the catastrophe options seem to expand every day

[ratcreature]

Just now I read that according to a review of multiple studies the insects populations are collapsing even faster than the (already bad) expectations were before, which will collapse all ecosystems and our food supply fast (even faster than climate change).

And since it's been 2017 since I did the last version of this poll...

Poll #21348 why ratcreature should only look at pictures of fluffy baby animals, 2019 ed.

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 17

View Respondents

Which inescapable disaster/crisis/calamity do you think is most likely to lead to your demise?

View Answers

I'll die in the ecological collapse caused by the ongoing insect extinction
2 (11.8%)

the climate change catastrophe will kill me through a grand disaster
2 (11.8%)

climate change will kill me slowly through failing crops and the like
5 (29.4%)

climate change will kill me fast but in a boring way through some horrible heat wave or such
5 (29.4%)

I'll die because thanks to the global water crisis I won't be able to afford clean drinking water
3 (17.6%)

the next high mortality rate pandemic will come for sure, possibly via climate change mosquitoes or ticks before they're all extinct
3 (17.6%)

no pandemics needed, I'll die of some treatable condition, not able to afford medicine, thanks to the health system crisis/collapse
9 (52.9%)

I'll die in a riot/civil unrest brought on by an ongoing global economic crisis/collapse in general
3 (17.6%)

I'll die in a riot/civil unrest brought on by the economic crisis/collapse following Brexit in particular
1 (5.9%)

I'll die in a riot/civil unrest brought on by some rampaging "alt-right"/neo-fascist mob that felt slighted on the internet
1 (5.9%)

I won't die from any of the above disasters directly, but while fleeing from it
0 (0.0%)

nuclear armageddon! started intentionally by horrible politicians
1 (5.9%)

nuclear armageddon! but brought on by pure stupidity, like someone misinterpreting some screen and/or pushing the wrong button
1 (5.9%)

terrorism! I'll be blown up by some shadowy terrorist organization
0 (0.0%)

terrorism! some deranged mob will lynch me as "terrorist"
0 (0.0%)

terrorism! but it's my government who will dispose of me as "terrorist"
0 (0.0%)

my government's malicious policies will kill me without them bothering to label me as "terrorist"
4 (23.5%)

crime! I'll end up as a victim in a crime statistic
0 (0.0%)

crime! but as a victim of the "tough on crime" policies, like tazered to death or shot by police and the like
0 (0.0%)

a meteorite will kill me in a huge extinction level event, but at least I have the consolation that everyone else will be dead along with me
0 (0.0%)

killer robots will get me
0 (0.0%)

killer robots will get me, but it will be an accident (less Terminator, more self-driving cars gone wrong)
1 (5.9%)

killer robots will get me, and somehow a Facebook algorithm will be at fault
1 (5.9%)

killer robots will get me, but it will be Amazon's algoritm that did it
0 (0.0%)

I will be killed by a Google algorithm smart enough to make it look like it's not killer robots
0 (0.0%)

I'll get killed by the zombie apocalypse
0 (0.0%)

I'll get killed by the zombie army I raised to protect myself, falling victim to dramatic irony
1 (5.9%)

and so on and so forth... (civilian nuclear disaster! genetically modified crops! micro-plastics!...)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[frith_in_thorns]

This is something that really stresses me out. I want to have a baby, but do I really have a right to bring a child into this kind of awful world? Force them to possibly/probably have a severely curtailed future? Contribute to the problem by having a child with the associated consumption and waste each human being produces?

Argh :(

[ratcreature]

I hope my poll didn't make it worse. It stresses me a lot, and I don't even have children. (I do care about my nieces though.)

FWIW, while I think that for us as a species population control is important, and women everywhere need to be able to have control over their own fertility -- at least the trajectory for that isn't getting worse than expected, but population growth has been slowing faster than in the older predictions. And individually having children might actually help giving people more of a stake and incentive to care about there still being a future for our species. (I mean long term the planet will recover even from us, there's enough time before astronomy will make it uninhabitable.) Though as I get older, the predictions for various ecological collapses have accelerated so much, that they are becoming a problem for my own lifetime rather than allowing me the morbid but somewhat comforting thought of "well, at least I'll be dead by that time"...

[frith_in_thorns]

Don't worry, I tip into extreme existential terror at least once a day at the moment.

[ratcreature]

Yeah, same.

[schneefink]

I used to also worry a lot about what kind of life a potential child of mine could have in this world, with global warming etc., and it's a fair question. I feel better about it since I heard that my parents and their generation had the same worries, only except about global warming they worried about the nuclear apocalypse. They still had kids though and personally I'm quite happy to be here :)

[lilacsigil]

I'm in rural Australia so we're all going to catch fire and die, the end.

[ratcreature]

Living in a coastal climate in in Northern Central Europe, the exact catastrophe facet that will get me here is much murkier.

I mean we had the worst drought since records began last year (it was disconcerting to have no rain at all for many months, when normally it will rain about a third of the days), and a fairly bad heatwave (billion plus Euro damage to farming, dying fish, etc.etc.), and actually for the very first time in my life there was a wildfire in a former peat bog in my larger area that was bad enough and burned long enough that wind got the smoke plume into my city enough that I could smell it. (The army caused it through some shelling still, because they didn't suspend these despite the droughts, presumably because normally wildfires aren't a serious concern.) So that was new and unwelcome.

But since we are starting from a very wet and temperate climate (without drainage you get swamps here even without running water, just from precipitation) that development is not going to be deadly soon unless you are old or otherwise at risk from heat. And A/C's are expensive and uncommon here, but as a high income country people will be able to install them should summers get even worse.

And storms and rainfall events are getting worse, and of course there is sea level rise, but we have a pretty fortified seawall system that can cope with quite a bit, so it's not as bad as on some unfortunate islands or in Bangladesh or such.

So I'm in one of the areas that even more people are going to try to get to, as other regions become uninhabitable. So my guess is that I'm going to get ever more unpleasant weather, but the horrible reactions to the inevitable climate refugees will get worse much faster here. Already it feels like being on the inside of the dystopia fortress that is constantly killing outsiders, what with all the people drowning in the Mediterranean, and Europeans deporting people into practically collapsed states with slavery and torture.

[othercat]

I really like this breakdown of Bad Things And Why You Should Avoid The News And Look At Baby Animals. It states all the potential horrors and disasters that I have trouble putting into words/classifying.

[ratcreature]

I like sorting things and the possibilities I worry about keep expanding... Unfortunately even the comfort of sorting is limited when dealing with doom scenarios, but it's something.

[sillimarilli]

*sigh* I'm going with rampant tornados as a product of climate change given the part of the world I live in. Either that or someone is going to wonder why I haven't come in to work yet, only to check my office and find I never quite made it away from my desk. So, either way, end-stage capitalism is going to have its way with me.

I read the bug article, too. It was eye-opening. I didn't think it was that accelerated.

[ratcreature]

I had heard before that insects were vanishing fast, and noticed that there were fewer of them, but I hadn't fully realized it was this fast either. On the upside it looks more and more like humanity's ecological damage will be a self-correcting problem sooner rather later. I feel a kind of kinship with the early anaerobic animals who caused the great oxygenation catastrophe with their waste. Only stupider, because they didn't now what they were doing.