So, a huge asteroid will pass Earth in 2036 but here’s why we’re not freaking out about it

We hate to be the party poopers who put a damper on your holiday weekend, but since a gargantuan asteroid is heading towards earth, we figured you’d want to know in advance. Blame our horrible timing on The History Channel, which shared a video about a monstrosity of an asteroid named Apophis, “after the ancient Egyptian god of destruction.”

Just in case Earthbound life doesn’t already present us with enough mundane issues to worry about, this asteroid is reportedly three football fields wide and would make an impact 1,000 times the atomic bomb that struck Hiroshima, except, as Slate points out, Apophis won’t actually hit earth in 2036, as was previously believed.

Despite the false alarm, we totally get why people continue to freak out over the possibility of asteroid-induced mass destruction that would bring about the annihilation of at least one major city. Luckily though, NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office (coolest workplace ever) is in charge of handling such incidents with plans that involve detecting, assessing and ultimately protecting the planet from dangerous asteroids with the help of high-powered instruments such as cameras and a telescope that, according to Scientific American, “is designed to spot dangerous asteroids shortly before their final plunge to Earth.”

Thankfully, we can rest easy (for now) with the knowledge that Apophis will bypass Earth in 2036 from a very comfortable 150 lunar distances away. We’re beyond relieved because we’ll probably need way more than 20 years to save up enough money for a one-way ticket to Mars.