Doomsday 1999 [antikvár]

. I CHAPTER 1Doomsday 1999The end of the world, whether by flood, fire, freezing, cosmic collision or other catastrophic manifestations, has always had a grim fascination for prophets of doom and also for the general population. The makers of such predictions are of several varieties. They are religious prophets of warning, mystic prophets - basically a variant of the former - and seers who seem to dream inadvertently of future events without living to see their prophecies fulfilled. Then there are the scientific interpreters of trends and likely possibilities of doom who frequently indicate, supported by the evidence of astronomy, geology, meteorology, and even economics, an even more complete destruction than many of the prophetic visions from the past.The scientific prophets of today foresee the pillaging and eventual destruction of the earth's potential through uncontrolled industrialization; general famine resulting from overpopulation and food distribution breakdown; disastrous climatic variation and flooding through the hothouse effect of excessive carbon dioxide in the upper atmospheric layers; and the poisoning of the oceans and the destruction of the sea's ability to renew life. These threats to survival are generally conceded to become acute toward the end of the second millennium of our era - the year 2000 a.d.There are, understandably, a great number of thoughtful people in the general population who fatalistically expect a possible Doomsday from the results of thermonuclear warfare, with the added possibility of a self-generating chain reaction which, in the opinion of some theoreticians, might possibly turn the earth into a temporary though short-livedI V,,:'';' ! . i I iiii' I'i';I } i