Cataclysm - Is it going to happen to you?
 

In your lifetime, what do you think are the odds that there'll be a big disaster that affects, say, a quarter of the U.S. population, either directly or indirectly (via food shortages, extended power outages, etc.)?

Such an event might include, but not be limited to:

- meteor hit
- radiation blast from deep space
- massive earthquake and/or crustal shift/pole shift
- supervolcano eruption
- massive tsunami
- nuclear attack
- bioterrorism attack
- chemical attack
- attack of giant mutant animal
- alien invasion
- military invasion by Mexico or China or some other company
- superhurricane that's way bigger than Katrina
- supertornado that's way bigger than Katrina
- complete governmental collapse
- massive depression that makes the Great Depression get renamed the Pretty Good Depression
- large new dust bowl thingie
- massive virus epidemic
- civil war
- global warming and climate change
- destruction of food via honeybee decimation or virus that kills all grasslike plants like wheat and corn
- comet strike
- asteroid strike
- lunar strike
- dinosaur cloning and resultant rampage
- attack of crazy birds
- arrival of messiah who doesn't like Americans
- attack of brain-eating zombies
- development of sentient large apes who take over
- nuclear accident of huge magnitude
- massive solar flare
- massive computer virus that destroys infrastructure
- world's largest forest fire
- massive energy crisis that shuts down infrastructure
- solar flare that destroys Earth's electricity
- black hole
- mass extinction that destroys the food chain

Massive earthquake would be the smart pick for me.

I'm waiting for such an event with great anticipation. Then I can finally be the hero I see in all my favorite movies. And they ALWAYS get laid.

Nothing ever happens in Nebraska.

It might be your best chance. Let's hope something horrible happens.

We have already experienced it, and are dealing with it right now. The general populous has lost it's loyalty to American made products, for a variety of reasons. They feel they actually have a right to buy foreign cars and not support their neighbor.

Does a plan to take over the world count as a cataclysm? I mean it would be pretty sweet for me...but would suck for everyone else.

If so then I would say 100% :)

Honestly, I think a continuation of the global financial system unraveling is probably the most likely source of cataclysm, even though the nerd in me wants to think that a killer virus (affecting humans, plants, animals, whatever) could wipe out enough things to seriously hurt the US.

That said, I don't think any of these things are likely. So many things have to fall into place for these situations to gain serious traction and spread enough to be a cataclysmic event that I doubt seriously they will happen.

You didn't see the tornadoes that smoked everything in about a 10 mile stretch of I-80 around Kearney? If it weren't BFE Nebraska lots of people might have died....Wait....I see your point.

Nevermind.

Really? Come on. "Foreign" products are assembled here, and "American" products use components that are made overseas. We are part of a global economy.

My only concern is the battery life of my mp3 player. I'm scared I might run out of hero music.

I'd say very very high... the powers that be feel that there is too many people on earth... a good 80% is the number I have found that they want eliminated.

Codex Alimentarius is one way they slowly will create the pandemic...

I could foresee something crazy happening... some biological something, and transportation stops... thus the food supply is diminished... thus rioting and madness occur.

New Madrid quakes tend to hit every 300 years or so, and it's been 200 years since the last one. If the next one hits early, there could be people here alive when it happens. Hope I'm not one of them. The destruction of a major midwestern quake would be unimaginable, and I doubt if the nation as we know it would survive it, especially if it hits during a period when the economy is in the shitter.

I was living near Chicago when there was a tremor there last year... it was a very weird sound, especially for someone from the Midwest that's never heard anything like it. The buildings here aren't ready for it at all, either. I don't think it would cripple the nation, but it would be really bad – probably worse than Katrina or at least in the same ballpark.

Well, it's a well known fact, Sonny Jim, that there's a secret society of the five wealthiest people in the world, known as The Pentavirate, who run everything in the world, including the newspapers, and meet tri-annually at a secret country mansion in Colorado, known as The Meadows.