this post was submitted on 10 May 2025
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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 hour ago (2 children)

Gen X checking in. Here's a list of world crises just in my lifetime. This is by no means a comprehensive list:

1975 - 1990: Lebanese Civil War
1976: Tangshan earthquake (China) - 242,000+ deaths
1979 - 1989: Soviet-Afghan War
1979: Three Mile Island nuclear accident
1980 - 1988: Iran-Iraq War
1981 - Present: HIV/AIDS pandemic
1983 - 1985: Ethiopian famine - 1 million+ deaths
1984: Bhopal gas disaster (India) - 15,000+ deaths
1986: Chernobyl nuclear disaster (USSR)
1987: Black Monday stock market crash
1989: Exxon Valdez oil spill
Late 80s - early 90s: Recession 1990 - 1991: Desert Storm
1991 - 2002: Somali Civil War & famine
1992 - 1995: Bosnian War & Srebrenica massacre
1994: Rwandan genocide - 800,000+ deaths
1999: Columbine High School massacre (the beginning of a trend)
2000: Y2K
2000: Recession (Dot Com Bubble, etc)
2001: 9/11
Early 2000s: Recession (Fallout from 9/11) 2001 - 2021: Afghanistan War
2003 - 2011: Iraq War
2004: Indian Ocean Tsunami - 230,000+ deaths
2005: Hurricane Katrina - 1,800+ deaths
2007 - 2008: Global Financial Crisis
2008 - 2009: Great Recession
2009: H1N1 swine flu pandemic
2010: Deepwater Horizon oil spill
2010: Haiti earthquake - 160,000+ deaths
2011: Tōhoku Earthquake and Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Disaster
2011: Arab Spring uprisings & Syrian Civil War begins
2014: Ebola outbreak (West Africa) - 11,000+ deaths
2014: Russian annexation of Crimea
2015: European migrant crisis
2017: Hurricane Maria (Puerto Rico) - 3,000+ deaths
2019 - Present: Covid19
2020: Australian bushfires - 3 billion animals affected
2020: George Floyd protests & global BLM movement
2021: January 6th US Capitol riot
2022: Russian invasion of Ukraine
2022: Pakistan floods - 1,700+ deaths, 33 million displaced
2023: Turkey-Syria earthquakes - 50,000+ deaths
2023 - Present: Hamas-Israel war and open genocide
2025: Global Trade War

The first third of this list took place during the Cold War, when WWIII and nuclear attacks were a real fear. Add in climate change, the discovery of microplastics in everything, the world seemingly embracing Fascism again, and a whole slew of other shit, and it's no surprise that suicide rates have increased almost 40% over the past 25 years.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 57 minutes ago

Guess what? I was born 1995. So my life as a newborn was spent in a shelter. Same again as a 4 year old toddler. Now that's fate.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 57 minutes ago

lol hot damn. Gen X started off with some bangers. They just on going for millennials.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 hour ago

As a Gen Xer who lived through the fall of the Berlin Wall and then all of the rest of this shit, I'm so tired. Y'all millennials even got to miss there Reagan years. Nixon may have started the car, but Reagan is the asshole that shifted it into drive, tossed a brick on the pedal, and let it go off down the mountain.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 hours ago

I still remember watching the news as a child right after the tsunami of 2004 and seeing the death toll rising day by day.

It is only going to get worse with climate catastrophy barely being addresed. Hunger and water shortage is only going to increasr the frequencies of wars and pandemics. Which will result in more and more extremism.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

Oh yeah, 9/11. The biggest issue of this generation. I imagine millennials in Ukraine be like “war is tough, but thank God 9/11 is over”

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

This is very obviously a US-centric meme, as evidenced by the first word in the header, "milennial."

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

I don't know how old you were during 9/11 but it was an awful time to grow up. Out of nowhere you were being bombarded with messages of hate towards of nebulous group of "others". The country overnight decided that unabashed Islamophobia was in vogue (previously there was still hate but not as outright). Think the Asian hate during covid but ramped up to 11. Your country was changing (at least from a young persons perspective) and all the sudden our allies were not to be trusted (remember freedom fries?). The US became embroiled in what was ostensibly a forever war for no reason.

