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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
So far, so good. Bet I die of natural causes before any current prediction of doom comes to fruition.
We’re going to have to cut off your supply of Grade B horror movies.
Of the alt-right.
And if one of the big ones hits, we’ll all be dead so he won’t be able to collect. Sounds like good odds.
Sanctuary state?
Watch it!
Nah, their glaciers aren’t really melting, either.
I’m safe, since either way I’ll probably be dead.
I’m lounging in a hammock. Does that count?
And just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that there isn’t someone after you.
Thankfully I was told for many years that loading up on carbs wouldn’t kill me! Oh, wait . . .
Touche’
I’m pretty certain I’ve died a couple times from the sinking of the Floridian Peninsula over the last 35 years.
I’ll take my chances.
First the USSR was supposed to destroy us economically. Then it was Japan, now it is China.
Since hundreds of years before Christ, humans have believed that the world will end soon. It is simply what humans do.
Round-up, plastic in the water, lead and fluoride have all killed me multiple times.
For a Canadian perspective:
The world will end at 4 pm. 4:30 in Newfoundland.
Oh, yes!
A Newfie joke.
We can’t leave them all to the Newfies, after all.
Ah yes, also known as Rumsfeld’s Disease.
I think it was Ralph Nader who correctly predicted that the ditches would run red with blood if we raised the speed limit above 55 mph. Just as Oprah Winfrey foresaw, I have died of Mad Cow Disease from eating hamburgers. Just as countless
scientistsactors, actresses, and rock stars have predicted, my whole town died of radiation poisoning from melt downs at nuclear power plants. I was shot to death when the Clinton Assault Weapons Ban expired. I won’t tell you what caused me to go blind.It’s okay. None of us can see to read your explanation anyway.
There’s two kinds of liars…
Almost died of a sharknado today.
Lucky you were prepared.
Darn. This is an animated GIF on my computer. The other two thirds are better.
Well, here it is:
Has to be at full size for animation to work.