I don't see a strawman here. Care to elaborate?

> 1 generation survived all kinds of terrible events

That isn't even close to the GP's argument. The steelman is every generation encounters existential problems that get exaggerated to apocalyptic proportions but that history is also a very long story of those existential problems being dealt with in one way or another. (And in the voice of GP "I lived through one such cycle")

The black-pilled people would counter that civilization today has an unprecedented number of ways in which to destroy itself and so that destruction is inevitable.

The counter to the black pill is that it's missing historical information which shows humanity has been successfully walking this tightrope for far longer than anyone thinks.