It’s so hard to find a good, credible, looming disaster to panic about, and then those pesky scientists keep destroying the few that we manage to find. Runaway global warming keeps getting kicked in the teeth by inconvenient facts. Nuclear power disasters persistently refuse to be anywhere near as disastrous as people hope. Scientific advancement constantly fails to cause the end of the physical universe. Mother Nature is just too sentimental. And even God won’t even help.

You can’t even count on humans — hundreds of thousands of jihadist suicide attackers are just tauntingly refusing to blow themselves up on us, even when our governments go out of their way to give them reasons.

And now it looks like Peak Oil has joined the damp squib parade.

I think all we have left is the end of the Mayan long-count calendar, and most people stubbornly refuse to believe that.

Come on guys, give us a break — our politicians need disasters to whip the masses into a frenzy. How else are they going to keep us scared and manipulable, and from noticing their hands constantly in our pockets?