Will the Russians nuke us? Or high-tension power lines fry our brains? Could we be poisoned by the water? By fluoride, or lead? Are we being gulled by subliminal advertising? Blinded by sitting too close to color television? Or by computer screens? Cooked by microwave ovens? Will cell phones give us brain cancer? Are we being crushed by overpopulation — too many kids. No, bankrupted by aging demographics — not enough kids. A new ice age, no, global warming. Africanized killer bees, on the move north. Would the airbag in my Honda slit my carotid artery instead of saving me? Will AI — Artificial Intelligence — start churning out content in one corner of the internet while consuming it in another, shutting humans out of the loop entirely and somehow destroying the world?
Honestly, by the time gas stoves were raised as a peril, I’d had a lifetime of ooo-scary threats that proved illusionary, an endless car alarm blare of empty warnings, so many that I’ve become immune. News of any danger without the immediacy of “you’re bleeding” is safely ignored.
