Unpredictable rogue asteroids are, essentially, all asteroids, because all of the independent astronomers and government-funded organizations in the world trying to keep track of every stray bit left over from the birth of the solar system amounts to little better than one wayward bum looking through all the dumpsters in New York for a Christmas card somebody threw out without remembering to remove the money. Millions of space rocks cross Earth’s orbit regularly - the most comprehensive catalogue of them in existence maintains records of the activities of several thousand. Trillions upon trillions more lie further out in the Kuiper Belt, the Scattered Disk, and the Oort Cloud, halfway to the next star even, just waiting for a passing gravitational disturbance to slingshot them to our doormat. Asteroids can and do hit the planet every year – most into the ocean, Antarctica, or some other uninhabited space.

A group of old astronomers deep underground, perhaps under a farm in Pennsylvania, perhaps in Sweden, committed themselves to their observatory undisturbed for a quarter century, assuring themselves that they were the guardians of the human race. After years of tireless combing of the skies with a thirty-year old telescope with the focusing capabilities of Mr. Magoo, one of them finally found something of note – a lump of rock, nickel and iron roughly half a mile across, on schedule to hit Australia in six months time. The devastated area would perhaps be comparable in size to Rhode Island. The astronomers congratulated themselves upon finally finding anything at all, and concluded that they had to go topside immediately to warn the world of the impending catastrophe. Soon indeed, their efforts would yield fruit, for they would be heroes.

When they reached the surface for the first time in decades, however, they were greeted not with sunshine but a roaring August snowstorm and clouds as thick as night. For while they lay sequestered away from the rest of humanity, another larger rock had snuck in through the back door, under their noses, and inconspicuously ended the world. One by one, the astronomers retreated back underground in silence, and opened the cognac.