memes

I am not religious, but I like the substance of this quote by C.S. Lewis: "If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things —praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (any microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds."

There are always wars, rumours of wars, plagues, natural disasters, but the work remains the same as it has been for much of human history.

A lot of us are 40+ but I appreciate your meaning.

Gen X checking in. Here's a list of world crises just in my lifetime. This is by no means a comprehensive list:

1975 - 1990: Lebanese Civil War
1976: Tangshan earthquake (China) - 242,000+ deaths
1979 - 1989: Soviet-Afghan War
1979: Three Mile Island nuclear accident
1980 - 1988: Iran-Iraq War
1981 - Present: HIV/AIDS pandemic
1983 - 1985: Ethiopian famine - 1 million+ deaths
1984: Bhopal gas disaster (India) - 15,000+ deaths
1986: Chernobyl nuclear disaster (USSR)
1987: Black Monday stock market crash
1989: Exxon Valdez oil spill
Late 80s - early 90s: Recession 1990 - 1991: Desert Storm
1991 - 2002: Somali Civil War & famine
1992 - 1995: Bosnian War & Srebrenica massacre
1994: Rwandan genocide - 800,000+ deaths
1999: Columbine High School massacre (the beginning of a trend)
2000: Y2K
2000: Recession (Dot Com Bubble, etc)
2001: 9/11
Early 2000s: Recession (Fallout from 9/11) 2001 - 2021: Afghanistan War
2003 - 2011: Iraq War
2004: Indian Ocean Tsunami - 230,000+ deaths
2005: Hurricane Katrina - 1,800+ deaths
2007 - 2008: Global Financial Crisis
2008 - 2009: Great Recession
2009: H1N1 swine flu pandemic
2010: Deepwater Horizon oil spill
2010: Haiti earthquake - 160,000+ deaths
2011: Tōhoku Earthquake and Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Disaster
2011: Arab Spring uprisings & Syrian Civil War begins
2014: Ebola outbreak (West Africa) - 11,000+ deaths
2014: Russian annexation of Crimea
2015: European migrant crisis
2017: Hurricane Maria (Puerto Rico) - 3,000+ deaths
2019 - Present: Covid19
2020: Australian bushfires - 3 billion animals affected
2020: George Floyd protests & global BLM movement
2021: January 6th US Capitol riot
2022: Russian invasion of Ukraine
2022: Pakistan floods - 1,700+ deaths, 33 million displaced
2023: Turkey-Syria earthquakes - 50,000+ deaths
2023 - Present: Hamas-Israel war and open genocide
2025: Global Trade War

The first third of this list took place during the Cold War, when WWIII and nuclear attacks were a real fear. Add in climate change, the discovery of microplastics in everything, the world seemingly embracing Fascism again, and a whole slew of other shit, and it's no surprise that suicide rates have increased almost 40% over the past 25 years.

It's missing working 3 jobs to survive and still being called entitled and lazy

Y2K wasn't that bad compared to the rest

Pretty sure we are in a "unofficial world war 3" considering how there's like 6 countries at war

Russia vs Ukraine

Israel vs Palestine

India vs Pakistan

Americans vs America.

As a Gen Xer who lived through the fall of the Berlin Wall and then all of the rest of this shit, I'm so tired. Y'all millennials even got to miss there Reagan years. Nixon may have started the car, but Reagan is the asshole that shifted it into drive, tossed a brick on the pedal, and let it go off down the mountain.

I've become convinced after the recent India/Pakistan conflict that WW3 is near impossible under current conditions just due to the fact that you start losing your very expensive airforce really really quickly.

Real I'm not quite sure Y2K should be in there since it didn't really result in anything happening.

We're also closing in on a potential second plague here with bird flu since there's been a concerning surge of infections in cats and the current regime is refusing to act on it.

Add a housing crisis, the construction of a corporate surveillance state, a fascist takeover and the impending employment apocalypse of AI implementation.

Gen X here - we had Mutually Assured Destruction as well.

I still remember watching the news as a child right after the tsunami of 2004 and seeing the death toll rising day by day.

It is only going to get worse with climate catastrophy barely being addresed. Hunger and water shortage is only going to increasr the frequencies of wars and pandemics. Which will result in more and more extremism.

The dot-com burst was a recession too.

Oh, and you are ignoring the entire thing where every currency except the dollar was destroyed in the 90s.

Also, history ended in 1986. It seems you didn't get the memo. It would have been typed and nailed into your local clipboard.

Older Gen Z have lived through all of those as well, but before the age of 30 😭

Bird flu is scheduled before WW3 so plural plagues

Do people not remember that they didn't have cars until like 1920? Do people not understand that most roads weren't paved until like the 50s? It's foolish to think we're the only generation living through lifetime events. Motherfuckers they were people that went through World War I and World War II. They were veterans of World War 1 that enlisted in World War II. There are people born in the fifties that lived through the computer Revolution. Do people not understand that the internet is only 30 years old?

as a gen Z I still don't get why Y2K was such a big deal

And climate change