Watching people who are seeing the end of civilization in old-time, and modern Phoenix


It's November 28th, 2020, and as usual I'm spending a lot of time on the internet, on my phone, and on my tablet. And since this is a pretty awful time right now, I'm watching some people seeing the end of civilization. As a person who is interested in history, I'm fascinated by the "end of the world" people.

Well, to be fair, the world will go on with or without us. The world itself has seen so many species go extinct that it seems a cold, cruel world. Yep, nearly everything that ever tried to live on this planet has gone extinct. You can Google it if you want to, but it's kinda depressing.

Speaking for myself, I have faith in the future of humanity. And that makes me seem like an absolute idiot to some people who know that it's all about to end. Right now it's a global pandemic, and I'm pondering other scenarios that would have scared people, with good reason, with the end of civilization.

In my experience, I remember when the new millennium started. That is, when the calendar went from 1999 to 2000. Of course it's really 2001, but that's a bit of calendar trivia to most people. And fearing the end of civilization as we know it has always been popular when calendars turn. The 2000 one made people fear that computers, which were suddenly controlling everything, would go haywire, planes would fall from the sky, that sort of thing. My next-door neighbor was preparing for the rapture, and she was terrified. She was an elderly lady, all alone, and I remember going over to knock on the door and tell her that I would be right next door.

But to me, the most terrifying thing is something that happened long before I was born, and people in Phoenix could watch the testing of atomic bombs, right nearby in New Mexico. And that fact that we're all still here, in 2020, and haven't destroyed everything with atomic bombs still puzzles some people. I wonder about that myself, and maybe it's the reason that ultimately I'm optimistic.

I could give more examples, but the fear of an atomic bomb suddenly starting a gigantic war and wiping out everyone on the planet seems to be the ultimate one. But I would be remiss if I didn't mention December 7th, 1941.

When the news of the pandemic really started to hit, this past spring, I remember talking to a young man who worked at the McDonalds where I used to go get my coffee. I told him that he would remember this year, and it would something that he could tell his grandchildren.
If you like pictures of old-time Phoenix, please become a member of History Adventuring on Patreon. I share a LOT of cool old photos there, copyright-free, with no advertising. Your support makes it happen! Thank you!

Click here to become a Patron!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me
Read more