Re:The human body is already close to thermal limits in many...
by marcus_holmes on Monday July 29, 2019 @02:06PM
(#20557482)
the ones that spring to mind immediately:
- Nuclear war. This was the biggy. I remember at 25 I honestly didn't expect to live to 40. We regularly asked each other what we will do when (not if) the alarm goes off and we have 15 minutes to do something before being simultaneously cooked and blown apart in the shockwave.
- AIDS. When the AIDS epidemic broke, there were TV adverts with tombstones on them basically saying "stop having sex, it'll kill you". There were scientific articles explaining how the spread of AIDS was unstoppable and would destroy Western Civilisation within a decade.
- The Hole in The Ozone Layer. This was going to fry us all and we'd be living in underground bunkers by 2020.
- Y2K. Mass Media made a lot of this, painting pictures of planes falling out of the sky and distribution networks failing. It was very, very, anticlimactic (thankfully, and I played my part in that).
- Peak Oil. There was a fairly popular sentiment in the 00's that the oil was going to dry up before we were ready for it to. It turned out that fracking could alleviate that concern, and then they found a ton of new oil fields. But again, you can find media articles explaining how Western Civilisation was going to be destroyed by Peak Oil, and preppers getting themselves ready to survive it.
- Acid Rain. Less catastrophic, but still up there. I remember articles explaining how the delicate ecosystem of the English countryside was being destroyed by acid rain, and it would never recover, leading to the collapse of Western Civilisation.
There's probably more. The common thread is always "if this continues at its current pace (and it will because we have no way of stopping it), X will happen and that will destroy Western Civilisation". Sound familiar?
- Nuclear war. This was the biggy. I remember at 25 I honestly didn't expect to live to 40. We regularly asked each other what we will do when (not if) the alarm goes off and we have 15 minutes to do something before being simultaneously cooked and blown apart in the shockwave.
- AIDS. When the AIDS epidemic broke, there were TV adverts with tombstones on them basically saying "stop having sex, it'll kill you". There were scientific articles explaining how the spread of AIDS was unstoppable and would destroy Western Civilisation within a decade.
- The Hole in The Ozone Layer. This was going to fry us all and we'd be living in underground bunkers by 2020.
- Y2K. Mass Media made a lot of this, painting pictures of planes falling out of the sky and distribution networks failing. It was very, very, anticlimactic (thankfully, and I played my part in that).
- Peak Oil. There was a fairly popular sentiment in the 00's that the oil was going to dry up before we were ready for it to. It turned out that fracking could alleviate that concern, and then they found a ton of new oil fields. But again, you can find media articles explaining how Western Civilisation was going to be destroyed by Peak Oil, and preppers getting themselves ready to survive it.
- Acid Rain. Less catastrophic, but still up there. I remember articles explaining how the delicate ecosystem of the English countryside was being destroyed by acid rain, and it would never recover, leading to the collapse of Western Civilisation.
There's probably more. The common thread is always "if this continues at its current pace (and it will because we have no way of stopping it), X will happen and that will destroy Western Civilisation". Sound familiar?