Manhattan hardhats dug up a giant missile Wednesday afternoon on their jobsite — and were tripping over their lunch pails to get away from it.
The NYPD’s Bomb Squad and Emergency Service Unit raced to the scene, fearing the worst.
But what they discovered could cause only a disco inferno.
The missile was nothing more than a practice bomb turned time capsule created by the since-shuttered hotspot Danceteria, where celebs like Madonna used to party.
“It looked like an old World War II shell, maybe about five feet long,” a police source said. “They thought it was a real bomb and it sent everyone into a panic.”
John Argento, who used to own the famous nightclub, said he had to convince the Bomb Squad’s commander it wasn’t an actual explosive.
“I said, ‘Do I need a lawyer?’ and he said, ‘I don’t think so,’” he explained.
“I was trying to convince him it wasn’t a bomb. It’s just a dummy we bought at the Army-Navy store at the west end of Canal.”
Construction workers dug up the capsule around 12:20 p.m. in the Flatiron District where the club, which closed in 1986, used to stand.
Amid the confusion, cops shut down a stretch of West 21st Street, forcing some workers in the area to evacuate their buildings.
“We only had 2 minutes to evacuate our building. Bomb scare on 21st between 5th and 6th ,” Alexis Todd wrote on Twitter.
Argento, who’s now the managing director of Surf City Beach Bar and Zeppelin Hall and Biergarten, said he dreamed up the idea for a time capsule with Danceteria promoter Rudolph Pieper.
“We made an announcement that we’d be doing a time capsule for the people of the future so people would know what was happening at Danceteria,” he said.
“People would throw in objects — Rubiks Cubes, stuff from the 80s. We did one party and left it out a week or two. People would fill out a card and put it in the bomb.”
They buried it in an alley near the club — and soon forgot about it.
“It wasn’t a serious time capsule,” Argento said. “We knew it wasn’t gonna last 10,000 years. We didn’t think much of it.”