Asteroid Apophis is Coming | Ground Zero: California

On April 13, 2029, an asteroid named Apophis will pass closer to Earth than our communication satellites. For the first time in human history, millions of people will watch a mountain-sized space rock race across the night sky. NASA says we're safe, but Apophis is just the beginning. Scientists estimate 25,000 city-killer asteroids cross Earth's orbit, and they've only found half of them. The other 13,500 remain completely hidden, somewhere in the darkness of space. Every three days, fragments from ancient comets bombard our planet. Just 12,800 years ago, a cosmic impact reset human civilization and triggered a freeze that lasted over a thousand years. The evidence is buried in rock layers across four continents. Today, we have the technology to fight back, but time is running out. The question isn't whether another impact will happen—it's whether we'll be ready when it does.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-yXhTmSSro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:40AJ Gentile?

  On April 13, 2029, an asteroid named Apophis will come within 19,000 miles of Earth. It will fly under our communication satellites. It'll be visible to the naked eye. NASA says we're safe. But on a cosmic scale, 19,000 miles is nothing. A nudge from solar wind, a tap from another asteroid, or a simple miscalculation is all it would take. We already know where it would hit. We know what would happen. Apophis is coming. And it's a killer.

• 1:18AJ Gentile?

  New video episodes of The Y-Files at Spotify every Monday and Friday. And if you're a Spotify Premium subscriber, you get fewer ads, meaning more story, less interruption, and less screaming at the TV.

• 1:36AJ Gentile?

  The story begins on June 19, 2004. Two astronomers at Kitt Peak Observatory found a faint dot moving against the stars. They logged it as 2004 MN4 and went back to work. Within weeks, observatories around the world were tracking it. The more data they collected, the more concerned they became. This asteroid's path looked like it might intersect with Earth's.

• 2:03AJ Gentile?

  The picture got clearer and scarier. The asteroid was big. 1,480 feet long, larger than the Empire State Building. In December, scientists made a shocking announcement. 2004 MN4 had a 2.7% chance of hitting Earth on April 13, 2029. A 1 in 37 chance of impact. 67 million tons of rock and metal were roaring toward us at 19 miles per second. The asteroid was officially named Apophis, the Egyptian serpent god of darkness and destruction. It was rated a 4 on the Torino scale.

• 2:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, Torino scale. The Clintons would have hit that.

• 2:44AJ Gentile?

  No, no, the Torino scale measures the hazard of an impact.

• 2:48Speaker 02

  Ah, that makes more sense.

• 2:50AJ Gentile?

  A 0 on the Torino scale means no threat. A 10 means no planet. Even a 4 is a concern. Apophis was the first object in history to reach that level. This was bad. The media went wild. Headlines screamed about "The God of Chaos." Cable news ran countdown clocks.

• 3:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, wouldn't countdown clocks more accurate than their election predictions?

• 3:12AJ Gentile?

  No.

• 3:13Speaker 02

  Uh-huh.

• 3:13AJ Gentile?

  But scientists worked around the clock. In 2005, they announced Apophis would miss the Earth. But they found a new problem. A region in space about half a mile wide. If Apophis passes through it, the chance of impact on the next pass isn't 2.7%, it's 100%.

• 3:58AJ Gentile?

  Jet propulsion laboratory at 3 a.m. looks abandoned. Most buildings are dark.

• 4:07AJ Gentile?

  But in the Center for Near Earth Object Studies, Marcia Singh stares at her monitor. She's running the Yarkovsky drift calculations for the third time. Solar radiation pressure on rotating asteroids causes tiny changes in orbit, tiny changes that add up over decades.

• 4:26Speaker 03

  This can't be right.

• 4:27AJ Gentile?

  The numbers came back wrong, again.

• 4:31AJ Gentile?

  Apophis isn't following its predicted path. The deviation is small, 0.003 degrees, but that's enough.

• 4:42AJ Gentile?

  The asteroid will thread Earth's gravitational keyhole, a 1,200-foot region of space that will bend Apophis's trajectory, bend it directly into Earth.

• 4:55AJ Gentile?

  Outside, Los Angeles sleeps. 14 million people who don't know they have 90 days left.

• 5:03AJ Gentile?

  The impact models show Catalina Island as ground zero.

• 5:08Speaker 03

  Billy, check the path of 2004 MN4. Are you seeing this?

• 5:13Speaker 04

  Hang on.

• 5:23Speaker 04

  Oh my god.

• 5:24Speaker 03

  What are you gonna do?

• 5:26Speaker 04

  I have to call the President. Marcia, go home. Be with your family.

• 5:33Speaker 05

  We now go to the White House, where the President is about to make an emergency announcement.

• 5:40Speaker 04

  My fellow Americans,

• 5:43Speaker 04

  I speak to you now with a heavy heart.

• 5:49Speaker 05

  CBS News can now confirm that asteroid Apophis will hit Earth on April 13.

• 5:54Speaker 04

  This is a Fox News alert. NASA says the asteroid Apophis will impact Earth on April 13.

• 5:59Speaker 05

  Global preparations are underway.

• 6:01Speaker 04

  Apophis will hit near California on April 13.

• 6:05Speaker 05

  Coastal regions are urged to prepare for immediate evacuation.

• 6:08Speaker 06

  The Department of Homeland Security has activated emergency protocols.

