Asteroid 2024 YR4: Now With 3.1% More Apocalypse!

Great news, everyone! NASA has once again crunched the numbers, and the chance of asteroid 2024 YR4 obliterating a city has gone up - again! We’ve officially upgraded from a 1 in 42 chance of impact to a thrilling 1 in 32. That’s 3.1% for those of you who enjoy percentages, or, in simpler terms: if the Earth were a casino, this asteroid just got better odds than you winning at blackjack.

But don’t worry, NASA is here to remind us that there’s still a 96.9% chance that this space rock won’t slam into our planet. Because, obviously, nothing says "Don't Panic!" like constantly releasing updates where the risk keeps increasing.

Now, before you go canceling your 2032 plans, let’s talk damage. At 177 feet wide, this bad boy isn’t quite big enough to end civilization (whew!), but it is big enough to flatten a major city, releasing 8 megatons of energy. That’s over 500 times the Hiroshima bomb, which I’m sure will be very comforting to whoever is standing under it.

Oh, and for an added bonus, there’s a tiny 0.3% chance it’ll smack into the moon instead. Because what we really need is to mess with the tides and see what happens. Fun experiment, right?

But hey, scientists assure us that more observations will probably show that YR4 is going to miss us. You know, just like every other time they’ve initially said, "Hey, there’s a small chance this thing could hit us," and then spent months nervously checking their math. So relax! The odds are still mostly in our favor.

Unless they update them again.