First, with the release of the book “The Late Great Planet Earth,” it was 1984, Then 1986. Then we had September 9th, 1999, (9/9/99,) then January 1st, 2000. On May 5th, 2000, we faced the planetary alignment. Those are just the ones that I can pull off the top of my head.
Now we face the end of the Mayan Long Count on December 21st, 2012, and there is every prediction of gloom, and doom that will befall us. Odds are it will be a day just like any other, but what are the real chances of something happening? What dangers do we face every day?
First there is the Cumbre Vieja, a volcanic ridge formed by numerous volcanic cones on the island of La Palma, in the Canary Islands. If it erupts with sufficient force, it could send a huge section of the island into the Atlantic Ocean. The resulting tsunami would engulf the entire east coast, from Nova Scotia, to Brazil with a 100 foot high wave. The south east shore of the big island of Hawaii will do the same thing for the Pacific rim.
In the 5th century, the volcano Krakatau erupted forcing a 30 year famine on the whole world. The last time the volcanic caldera of Samosir erupted, it almost drove humanity to extinction. Samosir’s magma chamber is refilling, as is Yellow Stone's. Mount Vesuvius has millions of people living around it. If it were to erupt, the casualties would be horrendous.
On September 1–2, 1859, in what would be called the Carrington Event, The Earth was hit by a massive coronal mass ejection that wiped out telegraph lines across the world. If the same thing happened today, the damage would be astronomical. Prominences have been observed erupting from stars that are similar to the Sun. If the Sun were to emit similar eruptions, they could reach as far as the orbit of Mars. Then there are gamma ray busts that could strip away the Earth's atmosphere. That's all before you conceder comet, and asteroid impacts.
We dance on the knife edge of existence. We will see disasters in the future, and if history is any indication, we will survive. The lessen to learn here is just to be prepared.