• 6:12Speaker 04

  We've now entered the final phase. Apophis will strike Earth on April 13. Prepare accordingly.

• 6:24AJ Gentile?

  On Friday, April 13th, 2029, humanity will witness something beautiful and dangerous.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  Oh, sounds like my second wife.

• 6:32AJ Gentile?

  If you're gonna interrupt me right at the top, can you at least make the joke a little less hacky?

• 6:38Speaker 02

  You're a straight man. Leave the comedy to the professional, eh?

• 6:41AJ Gentile?

  Apophis will pass just 19,300 miles from Earth's surface. That's closer than our communication satellites. For millions of people in the eastern hemisphere, it will appear at sunset, a bright point of light as bright as any star. But this star will be moving, fast. So fast, you'll see it cross the sky in real time. From the ground, the event will be a spectacle. But for Apophis, the flyby will be violent. As it passes, Earth's gravity will grab it, squeeze it, and twist it. These tidal forces could trigger landslides and quakes on the asteroid's surface, changing its path. This brings us to the keyhole. A gravitational keyhole is a small region of space. For Apophis, it's only about 2,000 feet wide.

• 7:25AJ Gentile?

  If the asteroid passes through it in 2029, Earth's gravity becomes a slingshot. It'll pull the asteroid back to where it started for a guaranteed impact on April 13th, 2036, Easter Sunday. Current calculations, based on years of radar data from Goldstone and Aracibo, show Apophis will miss the keyhole, barely, unless something changes. And that's what makes Apophis so dangerous. It's not solid rock. It's a collection of boulders and dust, held together by gravity. And it's not a sphere. It's shaped like a skyscraper, so it has no primary axis. It doesn't rotate, it tumbles. And this chaotic motion makes subtle forces almost impossible to predict.

• 8:09AJ Gentile?

  The most important thing is the Yarkovsky effect. The sun heats one side of the asteroid. As it tumbles, that heat radiates back into space, and this creates thrust.

• 8:18Speaker 02

  Hold on, hold on. Not everybody's miked the grass-tasted.

• 8:22AJ Gentile?

  That's, that's not a-

• 8:23Speaker 02

  How does that make thrust?

• 8:24AJ Gentile?

  Well, the heat causes gas to bend, which creates the thrust.

• 8:27Speaker 02

  Ah, now I get it. I could also create thrust by venting gas. Pardon me.

• 8:33AJ Gentile?

  Classy.

• 8:35AJ Gentile?

  This is just a tiny push, about the weight of an apple. A tiny push is hardly noticeable. But over millions of miles, it can change an orbit. NASA's own measurements show it's already drifting because of this effect, about 650 feet closer to us every year. Right now, Apophis is impossible to see. It's lost in the glare of the sun. It won't be visible again until 2027. And during this blind spot, a small nudge from another rock could alter its path completely. And we'd have just two years to recalculate everything. And two years to prepare for a city killer might be enough. But sometimes, we only get hours. Sometimes, city killers aren't found until they fly by. In fact, this happened last year.

• 9:25Speaker 00

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• 10:08AJ Gentile?

  The president hasn't been seen in five days. His last public appearance was the announcement.

• 10:13Speaker 04

  We have 90 days to solve this problem. America's best minds are working on it.

• 10:21AJ Gentile?

  Then he vanished. Official word: "secured at an undisclosed location." Everyone knew that meant Cheyenne Mountain.

• 10:30AJ Gentile?

  Anyone who had the means to escape didn't waste any time.

• 10:33Speaker 04

  Once the risk hit X, they were gone. Politicians, celebrities, people you've watched your whole life evacuated while the highways jammed.

• 10:41Speaker 06

  What we saw was an orderly panic among the ultra wealthy. Beverly Hills emptied almost overnight.

• 10:47Speaker 04

  It was Beverly Hills first, no surprise there. Gulfstreams and Learjets lined up like limos taking off every 90 seconds.

• 10:54Speaker 06

  The 405 is a graveyard of abandoned vehicles. Families walked for days into the mohave.

• 10:59AJ Gentile?

  The poor headed to tent cities in Nevada. Desert camps with no water, no power, no plan, just distance from the coast.

• 11:07Speaker 06

  Fuel ran out, roads clogged. Now, tent cities rise like new towns, only no one planned them.

• 11:13AJ Gentile?

  3 million people have fled Los Angeles in just 14 days. 3 million people gone in two weeks. Gas hit $47 a gallon, then the stations just closed. The tanker drivers stopped showing up. Why deliver fuel for worthless paper?

• 11:28Speaker 05

  Markets remain volatile as the Apophis timeline advances. Commodities like iodine tablets, fuel, and food stocks have surged in value.

• 11:36AJ Gentile?

  The new currency is water, ammunition, and insulin. A vial of insulin costs three gallons of water, if you can find it. We all got to watch Apophis grow larger in the sky. A red star visible during daylight, getting bigger every day. Suicide hotlines stopped answering. Too many calls, not enough volunteers. The volunteers had their own lives to worry about.

• 11:58Speaker 07

  Apophis, prepare for the light.

• 12:02AJ Gentile?

  Religious movements started sprouting up. As the world edges closer to impact, religious fervor has surged.

• 12:08Speaker 05

  The Church of the Final Days and the Apophis Witnesses have emerged, offering hope and salvation for those who believe. Apophis, guide us to the light.

• 12:24AJ Gentile?

