Gaze at the thriving forests covering over 90% of Appalachia—like my hometown of Norton, Virginia. This isn’t a wasteland of doom; it’s nature and humanity flourishing together. Yet, popular stories love a good apocalypse—electromagnetic pulses frying the grid, zombie plagues, eco-collapse. In 2022, Amazon Kindle brimmed with such tales. Growing up in the 1960s and 70s, I devoured them too, alongside moon landings and science breakthroughs. The end never came—resilience did.
As a kid in Appalachia, with no car and a Wise County Book Mobile as my lifeline, I read science fiction voraciously—Earth Abides (1949) by George R. Stewart, where a plague resets society to a simpler age; Star Man’s Son by Andre Norton, a post-nuclear tale of lost tech; Alas, Babylon (1959) by Pat Frank, a family’s survival in a nuked Florida. Nuclear fears loomed large then—Bikini Atoll tests, fallout on the Daigo Fukuryu Maru sparking Godzilla panics. I loved dinosaurs and earth science too—science was my lens, not spiritual dread.
These stories mirrored real anxieties—nuclear war, pollution, overpopulation. But they didn’t predict the future; they reflected the moment. Technology, often the villain, became our ally instead.
By the 1980s, stationed in West Berlin with the Army, I read Warday (1984) by Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka—a limited nuclear war leaving America in ruins, its grid zapped by EMP. Later, One Second After (2009) by William R. Forstchen echoed that EMP hype. Nuclear fears faded, though—Bikini Atoll, blasted by two dozen tests, is now lush again. Divers swim its Ghost Fleet; radiation’s low. Experts marveled at the recovery, despite old warnings of eternal ruin.
Environmental Armageddon took the stage next—ice ages from pollution, then warming. Coral reefs die, they said—yet in 2022, the Barrier Reef bounced back, a cycle seen 400 years ago. Earth’s tougher than the doomsayers guess, and nuclear power cuts CO2—hardly the monster of old tales.
Paul Ehrlich’s neo-Malthusian warnings—overpopulation crashing food supplies—fueled novels like Make Room! Make Room! (1966), turned into Soylent Green (1973). “Soylent Green is people!” Charlton Heston cried. Zager and Evans sang of doom in “In the Year 2525.” Ehrlich even floated sterility drugs in food (New York Times, Nov. 25, 1969). None happened. World grain doubled since 1971—1.07 billion metric tons of corn in 2017-18, 200 million tons of soybeans from the U.S. and Brazil alone. Pork’s $2-$3 a pound here in Bristol, Virginia; rice and potatoes are dirt cheap.
Food prices spiked in 2022—war, supply chains, not climate collapse. Abundance persists—technology and energy made it so, not green chants.
Some crave Armageddon—Earth Day’s 1970 launch, tied to Lenin’s legacy, spun ecology into an anti-tech crusade for a few. Nature’s not a deity; it’s biology, earth science—processes we can harness, not worship. Bikini’s green lagoon, Appalachia’s forests, global harvests—they show resilience, not ruin. Science describes reality—data over dogma—no voting on facts required.
Fear sells—Luddites hype nukes or plagues, spiritualists mourn tech’s “sins.” But 50 years of gloom haven’t panned out. Progress—cleaner energy, better farming—keeps us thriving. No mutants, no ice age, no starvation—just a world that keeps turning, better than the stories warned.
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