A Few Things We Should Not Worry About

Watch out Kim Jong Un! That water might be fluoridated!
Our world today seems fraught with peril: everywhere you look are threats to your safety and well-being. If it’s not the U.S. housing market’s collapse affecting economics worldwide, it’s the failure of Cypriot banking affecting the global economy. If it’s not Iran threatening an attack on Israel, it’s North Korea threatening South Korea (and Japan and the United States and likely the moon and the Kuiper Belt, too, for some damn reason). Hydraulic fracturing is leading to both a new oil and gas boom and to earthquakes and flammable tap water…

The list of potential causes for doom and gloom goes on and on, and it can indeed cast a pall over even the sunniest of days if you dwell on it. So today, we thought we’d take a turn for the positive, and give you fewer things to worry about by crossing some issues off your “Things I Worry About” list. (Also, for the record, if you have a list like that, you may want to talk to someone about the larger, underlying issues.)

1.       Don’t you worry about North Korea, America! Or rather, you can go ahead and worry about the DPRK, in that the regime there is headed by a thirty-year-old fat-faced madman who apparently thinks that threatening the entire world is just great diplomacy, but don’t worry about an attack from North Korea on American soil. Even though they may harbor a few small, marginally effective nuclear warheads, they lack the missile technology to come within hundreds of miles of any American city. So those wacky maps they have released showing hellfire raining down on our coasts and, oddly, Austin, Texas? Yeah, those are B.S.

2.       Don’t worry about fluoridation of the water supply. Colonel Ripper, the deranged officer in Stanley Kubrick’s dark comedy classic Dr. Strangelove may have been terrified by the prospect of the government adding fluoride to the water, but let’s keep in mind that we just identified him as deranged. The levels of fluoride in most U.S. domestic tap water are well under a milligram per liter of water. The EPA’s maximum safety level is a full four mgs per liter. In order for your health to be ill-affected by fluoridated water, you would need to just go ahead and drown in it.

Nothing to fear from this big guy.

3.       Have no worries over death by shark bite. Yes, people are killed by sharks almost each and every year, and yes, sharks are terrifying death machines, but unless you are a sea creature regularly consumed by sharks, worrying about a shark eating you is only rational if you worry more about death from these causes: dog bites, bee stings, lightning strikes, tree collapses, volcanoes, sandwiches, and much, much more.

4.       Don’t worry about an asteroid strike. Yeah, that was crazy what happened in Russia recently, but no one died, right? And that was a fluke anyway: the chances of a meteorite causing you any damage are so small they rank in the “less than one in a million” category. In fact, to date there is only one instance of an American being struck by a “space missile,” and all she got was a bruise on her leg.

5.       And finally, don’t worry about ghosts! Why? Because ghosts aren’t real.

Top photo by Reuters/KCNA from the Atlantic blog “Kim Jong Un Looking at Things”


Steven John has been an avid reader for as long as he can remember, and has been writing for almost that long as well. Most of his early writing you will never, ever see. But as for some of his more recent writing, namely his debut novel Three A.M., he admonishes you to read it and force—er, ask—all your friends to do the same. He is currently at work on his third novel and a host of side projects. Track his wanderings at www.StevenJohnBooks.com.

Read all posts by Steven John for Criminal Element.