  When official authorities dissolved, the local population took control.

• 12:29Speaker 05

  The Los Angeles Police Department dissolved last week. Over half the force simply didn't show up. The chain of command collapsed overnight.

• 12:36Speaker 04

  The 405 belongs to the Crips now. Their blue flags fly over improvised roadblocks. They're not attacking rival crews. They're screening vehicles and controlling movement. Crips and Serenius are distributing food, rationing medicine, even setting curfews. Ma'am, it's not safe to be out. If you need anything, check with me.

• 12:52Speaker 05

  What used to be gang turf in Los Angeles has now hardened into checkpoint states. Neighborhoods that once feared violence are now relying on it for structure.

• 13:00Speaker 04

  Call them gangs, call them militias, but right now, they're the only thing resembling law and order in the city of Los Angeles.

• 13:10AJ Gentile?

  Society didn't collapse, it reorganized itself. The powerful fled, the poor waited, and Apophis kept coming.

• 13:27AJ Gentile?

  While some astronomers celebrated, another rock caused global panic. In late 2024, asteroid 2024yr4 became the most dangerous object in modern history: a building-sized rock. Its impact probability kept climbing: 1.5%, then 2.8%, then over 3%. That threat prompted China to establish its first-ever planetary defense unit. They're recruiting astrophysicists under age 35. Their 2030 mission will try to deflect asteroid 2015XF261 using a dual spacecraft approach: one to impact, another to evaluate the results.

• 14:08AJ Gentile?

  International cooperation is growing, because the truth is, we have no idea what's coming. NASA estimates there are 25,000 city killers crossing our orbit, and they've only found half. 13,500 are still out there, somewhere completely hidden.

• 14:23Speaker 02

  Somewhere completely hidden, huh? You mean like the moon landing tapes?

• 14:28AJ Gentile?

  This detection gap creates nightmare scenarios. In 2019, asteroid 2019 OK was found. It's 400 feet wide. It was spotted less than 24 hours its closest approach. It missed Earth by only 40,000 miles. A direct hit would have released 30 megatons of energy. That's 300 times the size of the Hiroshima bomb, all with less than a day's warning.

• 14:55AJ Gentile?

  The problem is the Sun. Our telescopes have to look away from the Sun. Objects approaching from that direction remain invisible until they hit us. Like in 2013, the meteor that hit Chelyabinsk.

• 15:40AJ Gentile?

  NASA's NEO Surveyor Telescope is set to launch in 2027. It will finally close this blind spot. It'll use infrared and should find 90% of the remaining city killers within 10 to 20 years. But until then, we're defenseless against an attack from the direction of the Sun. To understand how devastating that kind of surprise can be, you don't even have to look up. You can look down. Because buried in a layer of sediment around the world is evidence of an impact that reset civilization.

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• 16:58AJ Gentile?

  The last Chinook lifted off from UCLA Medical Center at 6 a.m. Doctors stood on the helipad watching it disappear. They had patients on ventilators, premature babies in incubators. They were not leaving.

• 17:12Speaker 05

  LAX has gone silent. No departures, no arrivals, just grounded planes and flickering monitors. The terminals are empty now.

• 17:19Speaker 04

  The last jet out of LAX lifted off at 2:17 p.m. United to Denver. It was half-full. Those who could afford to leave already had.

• 17:30AJ Gentile?

  Those who remained made their choice. The elderly couple in Brentwood who'd lived there 50 years. They sat on their porch, holding hands. They weren't leaving either.

• 17:40Speaker 05

  For those still in Los Angeles, officials have confirmed that all remaining power will be shut off today at exactly noon.

• 17:46Speaker 04

  The blackout is deliberate to reduce fire risk after the strike.

• 17:50Speaker 05

  Please take this time to shelter and remain off the streets.

• 17:55AJ Gentile?

  The power grid shut down at noon. Controlled shutdown to prevent fires after impact. The emergency alert system broadcasts its final message.

• 18:07Speaker 04

  Seek shelter. Stay away from windows. God bless America.

• 18:12AJ Gentile?

  Then static.

• 18:15AJ Gentile?

  Maggie Powers, an ICU nurse, writes her patients' names on their foreheads with a Sharpie. She figures when the building collapses, someone should know who they are. She has 14 patients on ventilators. The backup generators have 30 hours of fuel. That means her patients only have 30 hours of life.

• 18:34AJ Gentile?

  Animals flee inland. Coyotes run through downtown. Birds fly east in massive flocks.

• 18:42AJ Gentile?

  Dogs howl constantly. Every animal except humans understands what the receding ocean means.

• 18:50Speaker 05

  Scientists warn this is not a tide, it's a gravitational response. Something massive is pulling on the ocean.

• 18:57Speaker 04

  The Pacific has pulled back over 20 feet since yesterday, like it's holding its breath. Entire reefs are exposed.

• 19:03Speaker 05

  Seismographs are now detecting microquakes, gravitational pulses, every 90 seconds. They're weak, but rhythmic.

• 19:10Speaker 04

  Every 90 seconds, the Earth flinches. Experts say it's the gravity of what's coming, literally, and the ocean is trying to warn us.

• 19:18AJ Gentile?

  The last text messages go out before the cell towers shut down. "I love you" is sent 847,000 times in Los Angeles County. Most messages are never delivered.

• 19:30AJ Gentile?

