Hey Pandas, What's A Ticking Time Bomb You Believe Will Explode During Your Lifetime? (Closed)

Fascism in the USA. "Those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it," attributed to philosopher George Santayana.

Why do the unhinged always pick the losers? Confederates, Fascism, uns.

America

Obvious answer, but capitalism. Since its very existence is dependant on endless growth to satisfy the shareholders, the prices of goods will grow bigger and bigger while the salaries are stagnating, resulting in the workers having less and less purchasing power.
There will come a time where the people, save for several % at the top, simply won't have enough money to buy the ultra-expensive goods from companies. And then what? There'll be people who can't afford basic necessities and corporations making no profit because nobody has the means to buy their products. An explosive combination.

World War 3 will probably come around, the current situation looks a lot like it did back then before WW2 started. Inner instability all around, maniacs and idiots in power of nations, economical recession etc.

The difference nowadays is that the most likely super powers of the conflict are also those with nuclear weapons

Monocrop farming, industrial farming of meat. The intensity of farming is destroying our soils. The majority of crops goes to feed animals in industrial farms which are polluting hellscapes ruining the environment. Our increasing desire for meat will lead to the collapse of the food industry.

Food shortages. This isn't going to happen,m it's already happening. Remember the panic during Covid? People elbowing each other out of the way for d**n toilet paper... Now imagine the riots that will take place when food supplies are running low and people's children are at risk of starvation.

Farming is not an attractive occupation: seriously hard work, high overheads, awful hours, no breaks, and very little monetary compensation. So none of the woke new generation are interested. Ergo, who will grow our food?

Secondly (even though deniers in the same category as flat-earthers will denounce this), the planet's population growth is unsustainable. We expand, so we need more housing, and therefore more stores and supermarkets. This takes up more land, meaning less space for animals to graze. Okay, so we stick the livestock in tiny cages - not nice, but hey, we're the dominant species, right? But wait... what do the animals eat? Grain and feed. From where? Farms. On what land, and worked by whom? Uh... uh... hm...

Seriously people, read the novel 10:59 by N. R. Baker and find out for yourself how bad it's going to get. It's a stunningly good thriller, but full of very scary facts. Not advertising, but honestly, just read it.

Health care is going to collapse. There are more people who need doctors than there are doctors to be seen. Literacy rates are dropping because kids can't comprehend anything not spoon fed to them, so medical school is going to spit them out long before they can graduate. It's not just insurance companies that are going to K*ll us all.

A bit of exaggeration on my part, but if rampant political extremism goes unchecked, there's a chance we may go into a second Civil War. Violence, death threats, just bashing everywhere. I do not see a safe way out of this.

A new satellite telescope that will replace the James Webb Telescope, allowing us to see even further into the universe and better images of exoplanets, and we'll find more Earth-like planets, and possibly more planets that challenge our laws of physics.

I've been expecting one of these space tourism flights to end in disaster. I hope I'm wrong.

The 6th Extinction. Already started but with humans this time. No we can't exist without the other species. That's including jungles, forests and sealife.

Another Pandemic but worse than COVID19. So many people haven't learned their lesson from last time and as far as the USA goes, the gutting of the CDC experienced staff will be totally devastating for them.

Potassium is running out.

Trump's health.

RFKII

I really believe the US is going to break up. I read The Continental Divide series by Alanson Rand a few years ago, and it's kind of scaring me now that so much of it seems like it could really happen, especially with the talk of "soft secession" these days. Waking in Ruins started the series with a pandemic(!), and the events spiraled from there. I just laughed it off as a work of fiction when I read it, but now I'm going back through the books and going, "Wasn't there something in here about this?" I have read so many works of fiction that are now plausible that it's spooky. I'd like them to be too weird to be possible again!

Most of the US people vs. the Republican party

Yellowstone.
It's a dormant volcano. Dormant, not extinct. When it blows, the ash cloud will be 300 miles in every direction, making the entire region uninhabitable for decades.

Ash is made of silica, which is basically glass. Breathing it cuts the lungs into ribbons.

The disruption to the food supply will cause mass starvation.

The loss of live will be immeasurable.

Since we're all indulging in some doom scroling here, let me add the singularity.

I live between a nuclear power plant (now out of use, but putting them back in use is on the agenda of some politicians) and a site where countless barrels of atomic waste were dumped into a former salt mine because what could possibly go wrong... I expect to hear from at least one of them in the next 25 years.