NATO was on full alert last night after pop-shouter Bono threatened to read a 14-minute poem about Elvis on Radio Four.
Scientists warned the tax-efficient Irishman's performance risked tearing a potentially cataclysmic hole in the space-time-dreadfulness continuum.
Entertainment physicist Dr Roy Hobbs said: "The sheer density of po-faced twatishness could strain the boundaries of reality and we could be sucked into a parallel universe where Bono reading out his doggerel on national radio is considered sensible."
Hobbs is working with NATO to avert the disaster by releasing controlled stanzas deep under the Atlantic Ocean. He added: "Listen to this -'You wore a white jumpsuit and feasted on squirrels – As far as I know you never gigged in the Wirral'."
"If that is read out over the airwaves in Bono's unbearbably laid-back yet excruciatingly earnest voice, thousands will die."
The poem, entitled You Were From Memphis, And So Wasn't Jesus was written by Bono in 1994 without any apparent provocation.
Broadcasting regulator Ofcom said Radio Four's decision to air it in full was, 'as reckless as using a threshing machine to brush your teeth'.
Bonologist Dr Wayne Hayes said: "When he did that lyric about a mole digging in a hole, that was pretty bad. But now, with this, he has become death… the destroyer of worlds."