  Apophis filled three degrees of sky. You could see it tumbling, end over end, a mountain in space. The last thing 50 million people would ever see.

• 19:51AJ Gentile?

  12,800 years ago, Earth was emerging from the last ice age. Temperatures were warming. Massive ice sheets were melting. Then suddenly, everything reversed. A comet about 62 miles wide broke apart and bombarded the planet. The evidence is found in a thin layer of rock found across four continents. The Younger Dryas Boundary Layer, also referred to as the Black Mat. The Black Mat contains evidence called "impact proxies." Iridium, shocked quartz, nano diamonds, microscopic spherules of melted rock. At over 40 sites, the concentrations of impact proxies are millions of times above normal levels. All date back to exactly 12,800 years ago.

• 20:35AJ Gentile?

  A series of objects hit the North American ice sheet, causing mass flooding. Continents sank beneath the sea. The impacts triggered global wildfires. Then came the freeze.

• 20:48AJ Gentile?

  Yes, the freeze lasted 1,200 years.

• 20:51Speaker 02

  That's how long it's gonna take George Martin to finish the books.

• 20:54AJ Gentile?

  The devastation was total. Mammoths, mastodons, saber-toothed cats, American horses, all gone. Seventy-five percent of North American megafauna went extinct. Two-thirds of the human population disappeared. The first widespread human culture in North America vanished from the archaeological record. This wasn't climate change. This wasn't overhunting. This was a civilization reset. And comets are different from asteroids and far more dangerous. Asteroids follow predictable paths. Comets arrive from the outer solar system. They have long elliptical orbits, so they can show up with little warning, and sometimes as little as six months. As I write this, comet Three-Eye Atlas is headed our way.

• 21:39AJ Gentile?

  It was spotted a few weeks ago. It'll make its closest approach to Earth in December. That's fast. So fast, there is not a thing we can do but watch and wait. Asteroids hit Earth at 19 miles per second. Comets come in at 45. A comet delivers more than nine times the destructive power than an asteroid of the same size. The most dangerous comet we know is Swift-Tuttle, 16 miles wide. A land impact would release energy 27 times greater than the Chicharlue dinosaur killer. One astronomer called it "the single most dangerous object known to humanity." Now, despite what mainstream scientists say, asteroids hit Earth all the time. But what about comets? How often do they hit us?

• 22:23AJ Gentile?

  Every 100 million years? Every 10 million years? 1 million years? Nope. Comets of all sizes hit the Earth, on average, every three days.

• 22:51AJ Gentile?

  The flash came first. The sky turns white. Not bright, white.

• 23:13AJ Gentile?

  Everything within 100 miles ignites simultaneously. The thermal pulse travels at light speed. By the time your brain understood the flash, your body was already vapor. That's mercy. Instantaneous conversion from matter to energy. The blast wave expanded at Mach 2, a wall of superheated air traveling 800 miles per hour. It flattened everything from San Diego to Bakersfield.

• 23:38Speaker 05

  The fireball climbed 60 miles into the atmosphere, so high it pierced the mesosphere. It was visible from space.

• 23:45Speaker 04

  From Phoenix to Vegas, people saw it light up the sky. It didn't look like fire, it looked like a second sun. Then the horizon vanished.

• 23:57Speaker 04

  Is that?

• 24:00Speaker 04

  Los Angeles?

• 24:22Speaker 04

  The temperature of the plume exceeded 10,000 degrees Celsius. What erupted wasn't smoke, it was Earth itself turned to gas. Seven states were hit by ejecta. It wasn't just ash, it was fragments of Earth's crust fused and glowing. Some of it traveled faster than sound.

• 24:41Speaker 05

  Jumps of vaporized ocean rose miles into the sky, then hardened midair before slamming down across the Southwest.

• 24:48Speaker 06

  Reports of burning fragments came in from as far as Colorado. It rained fire.

• 24:57AJ Gentile?

  The earthquake was a 10.5 on the Richter scale. The ground rippled like water.

• 25:06AJ Gentile?

  Then silence. People were too frightened to notice the Pacific Ocean was moving.

• 25:29AJ Gentile?

  Every year, our planet flies through invisible minefields left by disintegrating comets. We call them meteor showers. We give them pretty names: the Perseids, the Leonids, the Geminids. But these aren't harmless light shows. We're flying through the shattered remains of giant comets at 67 miles per hour, and some of those fragments are massive.

• 25:52AJ Gentile?

  Remember Swift Huddle, the most dangerous object known to humanity? The Perseid meteor shower is caused by the Earth flying through trillions of pieces of debris from Swift Huddle. Trillions. And we're not just crossing one minefield, we're crossing a dozen. The Leonids can produce storms of hundreds of thousands of meteors per hour. The Lyrids come from a comet two and a half miles wide. There are 12 or 13 meteor storms every year, sometimes more.

• 26:18Speaker 10

  It takes the Earth several days to pass through the Torrid meteor stream. It's so big. The Torrid meteor stream is full of filaments of debris. Some of those filaments are very small debris. Some of them are much larger debris and much more dangerous. We pass through it twice a year. I've likened it in the past to strapping on a blindfold, and crossing an eight-lane highway, and just hoping that you don't get hit by a truck.

• 26:47AJ Gentile?

  The meteor shower that's most relevant to us is the torrents. The debris field is almost 20 million miles wide. We cross it every year. It has trillions of objects that range from the size of grains of sand to the size of cities. How many big objects? Nobody knows. It could be 10, it could be 100. The government doesn't like to talk about it.

