Everyday Apocalypse

It doesn't matter what side of the political fence you stand on, it is undeniable that our world is a mess right now. But take a look at these facts:

In the 18th century, the US was involved in four major wars and two major rebellions. Around the American slave trade claimed an estimated 10,000,000 lives. The Seven Years War likely claimed another 1,300,000 lives, though estimates range greatly.

In the 19th century, wars involving the US claimed over a million lives. The Battle of Antietam is known as the bloodiest single-day battle in American history and claimed 22,717 dead, wounded, or missing. That was just one day.

In the 20th century, a site I have been pulling information from (corroborated with other more notable sources), prefaced with the following:

"Elsewhere, I defined the Hemoclysm as that string of interconnected barbarities which made the Twentieth Century so fascinating for historians and so miserable for real people. Here, I have listed the sources for determing the body count for the biggest of these, the events that probably killed more than 5 million apiece."

And those were just the major events...

History classes around the world now make a point of teaching us the past in order to hopefully avoid a repetition in the future. So it is no wonder that our modern imaginations are fascinated by constructs of the apocalypse, natural and man-made.

Now we have a fascination with the end of days. Scientists believe we have sped up the natural process of global climate change more than 170x normal. BBC's Nicholas Barber wrote an article published in 2014 about why the enigma of zombies just won't die! Hollywood has continued to play on our fears by dramatizing and visualizing the worst that may yet to be: AIs taking over and destroying their creators, aliens deciding we are too destructive to exist, our own screw-ups leading to our demise, or even just the universe giving up on us.

It is no wonder that we have so many shows now that are post-apocalyptic.

But if you look at our current social climate, it is also no wonder we are so focused on the end of days being a fantasy instead of reality. We hold in our hands, and have for several decades, a means to destroy not just our enemy but also ourselves. During the Cold War, a nuclear winter was a very real possibility.

Now it is a psychological need to disassociate our end with our current status. Our political structure is decaying, our infrastructure has not been brought up-to-date and is showing age, our culture has become so web-based that we have forgotten how to communicate face-to-face...

Have you ever considered that maybe this is the apocalypse in slow motion?