of that probability. Ukrainian astronomers spotted it recently: 410 meters across, roughly the size of several city blocks, making its leisurely way through the neighborhood.

If it lands—and again, almost certainly it won’t—the impact would release around 2,500 megatons of TNT. For scale: the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated, the Soviet Tsar Bomba, clocked in at about 50 megatons. So we’re talking 50 of those, stacked. A bad day for wherever it touches down. Arguably a bad day for everyone.

The options, as I see them: trust the math and go on living your life, or accept that humanity’s next 19 years could be meaningfully spent building something with lasers pointed skyward. Or we call Bruce Willis. The man has done it before, or at least a version of him has. Your call.

I keep returning to that specific date—August 26, 2032. I’ll be older. The world will be different in ways I can’t predict. And there’s a 0.0016% chance none of that will matter. There’s something strange about sitting with that. Not because it’s frightening, but because it’s so perfectly arbitrary. The universe doesn’t have it out for us. It just doesn’t particularly care either way.