This is the ultimate doom scrolling thread.

I am worried. Haha.

There are plenty of candidates but IMO the kind of people who think about these things are already worried enough (and cynical enough) as it is. It would be better if those people began to do something (anything) about the problems rather than just reshuffle the rankings of their relative importance.

Climate change. We’re pretty fucked

• Bird flu learning about humans
• Climate change killing food crops on a massive scale (not the worst part of the outcome by any means but one of the ones that’s directly relevant to humans and earliest on the timeline)
• No one in the US government is at all competent or trying to be
• People as a whole are losing track of what’s even going on in the world, so unable to work to solve any of these problems in any real sense, things are just on autopilot until the next time something that can’t be fixed happens. Covid was a lot more small-scale a global diaster than it had any right to be because (a) it was incredibly mild by the standards of how plagues go (b) the systems that were in place to mitigate it were still, just barely, functioning at the time that it hit us.

Have a pleasant evening!

Hoooo boy is that a loaded question! Where do we start? I’ll put it in order of least to worst in case anybody wants to opt out going further, to avoid a panic attack. (I apologize in advance if one mentions another out of order, the order is being worked on as I add things.)

Microplastics/forever chemicals: this is one of those things that wouldn’t end humanity on its own. It would likely just shorten and worsen human life if this occured in a vacuum of other crises. But that’s never the case is it?

Religion: again, one that humanity would survive through, but worsened lives and lifespans. Although the numbers of religious people keep falling, those who are religious, are turning more and more extreme. Humanity has survived religion for 10,000+ years, and although it’s made everything worse, it has never killed us off.

Nuclear/WW3: This is an interesting one because although it would kill off billions, many more would actually be better off, in some senses. Again, the global south would be the beneficiary here. They’re not nearly as reliant on our tech as we are, and this war would surely involve an EMP in the atmosphere at some point, basically signalling that their side had lost. Nuclear winter isn’t really a thing, depending on who you ask, and even if it is, humanity survived similar situations with volcanic eruptions. It might even be beneficial for a short time to combat climate change. I don’t know, I’m not that smart, but maybe?

Wealth inequality/redistribution of wealth: there are so many people without housing, and so many with far, FAR more than they need. And it’s only getting worse. Not just in the West, but everywhere. History shows us that this doesn’t end well for societies, but as a global society… Who is left to come in and pick up the pieces? I think the global south will be far better equipped to deal with this, and humanity will survive, but the society we know won’t.

Superbugs/pandemics: as the far right continues to deny science, and as the climate changes, pests and viruses spread from contained areas to a broader world, while our antibiotics fail to keep up and people deny vaccine science. It’s a problem that is a ticking time bomb.

Food management: we are capable of overfeeding the planet currently. But for how long? Crop failure is already more of a problem than at any time since the dust bowl. Yeah, we overproduce but those lines are going to cross at some point, and food scarcity is bound to happen, especially with the global trade in flux.

Social media/propaganda: without social media, people would have been far better equipped with stronger critical thinking to deal with the stupid shit coming our way like AI, climate change, super bugs, pandemics, mental health, wealth inequality, etc.

Climate change: This one’s bad, because it’s coming, and it’s coming much faster than we thought. In reality, it’s already here. And it’s bad, and getting much worse, very quickly. The scary part is how alarmed scientists are, about how quickly it’s happening. The time tables we were hoping for are not even close to reality, and we’re crossing tipping points already, like the permafrost methane explosions. Even worse, America is in scientific decline because of politics and program cuts that the world relied on. Setting us back years or decades in climate science.

Habitat/biodiversity loss: I put this above climate change because while climate change is it’s own thing, and wildly dangerous to society, nothing is an ender like the loss of food. This is what we’re facing right now and it is because of a couple of the previously mentioned issues. Habitat loss/overfishing/climate change/waste/farming all of these lead to a loss in food availability and diversity. And as food is deprived, wars, riots, uprisings and chaos occurs.

AI: on every level. The mass brain function loss, the poor choices given, and the trust people have in it, the power use causing climate change, the use for propaganda and loss of reality. AI is the worst thing to happen to humanity because it allows bad actors to abuse that blurring of reality, either to harm directly or indirectly. It’s a widely available tool to blur and distort, or completely “obliterate” reality. The worst part is how many people came to trust and rely on it immediately, without question.

The polycrisis: the fact of the matter is that each one of these things are major issues and almost none are being worked on. Society isn’t ready to deal with almost any of these issues and yet they’re all happening at the same time. How are we to mitigate every single one of these? Short answer? We don’t, and we can’t. It’s like having a pistol in a mall full of zombies circa 1997 when people still went to malls. You just can’t. You can try to kill zombies, but you’re going to get overrun in the end.

Pick your poison, basically. I could have included such things as the worldwide turn to the right, and human rights issues but felt they were included in other issues. I know I’m forgetting others but wanted to make it digestible. And many are intertwined with others. The amoc, authoritarianism, glacier melt, it’s all a web of things that can, and will fuck us in the near future. We’re not equipped to put out all of these fires. And everything is coming sooner and more pronounced than expected, all at the same time. Our society relies on a web and each of these issues need to be contained or it all falls apart.

Media literacy or the lack of it

Screen addiction