182 times throughout history that people thought the world was going to end, and it didn't

[darxus]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_prediction

Clearly we have plenty of things to worry about in the world today (oil supply, climate, economy, all of those affecting food production), but I find it comforting that it's pretty common for people to believe the world is about to end, and they're generally wrong.

Biggest surprises:
Christopher Columbus predicted 1658.
Isaac Newton predicted 2000 (Christian).

On that theme: "There's like 295M people in this country who have a vested interest in things not going Thunderdome, I think a lot of survivalist types forget that." -Marty Roesch

Comments

Yes, exactly

[drwex]

I'm rushed at the moment so I can't dig up my sources but generally social scientists have been saying for the last decade "uh, no, people don't act like that". Pretty much every alien invasion movie, disaster movie, and news scare story is wrong. People don't panic en masse, don't run screaming, do try to help each other out. Remarkably, major stress seems to bring out the best in people, and this seems to be true pretty much regardless of the country you study.

Just this morning there was a news story (Tech Review I think?) showing that the people in India who had been thought to have been crushed in a stampede were in fact victims of a known phenomenon relating pressure waves and people packed together. Point is, nobody stampeded.

Re: Yes, exactly

[darxus.livejournal.com]

My favorite page on it is http://www.energybulletin.net/node/10128
Peak Wood. Production peaked. Industry as it was known collapsed. Life went on.