Forget the coming winter. Forget the rising price of oil. Forget a possible attack on Iran by the Americans. While all these are very bad bits of news, they are merely a pale shadow of the terrors yet to come.
For me the most frightening announcement to emerge in recent weeks was hidden away in our Health Supplement, which revealed that a new super- strain of the Italica Cultivar group of Brassica oleracea - otherwise known as broccoli - is being developed.
Unless you are a recluse, or have been dead for the past decade, you too have been a victim of broccoli - a vegetable rarely seen or even heard of in Ireland until recent years.
No one has been able to tell me who decided Irish people should be served broccoli and why, but it seemed to make its appearance almost on the front claw of the Celtic Tiger. Since then it has been impossible to get a meal just about anywhere without a drumstick of what must be the most obnoxious of all the cabbage plants arriving on your plate unannounced, unasked for, unsought, unwelcome and unnecessary.
You will find it in the humblest of restaurants, in hotels, pubs and guesthouses. It turns up in salads and cold plates, it is being served in Chinese restaurants, it has been spotted even in curries - and I once came across it floating obscenely in a plate of Irish stew.
I have even been told there is a chip shop in Dublin offering deep-fried broccoli. The very thought of that sends goosepimples up my spine.
As far as I can ascertain, there are no major growers of broccoli in Ireland and there are no fields full of the stuff waiting to be dragged on to the plates of Ireland. Nevertheless, the chances are that if you open your family fridge, you will find broccoli lurking there in a plastic wrapper waiting to get out and turn up on your unsuspecting plate.
Could it be that broccoli is like those wire coat-hangers that you get from the dry cleaners which breed like rabbits at night when you put them in your wardrobe and close the door? Twenty years ago, like broccoli, wire coat-hangers were relatively rare. They were even treasured as a substitute for the "rabbit ears" aerial on top of the old black-and-white TVs.
Now there are millions of them hanging about in the wardrobes and offices of Ireland, or lurking in hallways; and very frequently you will find they have turned to crime because I have seen many of them lying beside stolen cars where they have been used to pick door-locks.
Is it possible that broccoli has taken a leaf from the coat-hangers and is procreating in fridges in the dark, intent on taking over the world? Could it be that in the darkness of the fridge - and that is another mystery because you can never be really sure that the light goes off when you shut the door - that the broccoli is killing off all other vegetables in order to rule supreme in the vegetable kingdom? All I can tell you is that in many homes, including my own, no one asks for broccoli, but somehow it happens to end up in at least two meals a week.
I bet you have heard the person who cooks in the house say: "I
couldn't get to the shops today and I have no vegetables. But hold on, I see there is some broccoli here." And I bet that when you have been cooking yourself you suddenly find yourself looking at the vegetable shelf to discover that only broccoli resides there.
I tell you, I would hate to be a cabbage, or a turnip or a well-formed carrot these days because I have a feeling that there is something very sinister going on in the vegetable kingdom.
Things are even scarier now that scientists at the University of Warwick have announced they are developing a new "super broccoli" which could last for up to three days longer.
The researchers there are trying to locate the gene which gives some varieties of the vegetable extra shelf-life. This could then be integrated into the new "super broccoli" to keep it fresh for longer periods.
I certainly don't need longer-lived broccoli - no more than I need the super-white cauliflower which was developed using the gene from swans that makes its feathers so snowy.
So I will be keeping an even warier and more watchful eye on the vegetable rack .