• 27:06Speaker 11

  The government knew that they couldn't do anything about it. And they were starting to hear worried calls from their constituents. What can we do about these things? You gotta do something about it, you gotta stop it. And they couldn't. So what they decided to do was to just pretend that it wasn't real. They had the public fears about the impacts. They decided to just deny, deny, deny. Just say, "Don't worry, there's no problem. We've got it under control," when they didn't.

• 27:36AJ Gentile?

  The Tenguska event in 1908 happened during the peak of the torrents. A fragment just 200 feet wide exploded over Siberia, flattening 80 million trees. If that happened over New York, Paris, or London, those cities would be gone. We don't really need to be hit by a giant object to cause planetary chaos. We don't have to be hit at all. Every year, about 50 objects pass closer to the Earth than our satellites. Losing our satellites would cripple the global economy. Phone service, the internet, the banking system? All gone. And that's terrifying. But in 2022, for the first time in history, humanity fought back.

• 28:49AJ Gentile?

  The Pacific Ocean recoils from the impact. Eight minutes ago, Apophis punched a 12-mile hole in the seafloor. The water rushed in, hit molten rock, exploded into steam. Now it's coming back.

• 29:07Speaker 04

  What was once shoreline is now seabed. Fish carcasses rot beneath a baking sun.

• 29:12AJ Gentile?

  Downtown has four minutes left.

• 29:25Speaker 05

  A tsunami of unimaginable scale, 150 meters high, is sweeping through Los Angeles. Entire districts have been erased in seconds.

• 29:36Speaker 03

  The whole ocean is coming.

• 29:38Speaker 04

  Imagine a skyscraper made of water, moving at 450 miles per hour. That's what hit Los Angeles this afternoon. Entire neighborhoods are gone. We are witnessing the unthinkable. A wall of water over 500 feet high has torn through Los Angeles, moving faster than a commercial jetliner.

• 29:54AJ Gentile?

  The wall of water doesn't break. It maintains its height.

• 29:57Speaker 04

  What hit L.A. was no wave. It was a moving cliff of ocean, 150 meters high, traveling faster than fire.

• 30:04Speaker 03

  I have to get to the roof.

• 30:05AJ Gentile?

  It tears through the city at 200 miles per hour, dragging cars, homes, and people with it.

• 30:11Speaker 03

  Mom?

• 30:43Speaker 05

  Initial estimates suggest tens of millions are gone. Entire cities, entire families, simply vanished. We don't have exact figures yet. But we know what's missing. The silence from Los Angeles, that silence speaks for millions.

• 31:02AJ Gentile?

  But more than California is affected.

• 31:04Speaker 05

  This is not just California. This is not just the United States. This event is global.

• 31:11Speaker 04

  Catalina Island is gone. Not underwater, gone, erased. The impact event struck with such force, it ceased to exist. The Pacific Shelf fractured. We are no longer talking about local devastation. This is global.

• 31:24Speaker 05

  There was no debris, no island, just a column of plasma where land used to be. Catalina didn't sink into the ocean, it was atomized. This is going to affect all of us. This impact event is global.

• 31:38AJ Gentile?

  The dust and debris in the atmosphere blacked out the sun. Photosynthesis stopped. The Earth's temperature dropped by almost 10 degrees. A new ice age was triggered, and humanity went underground.

• 32:03AJ Gentile?

  Right now, we're working on technology to spot asteroids and comets early enough to give us time to prepare. So what if we spot one coming? What can we do?

• 32:11Speaker 02

  I could stay awake just to hear you breathing.

• 32:16AJ Gentile?

  Please don't.

• 32:16Speaker 02

  Watch you smile while you are sleeping. While you're far away, I'm dreaming.

• 32:21AJ Gentile?

  Okay, that's-

• 32:22Speaker 02

  I could spend my life in this sweet surrender.

• 32:27AJ Gentile?

  That's enough!

• 32:27Speaker 02

  Fine, fine, you might be blind to asteroids, but you should have seen an Armageddon just coming.

• 32:34AJ Gentile?

  On September 26, 2022, NASA's DART spacecraft slammed into the asteroid Dimorphos at 14,000 miles per hour. The concept was simple, but revolutionary. Take a 1,200-pound spacecraft, crash it into a 500-foot-wide asteroid, see if we can change its orbit. The results exceeded expectations. DART changed the asteroid's orbital period 25 times more than required. It proved we can move space rocks. But the mission also revealed a problem: The rubble pile dilemma. DART was far more effective than predicted because the asteroid wasn't a solid rock. It was a loose pile of rubble. The impact created a massive plume of debris that acted like a rocket engine, supercharging the push. This means our best defense

• 33:19AJ Gentile?

  is also messy, chaotic, and difficult to predict.

• 33:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, like Spirit Airlines.

• 33:24AJ Gentile?

  That was a cheap shot.

• 33:25Speaker 02

  Spirit Airlines is on time about as often as my alimony checks.

• 33:29AJ Gentile?

  Anyway, to move an asteroid requires years of warning. For a surprise city killer, our only short-notice option is a nuclear device. The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 prohibits placing nuclear weapons in space. Now, in an emergency, the world would probably waive this restriction, but it's never been tested. We have the technology, the talent, and the money to create the tools we need to defend the planet. The one thing we can't manufacture is time. And time is not on our side.

