So, there you sit with 500 gallons of bottled water and enough Slim Jims to fill Lowe’s Motor Speedway. Well, not to worry, because even if Y2K turns out to be a yawner, there are still plenty of things to fret over.

While you’re waiting to crank that heavy-duty backup generator, here are some backup worries that should carry you well into next year:

• Annexation: If you live in Summerfield or Homestead Hills, worry about being annexed by Salisbury. If you live in Salisbury, worry about being annexed by Charlotte. If you live in Charlotte, worry about being annexed by Atlanta. (And if you live in Atlanta, well, you have our sincerest sympathies.)
• Overpopulation: There are now more than 6 billion people on the planet, and eventually all of them will be driving sport utility vehicles through I-85 construction sites.
• Killer corks: Warm bottles of champagne, coupled with careless aim, are responsible for ruptured eyeballs, detached retinas and even the loss of eyes, according to the American Academy of Ophthalmology. (Before you pop open the bubbly, make sure that Cold Duck is really cold — and pointed in a neutral direction.)
• Inflated allowances: According to a recent Associated Press report, the median teen-age allowance in this country is $50 — that’s per week, not per month. (We have two suggestions: Hide this information from your teen-agers — and require them to make matching contributions to your retirement plan.)
• Tammy Faye Bakker Messner: In case you missed it, she’s baaaaack. In North Carolina, that is. Pass the tissues.
• Dale Earnhardt: We hate to break this to Nascar fans, but someday he’ll have to retire, even if Strom Thurmond never does.
• Terroristic emus: Okay, we’ll admit it’s been weeks since our last known incident of an emu colliding with a car in Rowan County, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t out there.

Finally, doomsayers can take heart in this: If we survive cyber apocalypse, scientists say the Earth eventually may collide with a huge comet, be visited by some horrible new plague or suffocate under a miasma of pollution.

Even if none of that comes to pass, we’re still toast. In four billion years or so, our dying sun will puff up into a gaseous fireball and cook the planet.