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.
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