Why do Doomsayers Choose to Continue Living?

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Whenever I watch anything on the History Channel they have to show an ad for "The Notradamus Effect" every other commercial, and I hate it. And just last night there was a program on the local news channel about how we're running out of water because of global warming and that it would lead to all kinds of horrible things. Huh? I thought we were all going to drown from too much water because the polar ice caps are going to melt. I am so very sick of this. Everywhere I turn another apocalyptical sign. Every day another natural disaster, a new show or movie exploiting our unavoidable doom, another reminder about the comet or asteroid that's going to hit the earth soon. People everywhere are telling me to be paralyzed with helpless fear because the world is going to end and we are all hoplessly doomed. It's not that I don't believe what they're saying is true, in fact I have been terrified of the world's events since the 90's and after 9/11 -the same year I was diagnosed with Asperger's- my nerves were extremely bad. But what I want to know is if the world really is going to end soon and it's going to be worse than any nightmare I've ever had- and I once had a dream as a teen that the world blow up- why do the people who say so choose to continue living? Why not end your life in a faster and less painful fashion? In fact, why should anyone to go on living? And why do anything anymore if it's all going to end? Maybe we should all quit our jobs, give up on our hopes and dreams and try to make our last few remaining months on Earth as pleasant as possible. Go ahead and eat that entire cake! Go ahead and spend all your money! Go ahead and drop out of school! (No! I'm not REALLY recommending you actually do that!!) Or maybe you can do what I've been doing. Hiding from the world under my blanket and trying to sleep for as long as possible. Sigh...

Maybe they are masochists.
Or sadists.

They don't kill themselves because they either don't believe what they say or they suffer from the survival instinct. I like to think of it as the "alarm clock instinct." They have to squeeze as much time in as possible, even if they know there is no point. What difference does five minutes make anyways?

To gloat if they're right, I'd imagine. If they're wrong they can always come up with a new "doom" to be afraid of, the Jehovah's Witnesses have been doing this for years. I'm a cynical optimist myself, I go out and enjoy life but carry a gun just in case.

The only reason I'm alive today is because of survival instinct. I was legally unable to get my hands on a gun because of my hospitalizations, and knives HURT! I couldn't bear to swallow a whole bunch of pills and slowly get sick and die. Besides, if you swallow pills there's a chance you could be saved, and I wanted to make SURE I died. I am a doomsayer myself, I believe that the world economy is about to collapse, and all my efforts to prepare for it have flopped. I really wish I could kill myself.

Ask them, not us

only god knows the exact time of our individual or collective departure. everybody else is just talking merde.

Since nobody really knows when the crap will hit the fan why worry? We all die soon enough anyway.

Some of those shows are done to satisfy an agenda.

Fear is a great motivator for the masses.

easy.....fearful people are easy to control.

The doomsayer producers dont believe it for a minute but exploit ppl's fear so that we as a society are easier to control and lack the judgment of a calm mind. If anyone urges you to be afraid...dont...but pay attention to what they do...not what they say and you will find why they want to control you.

Thus is why "the only thing we have to fear...is fear itself" is such a profound statement

easy.....fearful people are easy to control.

The doomsayer producers dont believe it for a minute but exploit ppl's fear so that we as a society are easier to control and lack the judgment of a calm mind. If anyone urges you to be afraid...dont...but pay attention to what they do...not what they say and you will find why they want to control you.

Thus is why "the only thing we have to fear...is fear itself" is such a profound statement

easy.....fearful people are easy to control.

The doomsayer producers dont believe it for a minute but exploit ppl's fear so that we as a society are easier to control and lack the judgment of a calm mind. If anyone urges you to be afraid...dont...but pay attention to what they do...not what they say and you will find why they want to control you.

Thus is why "the only thing we have to fear...is fear itself" is such a profound statement

sorry folks my computer would not send...then sent 3 times

Melting ice caps go into the sea and become saline. This water is a) undrinkable and b) raises sea level by some extent. No-one (sane) suggests that we will all drown. However, many major cities (NY or London, say) and large areas of some countries (say Bangladesh) are at very low elevation above sea level and therefore vulnerable to rising sea levels, that's all.
The effect of global warming on supplies of fresh water is complicated, but largely irrelevant. The main problem is that the amount of available fresh water is limited (unlike the amount of food production, which has proved resolutely non-Malthusian), while human population has been relentlessly increasing for a long time, meaning that the demand for water for agriculture, industry and plain drinking is high and rising. Global warming doesn't help, but it isn't the root of the problem. It won't wipe out humanity though, just constrain it (and presumably with sufficient energy one could desalinate the crap out of a load of seawater, something which is already done in some places).

No major impacts with Earth are currently foreseen by anyone (sane). There are a few biggish objects (like Apophis) which will come close - in astronomical terms, which in this case is usually "within the orbit of the moon", in other words tens or hundreds of thousands of miles away. It's difficult to predict the precise orbit of an asteroid some distance into the future, though, so they are something that we need to keep a scientific eye on.

For religious types, that's fairly easy. Apocalypses are fascinating to contemplate, you get to promise your followers that they don't have long to wait, and that all those smelly nonbelievers will meet some horrid fate while you'll be rollicking around in Heaven; you can also justify any sociopathic and insane behaviour you feel like because "none of it will matter in the long run". You get bonus points if you convince your followers to give you all their money.
For non-religious types, I dunno. People in general will put up with a lot of hardship in the hope that things may someday improve. And there's the fame and the possibility of saying "You thought I was mad, fools!" mad scientist style.

"You must lower me into the steel" and "for in that sleep of death, what dreams may come?" Killing yourself is hard thanks to our hard-wired survival instinct, and also some clever theocrats hit on the idea a long time ago that they could keep their followers alive to serve them by promising eternal damnation to suicides. And leaving that aside, one could imagine anyway that death might not provide an escape, that there might be an unpleasant afterlife waiting for everyone. Killing yourself imposes a burden on your family and friends, too, another reason not to.

Personally, I'm not too worried about the end of the world. I guess the biggest threat is the possibility of a runaway Greenhouse Effect, which would pretty much stuff life on Earth. Second would be a full-scale global war with mass use of salted nukes, which would set life on Earth back a long way. As noted we don't know of any rocks likely to impact (and they'd have to be considerably bigger than Apophis to do real damage.) We're unlikely to be hit by radiation from a random supernova as we're in the wrong part of the galaxy for it. A runaway virus might take out civilisation, but it wouldn't wipe out humanity. Hawking radiation means we can probably rule the LHC out. Fah. I'm more worried about religious muppetry continuing to ensure the unhappiness of most of humanity than of the End of Days.

Don't worry, some day there will be an end to these illuminated parasites.

really???? an end to parasites...they seem to be breeding out of control...check out groups stalking in the US

They want to be around to experience the doom.