Hello all,

Am I just being paranoid, or does it seem like something really big is coming?

Perhaps I'm watching and reading to much news;
global climate change
pandemic flu
food shortages
drought
failing economies
unemployment
war
poverty
terrorism
etc.
...you know...the usual.

But it seems to me that we're at a breaking point for so may things, and eventually something has to give.
Couple to that the interconnectivity of many of our "vital" systems and...well, it looks like something big is about to happen.

Anyone else feel this way?

Looks par for the course to me.

Nope, nothing much different now from what's been haunting us for the past 30 years. There's always plenty of bad news to go around. Most of what you cited has been a real threat to us since before I was born, we just are more informed about it these days.

Look for the good in life. We all gotta die sometime Red. (Tom Berenger in Platoon). Be prepared, but try and stay optimistic about things. Life will go much better if you do. Besides, beyond simple preparedness, there's not much you can do about the big ones anyways. If all that "duck and cover" crap didn't condition us for constant anxiety, the media is sure trying to perpetuate it.

Don't let that new feeling of paranoia fool you - we are always teetering on the edge of disaster. It's just that now, there are so many negative things going on that the governments of the world can't put out propaganda fast enough to squash the niggling feeling that something of epic proportions is about to happen.

Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean that they aren't out to get me.

it's always been like this, we just have better media.

plague, pestilence, famine...

it's a part fo the human condition, alwasy was, always will be

I don't know if "better" is the correct adjective to describe today's media but we certainly have greater access to information.

So I am just being paranoid.
To Grouch's point: this is what I mean, the "bad" stuff seems to be happening faster and faster, and collectively, we're not able to deal with it.
I completely agree that haunting (hunting?) us for the past 30 years, though I'd say 60 years. Is it finally catching up?

You may want to take a break from watching the news for a while. It will do wonders for your outlook on life.

+100

I think that we are just aware of more stuff, almost to the point of having too much info to properly process. A lot of what we see as problems can be categorically dismissed because they will straighten themselves out with no intervention.

I once read that we worry too much. To make the point, the author suggested that for a month, we write down everything that causes us to worry. At the end of the month, review the list and you'll likely find that many of the perceived problems took care of themselves.