Denial is a Good Stage

Crawling out of bed this morning felt like climbing out of ashen ruins after the apocalypse. The extra dose of Seroquel I took helped me sleep after the nightmarish election returns, but didn't make getting up in a strange new world any easier.

The world initially didn't look any different. The cats needed feeding. The coffee needed making. The dishwasher, having been run overnight, needed emptying. I didn't want to shave, but I did. Clyde woke up by himself today so I didn't have to wake him.

We eventually got around to turning on the TV just to make sure it wasn't all a bad dream. It wasn't. Trump was elected, oh my god, I can't even say it.

The world was looking a little different after all.

Like many others, I live in a bubble of like-minded people. Almost everyone I know - friends and family, people I like and hang out with, have the same political views. I read and listen to news that reinforces what I already think and believe. So it's not a surprise when I say that I really don't know very many people that voted for Donald Trump; just a few people at work and on Facebook. In fact, the state I live in (Colorado) didn't go to him in the electoral collage. I have that thread to hold on to. So I simply can't wrap my head around how this disaster happened.

And I'm not even close to ready to contemplate the implications of a republican house and senate (no, I don't intend to capitalize those words for the next four years at least).

I'm still stunned and in shock. I haven't yet declared myself "no longer American," like some others I'm reading about. My extended family is hatching a pretty serious sounding plan to move to Canada. Even though it's guaranteed to be warmer up there in the future (thanks to runaway climate change), I'm not quite yet ready to go. I'm still waiting for it all to sink in.

I'm sure that later I'll be enraged. I'm sure that I'll be terrified. Later. I'm sure I'll be sad. Hopefully at some point in the future I'll be motivated towards activism, but that's not happening yet.

I think this is the denial stage. It's a good stage. This is the stage where you go on doing things which keep you going. So I eat, I work, I feed the cats. If not for denial, I couldn't function at all. I'd just curl up in a ball and not move. Maybe I'll do that tomorrow.

We Have Nothing to Fear but ... Volcanoes and Elevators

I'm not what you'd call a hysterical person. I maintain my calm and usually think logically through every problem before reacting. My analytical outlook prevents me from panic when unforeseen disasters occur - with one or two notable exceptions.

I am totally nervous about the supervolcano under Yellowstone National Park.

Every 600,000 years or so, this volcano erupts, burying North America in ash, disrupting the climate worldwide, and causing the extinction of countless species. 1,000 times larger than Mount St. Helens which exploded in the northwest in 1980 and blew ash all over our cars in Nebraska, Yellowstone, which is due for another eruption (could be tomorrow, could be another 100,000 years), will completely obliterate everything 100 miles in diameter. Goodbye Old Faithful and Jackson Hole. No more Tetons. The town where my sister lives would be toast.

Think that’s a shame but you could live with it? Think again.

Poison gasses will wipe out all life for at least 1,000 miles in every direction (most of the western U.S. including my home in Denver). The atmosphere all over the world will be darkened by ashy air for several years, plunging our planet into an ice age resulting in mass famine and starvation.

While other people watch "reality" TV shows like American Idol, I watch a lot of real reality TV on the Science, History, and National Geographic channels. Ask me anything about asteroids, mega-tsunamis, viral pandemics, solar storms, gamma rays, and anything else that could wipe us out. Though I don’t sleep well, I’m up on how the world could end.

But I can't watch Animal Planet. It upsets me too much to see a cat or dog suffering in the vet’s office, even if they do get well in the end.

You know, there are a lot of things more likely to kill me than a volcano, so it's odd that this is the one that keeps me awake at night.

For example, I drive to work every morning in the dark on a crowded freeway going 75 miles per hour. As if this alone didn't put me within a hair's breadth of a sudden and fiery end, what about the other idiots talking on cell phones and doing their makeup while driving ... But my neurotic anxiety about volcanoes doesn't extend to traffic situations.

I do have fears not related to natural disasters.

I fear my windshield washer fluid will run out. I fear I won't get to the airport two hours before my flight is scheduled to leave. I fear the cable will go out during Modern Family.

In addition, riots in other countries, crime, unemployment statistics, the eventual bankruptcy of Social Security, Sarah Palin – all are frightening, but I don’t lose sleep over them like I do those natural disasters where we have no control.

There is a place for fear: it motivates us to get away from situations which might harm us - if we can get away.

But fear can also be irrational.

I was once stuck in an elevator for about five minutes during which I worked myself into a full-fledged panic attack. I can't logically explain why I was so upset, but the guy on the other end of the emergency phone loudly and clearly got the message that no, I could not hold on a few minutes more. By the time the security and maintenance departments came with a big crowbar to pry the doors open, I was in a frothy sweat and I really had to go to the bathroom.

If I'm that way in an elevator, what will I do if that volcano blows?

Global Warming? We Should Be So Lucky (or, Relaxing With Television)

In 1859, a coronal mass ejection caused telegraph lines to burst into flame. Since that was the extent of high tech communication in those days, nothing else really happened when the sun rained unruly protons and electrons on the planet. Protected by Earth’s magnetic field, most people didn’t notice anything but an unusually strong aurora borealis.

Cosmologically speaking, these solar storms are not unusual. In fact, another CME is predicted. This time, more than telegraphs will be affected. Our power-based infrastructure, from electricity to communications, is dependent on satellites and power grids which could black out when the sun "ejects" again. Scientists warn that the world could be catastrophically disabled for months.

No lights. No television. No refrigerators or cell phones. I picture myself cowering in a closet as gun-toting, survivalist extremists plunder the city.

How do I know about this?

I spend many an evening relaxing to documentaries on the Discovery, History, and National Geographic channels.

Occasionally opting for educational programming over brainless entertainment, I sit riveted to the screen as scientists describe in detail how the world could come to an end. Volcanoes, asteroids, viral pandemics killing tens of millions: all are inevitable and have the potential to, if not end life, change it forever.

Usually, about 40 minutes into each program, the somber narrator says, "It's not a matter of if this will happen. It's a matter of when."

I don't need distortion from FOX News to make me worry. I don't need Nostradamus or predictions about "2012" to cause anxiety about the future. For that, I rely on actual science, graphically broadcast through cable TV.

Sometimes I think we know more than we ought to. In the time before mass communication, our worries were limited to more local problems. News was what you learned of your neighbor while visiting the general store. Of course our ancestors lived with anxiety too. Starvation, for example, was just one crop failure away for many of them.

But do I really need to know that the super volcano at Yellowstone blows up every few hundred thousand years, plunging the world into darkness and leading to the extinction of species? It could happen tomorrow or in 50,000 years. But it will happen. There is not a thing we can do about it.

Geologically speaking, the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs was not that unusual. It's only a matter of time before another random object from Space crosses our orbit with the same effect as thousands of nuclear bombs.

Smaller disasters aren’t much better to contemplate.

The Cascadian Slip Fault, just off the coast of Oregon and Washington, gives way every few centuries. The last time it happened was in 1700 according to carbon dating at the site and also records of a related tsunami in Japan. The next time, a 9.0 earthquake and accompanying ocean waves will wreak havoc in the great northwest.

And we all know that one of these days, California will be leveled by "the big one" – a long predicted earthquake the length of the San Andreas Fault.

Tragic as they are, hurricanes are small fry. That volcano in Iceland causing some inconvenience in Europe is a pipsqueak. Floods? Blizzards? Climate change? We should be so lucky.

Hmm. I wonder what will happen on Idol this week.