• 34:18AJ Gentile?

  The first days underground were chaotic.

• 34:24AJ Gentile?

  Two million people crammed into the Moscow metro, half a million in the London Underground. Every subway system on Earth became humanity's last refuge. People fought for platform space, killed for corners to sleep. The strong took the train cars; the weak got the tunnels.

• 34:45AJ Gentile?

  The filth was unbearable. No working toilets for millions. Disease spread fast: cholera, dysentery, bodies piled up in maintenance tunnels. The smell made people vomit, which just spread more disease.

• 35:01AJ Gentile?

  Then, organization emerged. Not democracy, survival. We're gonna need everyone to pitch in. It's the only way we survive down here. Former military officers established order.

• 35:16Speaker 12

  I think we can convert most of these tunnels to living quarters.

• 35:19AJ Gentile?

  Top priority is getting power back online. Engineers got generators running.

• 35:29AJ Gentile?

  What's the volts on this? 12? Uh, 15? That's right. Nice.

• 35:36AJ Gentile?

  Doctors created triage stations. The dead were processed into fertilizer. Nothing could be wasted.

• 35:46AJ Gentile?

  We lived off mushrooms until LED lights were brought in from abandoned cannabis farms.

• 35:52AJ Gentile?

  Thousands of hydroponic gardens came online.

• 36:02AJ Gentile?

  Subway tracks were ripped up, replaced with growing beds. The Circle Line became London's farm.

• 36:10AJ Gentile?

  Still, we mostly ate mushrooms.

• 36:21AJ Gentile?

  But within six months, the tunnels transformed.

• 36:30AJ Gentile?

  Art appeared on walls.

• 36:33AJ Gentile?

  You better not write any dirty poems over there.

• 36:37Speaker 07

  No promises.

• 36:42AJ Gentile?

  Children's classrooms and old ticket booths.

• 36:46AJ Gentile?

  An economy emerged: calories for labor, labor for medicine, medicine for hope. Take three drops with a meal and you'll feel a lot better.

• 36:55Speaker 03

  Thanks so much, doc.

• 36:57AJ Gentile?

  Moscow's metro became a city. Same with Paris, New York, Tokyo. Organized, efficient, alive. Babies were born underground. They'd adapted perfectly. They'd never known the sun, so they didn't miss it.

• 37:23AJ Gentile?

  ham radio networks connected the colonies.

• 37:29Speaker 04

  Tulsa Town, this is Dallas. How copy?

• 37:33Speaker 04

  Tulsa Town here. Solid copy Dallas.

• 37:39Speaker 04

  Detroit. Do you read? Any chance you have a spare diesel? We might be frozen Toronto, but we're still Motown. We got ya. Appreciate it Motown.

• 37:49Speaker 08

  Baltimore's got your back. You can count on us.

• 37:53Speaker 04

  Hang in there Milwaukee. We've got water filters to spare. Chicago saves our bacon again. Thanks again windy city. Thank you Boston, we owe you one. Go Red Sox! Don't push it Boston. Break 1-9. Breaker 1-9. Minneapolis here, anybody reading this?

• 38:13Speaker 05

  Winnipeg here. You are 5 by 5 Minneapolis. Loud and clear.

• 38:18Speaker 04

  It is so good to hear your voice Winnipeg. How are you doing up there?

• 38:23Speaker 05

  Cold.

• 38:26Speaker 04

  Copy that.

• 38:42AJ Gentile?

  The surface was still too cold and dark to survive. The air was still toxic.

• 38:49AJ Gentile?

  But small trading parties would go from colony to colony moving goods.

• 39:01AJ Gentile?

  In just a few years, trade routes were established. Every colony soon had access to all the others.

• 39:09AJ Gentile?

  The martial law that first organized the colonies naturally fell back to elected leadership and cooperation. This was more than survival. This was civilization.

• 39:28AJ Gentile?

  La historia comenzó con un solo asteroide, Apophis. Esa amenaza nos llevó a una historia oculta de impactos cósmicos y la asombrosa realización de que miles de otros asesinos de la ciudad todavía están ahí. Así que, vamos a separar el hecho de la ficción. El hecho: Apophis ya no es una amenaza. La probabilidad inicial de impacto de 2.7% era real, pero los datos actuales dicen que nos perderá y el agujero clave gravitacional en 2029. Probablemente.

• 39:58AJ Gentile?

  El hecho: podemos mover asteroideos. La misión DART de la NASA lo demostró. El impacto kinético funcionó, pero porque los asteroideos no son sólidos, no hay forma de predecir el resultado.

• 40:10AJ Gentile?

  El hecho: Hubo un gran impacto en la historia humana. La evidencia para el impacto más frágil y más frágil hace 12.800 años es abrumadora. Los espinos de plata, los diamantes nano y el marrón negro apuntan a un cometa fragmentado que reseta la civilización. No es una pregunta de "¿volverá a suceder?", sino "¿cuándo?". Y la ficción grande: estamos perfectamente seguros. No lo estamos, pero podemos cambiar eso. Durante 4.5 mil millones de años, la vida en este planeta ha estado a la mercancía de la violencia cósmica aleatoria. Ya no es así. Somos la primera especie en la historia de la Tierra capaz de ver la amenaza llegando y la primera con el poder de detenerla. La pregunta ya no es de habilidad, sino de voluntad.

