SaneAmongInsane said:
Am I really the only fool with just a tiny bit of anxiety about it?
No, I was that fool once too. To make it worse I spent my childhood years growing up during the end of the cold war so "the Russians will nuke everyone!" was the pervading (stupid) fear of the time. I fixed my own delusions eventually by educating myself thoroughly on the topics at hand. Here's what I found out. Let's talk about some things that are supposedly going to "end the world":
1. Nostradamus didn't know jack shit. Every prediction of his is completely 100% worthless. Have you ever read any of Nostradamus - not people's interpretations, but his
actual predictions in their original format? If you have, you'd know why. His prophecies are all little four-line stanzas like this:
On the third day after the seventh full moon
A great army will rise in the north
Three trees will fall in the purple river
And Esther will be vindicated
It's all shit like that, that you can interpret any old how. People saying "oh, he predicted such and such" are just extrapolating
massively from the original verses. Also, Nostradamus' predictions
didn't have dates on them so anyone saying he predicted the world would end in 2083 or whatever (I just made that date up, don't get afraid) are just once again making guesswork by multplying the seven full moons and then adding the three trees and dividing by the river, or whatever.
2. 2012. The Mayans got thoroghly conquered by the Spanish in 1697, as in, completely fucking
exterminated. You'd think these all-seeing gurus would have seen that shit coming and ended their calendar by then, but no - clearly they didn't know jack. So don't believe anyone's 2012 rubbish next year when you're still alive and worrying to death about it, okay?
3. Nuclear apocalypse. Not gonna happen. All the big nuclear superpowers are cosy trading partners with no interest whatsoever in messing up their symbiotic relationship with each other. Think any of them want biffo? Get real. The west is in love with eastern convenience, the east is in love with western money. Not. Gonna. Happen. Think China would back a North Korean nuclear strike? Fuck no, China thinks North Korea are
insane, they want them out of the way even more than the US does because of the proximity. Nukes are so old-hat now as to be more or less worthless anyway, conventional weapons get the job done better, faster, cleaner, neater and with less stain on the PR record.
There's more: peak oil - not a threat, too long to go into here but anyone who thinks that will bring down society just failed economics class. Global warming - probably the most realistic threat of the lot but meh, we'll work it out because we have to, and anyway it will be the slowest apocalypse ever if it does come to that. Notice how they've stopped calling it "global warming" and started calling it "climate change"? What does that tell you. Asteroid or cosmic event - we'll see it coming by decades and have a solution ready, like NASA are already doing for a roid that's going to swing by us in a few decades.
In the meantime, the sun is shining, there's good music, good food and girls out there you haven't even talked to yet, what are you doing wasting your time worrying about this stuff. How did you even read this far? If we are going to have an apocalypse you owe it to yourself to at least party like it's 1999, as Prince said in this brilliant apocalypse-themed pop song:
