How Many Times Have You Died, and Of What Causes?

 

Seems like there have been at least half a dozen times we were all going to die since Trump assumed office. Net Neutrality? Pulling out of the Paris Accords climate boondoggle? Etc. But the immediate destruction of the world is hardly new to having Trump as PotUS. I was trying to count all the times I have died and of what causes during my lifetime, but with all the goalpost moving, it can be so hard to keep up.

OccupantCDN’s Ice Free Montana had a video the other day that went through the timeline of when Montana’s glaciers were supposed to all be melted starting with the first prediction of 1941, if I remember correctly. They just removed signs that said they would all be gone next year. (Surprise! They’re still there!) That is hardly the only one of the many, many dire predictions that have had to be moved back because the predictions did not come to fruition.

Global warming? I hear we now have to act in the next twelve years, or we will be beyond the point of no return. Of course, the first time I heard that prediction, I think it expired close to twenty years ago. It is very much like the various Millenarianist sects who keep having to move back the date of the Second Coming. Does anybody remember the Great Disappointment? Of course not, it was before we were born happening on October 22, 1844. But I bet we all remember predicted dates for the Apocalypse that came and went without anything happening other than one religious group’s disappointment.

Hey, remember the end of the Mayan calendar cycle? That was fun.

I’m old enough to have been alive when The Population Bomb was first published. According to that, we were all going to starve in the 1970s and 1980s unless we stopped people from reproducing. It was all very Malthusian. Of course, Old Tom first wrote about the idea in 1798, and we’re still producing more and more and the population has not kept up with production, so the world is much richer per capita than it was in 1798 or 1968.

Then there was nuclear winter. Because of nuclear testing, and if we had a nuclear war, so much particulate matter would get into the upper atmosphere that we would cool down and the Earth would go back into an Ice Age. That was in the 1970s, I believe.

Then there was the fact that a mad cowboy had been elected and had his finger on the nuclear button. We were all going to die because he’d get us into a war. What? No, not George W. Bush. Ronald Reagan, back in the 1980s. Bush came later.

Somewhere along the way, there was Global Warming, especially Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). But then it didn’t happen fast enough and there were cooler periods, so AGW was now supposed to bring on an ice age. For a while, they changed it to Global Weirding, and then to Climate Change. I don’t remember how many changes it went through or how many predicted must-act-before dates whizzed by over the last thirty years.

What else? Y2K was supposed to have major disruptions of computers that would have planes crashing into buildings and probably the end of civilization.

I’m sure I am missing at least two hundred things that were predicted to have killed me by now. How about you? Are you old enough to have died due to the Silent Spring of 1962? Something even before that? What have I missed that you died of, perhaps multiple times?

Published in History
This post was promoted to the Main Feed by a Ricochet Editor at the recommendation of Ricochet members. Like this post? Want to comment? Join Ricochet’s community of conservatives and be part of the conversation. Join Ricochet for Free.

There are 129 comments.

Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.
  1. Matt Bartle Member
    Matt Bartle
    @MattBartle

    I seem to recall that Al and Tipper Gore were very worried about Satanic messages in music at one point. 

    Not to mention the Satanic rituals going on at day care centers.

     

    • #31
  2. Doug Watt Member
    Doug Watt
    @DougWatt

    Climate change used to be what I called the Seasons. Sometimes they can be benevolent, and sometimes they are not. I suggest purchasing a coat for winter wear, that can be removed during the summer. Your HVAC tech is your friend, the Earth not so much.

    • #32
  3. DonG Coolidge
    DonG
    @DonG

    Eating eggs was supposed to kill us.  And saturated fats.  Now those are OK and we are to avoid carbohydrates.  

    • #33
  4. The Great Adventure! Inactive
    The Great Adventure!
    @TheGreatAdventure

    Kale.  Kale is going to kill us all.  Of that I’m certain.

    • #34
  5. The Great Adventure! Inactive
    The Great Adventure!
    @TheGreatAdventure

    This isn’t a worldwide catastrophe – only one for the Pacific Northwest.  It’s “The BIG One!”.  There’s going to be a massive earthquake – pretty sure it’s going to happen next week.  Everything west of I-5 will be destroyed, flattened (they’ve actually said that).  The power grid for everything west of the Mississippi will be wiped out.  If you don’t die instantly, you’ll be forced to crawl hundreds of miles to find potable water.

    • #35
  6. Al French, sad sack Moderator
    Al French, sad sack
    @AlFrench

    JustmeinAZ (View Comment):

    Alar treated apples. Mercury in tuna. Second hand smoke. So many ways to die.

    Aminotriazole in cranberries, 1959. I grew up in a cranberry producing area. Just before Thanksgiving a study was released saying that the pesticide caused cancer in lab rats. For most people, no cranberry sauce with the turkey that year. The farmers went bust. Or course you would have to eat a train car full of cranberries every day for a long time to equal what the rats ate. My family had cranberry sauce that year, and I’m still here.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2015/11/26/the-great-thanksgiving-cranberry-scare-of-1959/#2b8cba38525b

     

    • #36
  7. philo Member
    philo
    @philo

    The Great Adventure! (View Comment):

    This isn’t a worldwide catastrophe – only one for the Pacific Northwest. It’s “The BIG One!”. There’s going to be a massive earthquake – pretty sure it’s going to happen next week. Everything west of I-5 will be destroyed, flattened (they’ve actually said that). The power grid for everything west of the Mississippi will be wiped out. If you don’t die instantly, you’ll be forced to crawl hundreds of miles to find potable water.

    Thanks to Bill Bryson, I am keenly aware that the next eruption of the Yellowstone Supervolcano is long overdue. (For the record, when I’m trying to eek out a living under 11 feet of volcanic ash, I’m really not going to give a damn about my carbon footprint.)

    • #37
  8. Al French, sad sack Moderator
    Al French, sad sack
    @AlFrench

    The Great Adventure! (View Comment):

    This isn’t a worldwide catastrophe – only one for the Pacific Northwest. It’s “The BIG One!”. There’s going to be a massive earthquake – pretty sure it’s going to happen next week. Everything west of I-5 will be destroyed, flattened (they’ve actually said that). The power grid for everything west of the Mississippi will be wiped out. If you don’t die instantly, you’ll be forced to crawl hundreds of miles to find potable water.

    On the plus side, “Everything west of I-5” includes Portland.

    I live on the east side. After the Big One you west siders won’t look down your noses at us any more.

    • #38
  9. philo Member
    philo
    @philo

    Al French, sad sack (View Comment): Or course you would have to eat a train car full of cranberries every day for a long time to equal what the rats ate.

    Science!

    • #39
  10. Jimmy Carter Member
    Jimmy Carter
    @JimmyCarter

    Consuming aspartame will give You cancer and You’ll die. 

    • #40
  11. The Great Adventure! Inactive
    The Great Adventure!
    @TheGreatAdventure

    Al French, sad sack (View Comment):

    The Great Adventure! (View Comment):

    This isn’t a worldwide catastrophe – only one for the Pacific Northwest. It’s “The BIG One!”. There’s going to be a massive earthquake – pretty sure it’s going to happen next week. Everything west of I-5 will be destroyed, flattened (they’ve actually said that). The power grid for everything west of the Mississippi will be wiped out. If you don’t die instantly, you’ll be forced to crawl hundreds of miles to find potable water.

    On the plus side, “Everything west of I-5” includes Portland.

    I live on the east side. After the Big One you west siders won’t look down your noses at us any more.

    You do realize, don’t you, that the term “Back East” means anything east of I-5?

    • #41
  12. Jimmy Carter Member
    Jimmy Carter
    @JimmyCarter

    Don’t “trick or treat.” Halloween candy will have razor blades in ’em that You can’t see and the children will die. 

    • #42
  13. Judge Mental Member
    Judge Mental
    @JudgeMental

    Matt Balzer, Imperialist Claw (View Comment):

    Judge Mental (View Comment):

    Killer bees. Hole in the ozone layer. Mutated frogs.

    When was the mutated frogs? Also, how were they supposed to kill us?

    They weren’t going to chase us down and attack.  They were a sign that we’ve polluted Mother Gaia.

    • #43
  14. Gumby Mark (R-Meth Lab of Demo… Coolidge
    Gumby Mark (R-Meth Lab of Demo…
    @GumbyMark

    I died on December 17, 1979 from starvation caused as a result of the famine induced by the Population Bomb predicted by Paul Ehrlich.

    I died again on February 8, 1984 because of the cruise missiles placed by the crazed warmonger Ronald Reagan in Europe which triggered a nuclear war as predicted by Teddy Kennedy.

    I died yet again on March 22, 2015 amidst the chaos, violence, and food shortages resulting from the drastic decline in the availability of fossil fuels as predicted by the believers in Peak Oil.

    There are also many people who should die of embarrassment because of these predictions.

    • #44
  15. Bishop Wash Member
    Bishop Wash
    @BishopWash

    Some comedian made the observation, and I thought it too. With all the “Stop, Drop, and Roll” training we got in school I was expecting to catch on fire a lot in life. 

    • #45
  16. Gossamer Cat Coolidge
    Gossamer Cat
    @GossamerCat

    I don’t know if anyone mentioned the most deadly and insidious threat of all:  sitting.  At the rate it’s killing us, there won’t be anyone left in 12 years to die off from global warming.

    Oh no, I’m sitting as a write this.  Farewell!

    • #46
  17. DrewInWisconsin Member
    DrewInWisconsin
    @DrewInWisconsin

    After Neil Gorsuch and Net Neutrality killed 90% of the United States, I just stopped counting.

    • #47
  18. DrewInWisconsin Member
    DrewInWisconsin
    @DrewInWisconsin

    philo (View Comment):

    Even as a monogamous, heterosexual, non-drug user there was still a 53.7% chance that I was going to die of AIDS in the late 1980s.

    Oh yes. A girl I dated in college was informed after a lecture that this would be her fate, and it took several hours to get her to stop crying and calm down.

    • #48
  19. Judge Mental Member
    Judge Mental
    @JudgeMental

    wrong thread

    • #49
  20. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    JustmeinAZ (View Comment):

    Alar treated apples. Mercury in tuna. Second hand smoke. So many ways to die.

    Good memory.

    • #50
  21. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Matt Balzer, Imperialist Claw (View Comment):

    Judge Mental (View Comment):

    Killer bees. Hole in the ozone layer. Mutated frogs.

    When was the mutated frogs? Also, how were they supposed to kill us?

    They were a sign of poisons in the environment, like canaries in the coal mine. If they all died off, our time would come.

    • #51
  22. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Slow on the uptake (View Comment):

    Well, one thing I can say with certainty: It is given unto man once to die, and then the judgment.

    (Oh, yes – taxes are also certain.)

    Couldn’t be right, because we’re still all alive, despite all the predictions of death and destruction.

    • #52
  23. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    The Great Adventure! (View Comment):

    Kale. Kale is going to kill us all. Of that I’m certain.

    I’m on board with this one.

    • #53
  24. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    The Great Adventure! (View Comment):

    This isn’t a worldwide catastrophe – only one for the Pacific Northwest. It’s “The BIG One!”. There’s going to be a massive earthquake – pretty sure it’s going to happen next week. Everything west of I-5 will be destroyed, flattened (they’ve actually said that). The power grid for everything west of the Mississippi will be wiped out. If you don’t die instantly, you’ll be forced to crawl hundreds of miles to find potable water.

    That reminded me of two more that are supposed to kill us all in the “near” future:

    1. Yellowstone Supervolcano, and
    2. The shift of Earth’s magnetic poles.
    • #54
  25. Slow on the uptake Coolidge
    Slow on the uptake
    @Chuckles

    Al French, sad sack (View Comment):

    JustmeinAZ (View Comment):

    Alar treated apples. Mercury in tuna. Second hand smoke. So many ways to die.

    Aminotriazole in cranberries, 1959. I grew up in a cranberry producing area. Just before Thanksgiving a study was released saying that the pesticide caused cancer in lab rats. For most people, no cranberry sauce with the turkey that year. The farmers went bust. Or course you would have to eat a train car full of cranberries every day for a long time to equal what the rats ate. My family had cranberry sauce that year, and I’m still here.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2015/11/26/the-great-thanksgiving-cranberry-scare-of-1959/#2b8cba38525b

     

    Maybe it messed with your brain?

    • #55
  26. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Thanks to all for bringing back all those great memories of the times we’ve died. It’s so good to be here in the afterlife with you. (Yes, Ricochet is Heaven.) Keep those great memories coming.

    • #56
  27. thelonious Member
    thelonious
    @thelonious

    Just a warning to you all. They only have to be right once.

    • #57
  28. Judge Mental Member
    Judge Mental
    @JudgeMental

    thelonious (View Comment):

    Just a warning to you all. They only have to be right once.

    I figure it’ll be the giant nine-legged, mutant frogs.  Sure, you can laugh now, but you won’t be laughing when you’re hit by thirty pounds of sticky tongue that drags you forward into the huge, gaping maw.

    • #58
  29. JoelB Member
    JoelB
    @JoelB

    Extinction of the humpback whales!

    • #59
  30. Fake John/Jane Galt Coolidge
    Fake John/Jane Galt
    @FakeJohnJaneGalt

    Percival (View Comment):

    :thinking: no superfluity of n… (View Comment):

    I was personally killed by acid rain. Or thought I would be, when they were crying about that when I was in elementary school. Later I learned it was just the trees, and maybe some stone monuments. Then nothing, because the problem seemed to just go away somehow.

    Then it turned out that some huge percentage of the sulphuric acid in the atmosphere was coming from two power plants in Canada and acid rain ceased to be a thing. Just like that.

    Can’t be.  Only the US produces pollution.

    • #60
Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.