(FORTUNE Magazine) – America's gross domestic product may be large enough to smoosh any other country's, but lately our $10 trillion GDP has been under assault from a variety of dark forces. Last summer's blackout cost the economy $6.4 billion, according to Anderson Economic Group. Spam is taking a $10 billion annual toll, says Ferris Research. Hurricane Isabel caused nearly $2 billion in damages--a startling $4 billion of that in Maryland alone, according to a state economic official.

If you love the GDP the way I do, those are disturbing numbers--but nowhere near as disturbing as the numbers that whiz past us in headlines every day. Add them up and it's a wonder there's any GDP left at all.

Take trampolines. All by themselves, those violent springboards lop more than $1 billion from our economy each year when they send little Caitlin over the garage roof, according to a study based on Consumer Product Safety Council data. That's big money out of our pocket--your pocket--right there.

The Formosan termite, meanwhile, gnaws away at our GDP at the rate of $1 billion a year--just one of the "invading nonindigenous species" that destroy $138 billion annually, according to a Cornell study. That study also puts "economic losses due to exotic fish" at more than $1 billion a year.

And how about animal-related traffic accidents, a category that encompasses deer-in-headlights and horse-drawn-carriage smashups? Another $1.2 billion, according to the Insurance Information Institute.

Poor English-speaking skills cost us at least $75 billion a year, according to an Ohio University study. Sleepy workers are an $18-billion-a-year problem, according to a National Sleep Foundation survey.

It's hard to look at those numbers without feeling a growing sense of distress. But stress deprives the economy of $300 billion a year, according to the American Institute of Stress. So there's no point in sitting around stressing out. In fact, sitting around just makes things worse. Listen to the Michigan Fitness Foundation: "Inactivity among Michigan's 7.6 million adults cost nearly $8.9 billion in 2002."

Inactivity is clearly a serious condition. But a common way of combatting it--activity--is dangerous and costly. Injuries to children engaged in biking, basketball, football, in-line skating, soccer, baseball, and playground fun--not to mention trampolining--cost the U.S. economy $33 billion a year, the CPSC study found. What's more, those injuries are often painful. Pain, according to a Louis Harris & Associates survey, costs the economy another $3 billion a year.

Herniated disks sure are painful. They cost the economy $16 billion. Dental diseases cost another $21 billion and are depressing to boot. Depression ($44 billion a year) can contribute to obesity ($117 billion) and alcohol abuse ($148 billion), which in turn increases the likelihood of sprains and strains ($10 billion). It's all connected, really. Secondhand smoke costs $82 billion and contributes to $4.5 billion worth of tooth decay, according to a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association. See?

It isn't just sick people that cost us money. "Sick buildings," according to an Environmental Protection Agency estimate, stick us with a $60 billion bill. Sick horses ("equine lameness" to you and me) cost anywhere from $678 million to $1 billion, the Department of Agriculture reckons. Sick computers are bad too. The "I Love You" computer virus caused at least $2.6 billion in economic damage in 1999--less than a real virus (the common cold wreaks $40 billion in economic damage yearly) but almost as much as pain itself, which is saying something.

That brings us to another dark force: friction. Last year FORTUNE estimated that the "economic friction" (e.g., heightened security) resulting from the World Trade Center attack would exert a $151-billion-a-year drag on the U.S. economy. Just as insidious, though, is what you get when you rub a piece of sandpaper over your exposed flesh, scraping and scraping until ...damn if that doesn't hurt. That kind of friction costs $150 billion a year, industrial scientists estimate--though eliminating it, I suppose, could cause some problems of its own. For one, you'd probably have more deer-related traffic accidents.

All this, however, pales in comparison to another threat. According to the book Hazards Due to Comets and Asteroids, a two-kilometer asteroid colliding with the earth could cause losses of some $400 trillion, what with all the dust and crap it would kick up. On the bright side, the costs would be amortized over one million years, meaning annual reported losses would run only $400 million--way less than the cost of, say, breathing secondhand smoke. So remember, if someone gives you a choice between a smoke-filled room and a direct hit from a monster asteroid, take the asteroid. (Also, request the asteroid known as 3554 Amun: A University of Arizona professor says it's made of platinum and other precious stuff worth $20 trillion!) The GDP will thank you.

What else would the GDP tell us if it could talk? One, that it's leaking like a sieve. Two, if we could just plug a few of those holes--say no to obesity, speak good English, steer clear of deer, not stress out when we do hit them, and use lubricants whenever possible--we'd be living like kings. How kingly would we be? Adding up the numbers in this story alone, our economy is producing $1.3 trillion less a year than it should. That represents--brace yourself--one entire China. We can do better. And we will do better--just as long as we avoid invisible waves of protons flaring from the sun's surface. According to Oak Ridge National Laboratory, those solar storms cost up to $6 billion a pop.