“Results from Slate’s ‘Choose Your Own Apocalypse’ poll”

Oh, come on! None of those are enough to “destroy America,” even combined. Almost all of them are self-correcting problems:

  • Loose nukes. A nuclear weapon can only be used once, after which it’s gone. If the supposed terrorists had a large supply, they’d be a problem — but without that, all they can do is cause some damage and fade away.
  • Peak oil. “Petroleum production reaches terminal decline. Oil becomes too expensive to extract, and alternative energies can’t maintain our fossil-fuel-dependent lifestyle.” If gas and oil prices get too high, people will use alternate means of getting where they need to go, and getting their food and other necessities to them. If it happened unexpectedly it would cause some chaos, but even then people would adapt.
  • Antibiotic resistance. Even assuming that science couldn’t come up with new ways to fight disease (which I wouldn’t bet on), humanity survived for untold centuries without antibiotics, and would again.
  • China unloads US treasuries. Again, short-term chaos, but both the people and the country would survive and adapt. Within ten years everything would be stable and growing again.
  • Israel-Arab war. Neither of them would want to use nuclear weapons — they’re after the same land, making it unfit for human life would be counterproductive. As such, I can’t see that any war between them would be any different than a war anywhere else, even if the US does get involved, no matter what religious books might say to the contrary.

Each of these would be horrific in its own way, but “apocalyptic”? Sorry, they’re barely in the same category.