• 40:53AJ Gentile?

  Apophis fue transformado en un símbolo de miedo. Creo que eso es algo bueno. Estos objetos deberían inspirar miedo. Un asteroide de tamaño medio recae más energía que todas las armas nucleares en el mundo. Necesitamos presionar a nuestros líderes y a la comunidad científica para tomar esto en serio. Apophis estará aquí en unos años. Será difícil ignorar una montaña que se mueve por el cielo. Espero que se convierta en el llamado de despertar que necesitamos desesperadamente. Porque tenemos dos opciones: ser motivado por el desastre que casi sucedió o ser ignorante del desastre que definitivamente sucederá.

• 41:32Speaker 00

  Network freedom and flexibility. That's what you want in a healthcare plan. With a Humana Medicare Advantage PPO plan, you can see any doctor in the country who accepts Medicare, including specialists. No referrals. No kidding. Learn more at gethumana.com. See any doctor who accepts Medicare and is willing to build Humana. Humana PPOs may not be available in all areas. Benefits and costs share may vary. Humana is a Medicare Advantage PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.

• 42:22AJ Gentile?

  Blue sky. Just a patch above Boulder, Colorado. Real blue. The first clear sky to cut through the green haze that covered Earth for almost two decades. Eighteen years after impact to the day, the first baby was born above ground. Dawn Mitchell of the Boulder Colony. Well, I guess technically she's from Boulder, Colorado. The first child in a generation to grow up with a clear sky overhead, not concrete and rebar. Sky.

• 42:53AJ Gentile?

  Of course, Dawn doesn't remember any of this. Dawn doesn't understand the irony and importance of her name. All 10-year-old Dawn knows is that she's a celebrity and she loves it. She's here to celebrate her birthday and the 10th anniversary of Sky Day, as we now call it, and the opening of the Catalina Crater Memorial. Wow. 10 years went fast. It took 18 years for the dust to settle. Literally. Atmospheric models said 50 years. They were wrong. Earth heals faster than we calculated. When the sun returned, the Earth warmed quickly. The extra CO2 in the atmosphere saw to that. The plants love the CO2. By the time humans had the courage to take off their helmets, nature was already back in full swing. Grass, trees, green everywhere.

• 43:41AJ Gentile?

  Most of the planet's infrastructure was destroyed. But the Svalbard Sea Vault survived. Norway's ice protected it.

• 43:49Speaker 07

  After the impact, our ancestors had to reorganize society down here, in these metro tunnels, to survive.

• 43:56AJ Gentile?

  About six months after Sky Day, the first wheat harvest came in. Eight thousand tons, enough to feed thousands of people real bread. Not mushroom paste, not fungus cakes, actual bread. My colony had to wait almost a year for our wheat rations, but for fresh baked bread, it was worth the wait. Nobody who lived through the impact is on a low-carb diet. I promise you that.

• 44:20Speaker 07

  And this, children, is what scientists call an extinction-level event. The thermal pulse alone would be devastating.

• 44:28AJ Gentile?

  Almost 80% of animals are gone. Extinct. Elephants, rhinos, hippos. Just about every large mammal too big or too slow to find cover is gone. Dawn won't miss the elephants, but a lot of us older folks will.

• 44:44AJ Gentile?

  Cities rose again, but different.

• 44:54AJ Gentile?

  Every building has a deep bunker. Impact shelters are mandatory. Schoolchildren run drills every month. Asteroid warning, 90 seconds to shelter. They practice in the dark. They practice holding their breath. They practice saying goodbye.

• 45:09Speaker 13

  I love you. I'm not gonna make it. Stay safe. I love you so much. I hope you're safe. Me and the boys are heading east. I hope you get this. I love you more than anything. Mom, please text me back. I'm so scared. I wish I could tell you. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

• 45:33AJ Gentile?

  The Memorial at Catalina stretches around the entire crater. 12 miles of black granite, 4 billion names.

• 45:42Speaker 07

  Where is grandpa's name?

• 45:44AJ Gentile?

  The International Apophis Detection Grid went online last year. 10,000 satellites, armed ground stations are in every continent. If an object larger than a basketball gets within a million miles of us, we can see it. Our ground and space-based railguns can kill it. It took a third of the Earth's wealth to build the system, but with 4 billion dead, nobody complained about the cost. The grid is there to make sure that no matter what the universe throws at us, we'll never worry.

• 46:13AJ Gentile?

  The memorial is here to make sure that our children never forget. Happy Sky Day.

• 46:33Speaker 14

  Hecklefish, right there. Yeah. Hey, Jay. There's a hecklefish, yeah. Oh my goodness, there he is. Yeah. Yeah, you wanna give him a kiss like you always do? Yeah, you always give hecklefish a kiss. Oh, that's so nice. Oh, yeah. Give hecklefish hugs.

• 46:56Speaker 14

  Say, "Thanks, hecklefish. Thanks, AJ."

• 47:00Speaker 14

  Oh, that's so good. Yeah.

• 47:05Speaker 14

  That's so good. That's so good of you.

• 47:10Speaker 14

  Yeah, thank you, hecklefish. Thanks, AJ.

• 47:26AJ Gentile?

