Yup. I've been thinking about writing (a yet another) blog entry about my thoughts on discussion. And why rational discussion is so hard. To put it short; to me it seems that too many people are too quick to get offended, and when people get offended their rationality decreases and any discussion degenerates into a non-productive quarrel. Well well. But let's take a look at one of those not-so-rational ways of thinking.

1. In the history there have been numerous religious cults preaching the apocalypse, even givin exact dates for it. And the apocalypse never came.
2. Therefore, it is safe to reason that anybody talking about any kind of apocalypse is just a delusional freak.
3. There is not going to be any apocalypse, nor any major disaster. Our civilization, our culture, our technology they are superior and nothing is threatening our way of life.
4. Therefore we don't need to prepare for any kind of disaster. Hungry? Go to a restaurant. Need something? Go buy it from a shopping mall. A problem? Wait for someone else to solve it. Easy like that!

Well, that line of reasoning might be soothing and comfortable for many people. But personally I find that somewhat fallacious, omitting some actual historical data, and failing some obvious rules of logical reasoning. Hehe, I'm not going to dive into the details in this comment, maybe it is enough if I just say that arguments 2. and 3. are over-optimistic. The history knows many examples of mighty civilizations which have just collapsed, for a reason or another. And if that has happened numerous times before, there is nothing which makes our current civilization somehow different.

And I think Mr. Polecat here accurately describes some of the mechanisms which makes a vast majority of population extremely vulnerable to sudden effects of abnormal conditions of nature. A day might come when the bread shelves at the shopping mall are mostly empty. That would make masses go hungry. And a hungry crowd, it can do a lot of desperate things. (To be more clear, here when I say "sudden", I mean something in scale of two years or so).

EDIT:
PS. One more clarification;
I'm not saying that I think "Apocalypse is coming! Our civilization is about to collapse!". No, I'm just saying that we can't rule that option out. I'm saying that a some sort of major disaster is possible. Then, of course, it becomes a question of estimating the likelihood of such a disaster. If, given all the available data and all the best science, the likelihood of a disaster would be estimated to be 1 out of 1 000 000, then I'd say that we don't need to worry about it. Alas, to me it seems that given all the best science we have, the likelihood of a major disaster is high enough to be considered seriously.