The box is not hype. It is the keyhole. If Apophis passes through it, it will strike the Earth in 2036. The last time new observations adjusted the 2029 pass position, they adjusted it farther from the keyhole.

Think of the keyhole as the sweet spot on a small hill in the middle of a golf putting green. If you aim just perfect, your ball will roll up the hill to its high point, turn (break as they call it in golf) roll down the hill and into the cup. But if you miss this sweet spot by even 1 milimeter, your ball will roll right past the cup. Miss the sweet spot by 1 inch and your ball will miss the cup by several feet.

This is why it is so difficult to predict whether or not it will hit in 2036. Referring to my golf example, we don't know "down to a milimeter" how far the ball will miss the sweet spot on the hill.

If Apophis were found to be on a collision course after the 2029 Earth passage, a strike in the middle of the Pacific Ocean would kill billions as the tidal waves would affect most of the the Pacific Rim. Or more likely, fewer people would die as they had 7 years notice to abandon the coast.

But I would imagine that unlimited resources would be dedicated to deflecting it, and we would be successful.

I didn't agree with the Nova piece's conclusion that nuking it would be a bad idea because we'd get hit with an equal mass of small debris. This is only if we nuked it hours before it hit. Nuke it 3 years before it hits, and the average spacing between particles will exceed 1 Earth diameter.