  Thank you so much for hanging out today. I'm AJ, there's hecklefish. Yeah, I've been hanging, chiefsta. This has been the Wi-Fi House. If you had fun or learned anything, and you're not scared to death, do us a favor, hit like, subscribe, share, comment. That stuff used to help out the channel a lot. Not sure if it does anymore. And like most topics we cover here on the channel, today's is recommended by you. So if there's a story you want to hear, a story you want to learn more about, go to the Yfiles.com/tips, or send me an email, and we'll get right on that. Remember, Yfiles is also a podcast. Twice a week, I post deep dives into the stories we cover here on the channel, and also post episodes that wouldn't be allowed on the channel. And you'll see those marked "redacted," so those are not for kids. Anyway, the podcast is

• 48:08AJ Gentile?

  called, it's really creative, "The Yfiles Operation Podcast," and it's available everywhere. Now, if you need more Yfiles in your life, and I don't know why you would, but some people do, check out our Discord. I think we're around 80,000 members on there, so 24/7, there's something going on, there's people hanging out, they're talking about the same weird stuff we do here on the channel. It's a great community, it's a really supportive community, it's a lot of fun, and it's free to join. Now, if you want to know what's going on with the Yfiles at any given time, you can check out our production calendar. It's the Yfiles.com/cal. We post our episode schedule, podcasts, live streams, all that stuff. A special thanks to our patrons who made this channel possible. Every episode of the Yfiles is dedicated to our Patreon members. Could not have done this without you. Still, out of the first maybe 100 members,

• 48:53AJ Gentile?

  I think 95 of them are still with us. And you guys are the heart of the channel. Now, if you'd like to support this channel, keep us going, become a member of this amazing community, consider becoming a member on Patreon. For as little as $3 a month, you get access to perks like videos early, and podcasts early with no commercials. You get merch available only to members, plus two private live streams every week just for you. And my camera's on, you get to meet the whole team. You can turn your camera on, jump up on stage, ask a question, tell a joke, discuss a topic, ask for advice. You shouldn't ask me for advice, but people do. I think it's the best perk there is. You get to know us as people. Another great way to support the channel is grab something from the Yfiles store.

• 49:31Speaker 02

  Grab a Haggler's t-shirt, or one of these fistable coffee mugs. You can stick your fist in. You might as well get your fists in because the asteroids coming gonna wipe us all out. You might as well have yourself a good time with your fist in your mug in your beverage, or whatever you're gonna do with it. Or a hoodie, or shut my face on it, or get one of these creepy YouTube dolls, or squeeze the animal, stop. That's it.

• 49:53AJ Gentile?

  But if you're gonna buy merch, make sure you become a member on YouTube. I know, I know, another membership, but hear me how. YouTube members get 10% off everything in the Wild Files store. You get a new code every month for 10% off anything you want. So if you're gonna buy $40 worth of t-shirts, become a member, get the coupon code, and it pays for itself. And if you want to cancel after you make your purchase, that's totally fine. The coupon code is there to save you money, not make me money. I don't keep any of that. That goes to support my great team.

• 50:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, will you be quiet with this code code to put me in a poorhouse for crying out loud?

• 50:26AJ Gentile?

  Those are the plugs. And that's gonna do it. Until next time, be safe, be kind, and know that you are appreciated.

• 50:51Speaker 15

  A place where they be a scenario 51. A secret code inside the Bible said I was. I love my UFOs and paranormal fun as well as music. Songs singing like I should. But then another conspiracy theory becomes the truth. My friends, and it never ends. No, it never ends.

• 51:29Speaker 15

  I fear the crap cat and got stuck inside Mel's home with MKL truck. I'm being only too aware. Did Stanley Kubrick fake the moon landing alone? On a film set, were the shadow people there? The Roswell aliens just fought the smiling man. I'm told, and his name was Cold. And I can't believe I'm dancing with the fish. Head to fish on Thursday nights with AJ2. And well, my love, I'll be all through the night.

• 52:09Speaker 15

  All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth So the whippers on my feet all through the night

• 52:35Speaker 15

  The mapman sightings and the solar storms still come To have got the secret city underground Mysterious number stations, planets circle to Project Starkgate and what the dark watchers found In a simulation, don't you worry though The black night satellite it told me so I can't believe I'm dancing with a fish Head for fish on Thursday nights with AJ2 And the whippers on my feet all through the night

• 53:15Speaker 15

  All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth So the whippers on my feet all through the night Head for fish on Thursday nights with AJ2 And the whippers on my feet all through the night All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth So the whippers on my feet all through the night

• 53:58Speaker 15

  Gertie loves to dance on the dance floor Because she is a camel And camels love to dance when the feeling is right on We're in time

• 54:11Speaker 00

  Network freedom and flexibility. That's what you want in a health care plan. With a Humana Medicare Advantage PPO plan, you can see any doctor in the country who accepts Medicare, including specialists. No referrals. No kidding. Learn more at gethumana.com. See any doctor who accepts Medicare and is willing to bill Humana. Humana PPOs may not be available in all areas. Benefits and costs share may vary. Humana is a Medicare Advantage PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal. Network freedom and flexibility. That's what you want in a health care plan. With a Humana Medicare Advantage PPO plan, you can see any doctor in the country who accepts Medicare, including specialists. No referrals. No kidding.

• 54:54Speaker 00

  Learn more at gethumana.com. See any doctor who accepts Medicare and is willing to bill Humana. Humana PPOs may not be available in all areas. Benefits and costs share may vary. Humana is a Medicare Advantage PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.