It wasn't the worst thing, but people were going to war again and that was very clear and very scary. The financial crashes probably take the spotlight since they affected a lot more Americans directly and it's possible that everyone knew someone who lost or had to leave their home, but 9/11 changed the country in unmistakable ways and it was scary to watch and then have to witness the fallout without really having much understanding and certainty no agency. I don't think the meme is saying all of these things are equally bad. Just pointing out that these were major events and possible inflection points in history that didn't break in favor of justice.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 hours ago

I for one would really like to get off this ride.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (2 children)

We're also closing in on a potential second plague here with bird flu since there's been a concerning surge of infections in cats and the current regime is refusing to act on it.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (2 children)

Don't forget the return of measles, as well as even more e-coli and salmonella outbreaks as food safety is curtailed.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 51 minutes ago

"Anthrax - snort! - alright!"

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Did y'all forget about the Zika, Ebola, Bird flu and Swine flus?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 50 minutes ago

Thanks, but I'm totally wasted on typhoid over here, i couldn't possibly do any more!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

I mean, people who were born in early 1900's would have spanish flu + 2 WW's just in one life time(if they reach the second one)

/+ in Germany there was the biggest hyper Inflation imagenable.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 hours ago

Gen Z here. Bitch, this shit just getting warmed up, hahaha

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 hours ago

WWIII has been looming on generations before millennials. Millennials weren’t alive during the 1980 cold sweat of Russia and the doomsday clock. Everyone had nukes. Lots and lots of nukes. We’re not talking small nukes. We’re talking like what happened in Hiroshima. Only everywhere.

Also recession isn’t new, its been happening at least once every 10 years if not more. Although usually they are only when something happens that isn’t preventable. This recession is entirely preventable.

It’s when it’s a depression that it gets real bad. Like your bank closed and your money is gone and it won’t matter what kind of insurance you had, you’re eating leather boots.

Additionally there’s been bird h1n1, sars, various flus prior to Covid.

Just be grateful none of us have to necessarily live through polio and a plethora of other diseases because we have vaccinations now….

Oh wait..

Ok so just be grateful there’s A CHOICE to not live with it.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 hours ago

I turned 40 in February and I only forsee things getting worse. 😩

[–] [email protected] 16 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (1 children)

Add a housing crisis, the construction of a corporate surveillance state, a fascist takeover and the impending employment apocalypse of AI implementation.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

Hey, at least you didn't get drafted for Vietnam

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

Give it time, I'm sure we'll have Vietnam 2 before long.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

I'll volunteer, on the Vietnamese side

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago

I doubt they'd take the average American. Wont fit in the tunnels.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 hours ago

gets drafted for the resource wars one year away from being too old to draft

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

What's the maximum age for the draft? There may well be a war against China very soon.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

I don't see that happening as that would be bad for everyone involved

In general war is devastating for all involved.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

And yet, we keep having them.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 hours ago

Funny how that works

[–] [email protected] 28 points 15 hours ago (6 children)

Pretty sure we are in a "unofficial world war 3" considering how there's like 6 countries at war

Russia vs Ukraine

Israel vs Palestine

India vs Pakistan

Americans vs America.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Does US vs the world in economic war count?

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

Gen Y had all that plus 6 wars (gross estimate) and an explosion of a nuclear power plant.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 14 hours ago (10 children)

as a gen Z I still don't get why Y2K was such a big deal

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

It was actually a bit of a big deal. Luckily it got figured out with enough time to fix it before it really effected anything. They were pulling cobalt programmers out of retirement to fix old systems and auditing anything important for years before 2000.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 36 minutes ago

cobalt programmers

I know classify anyone who knows how to program cobol as a cobalt programmer. XD.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 52 minutes ago

The panic it caused was the worst part of it, which was largely overblown by the media who kept predicting major crashes that would cause riots.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

Computers were not designed to roll over the year. This would have caused the dates to roll back to 1900 or some day in the past, breaking any logic doing math on dates.

The programming community made huge efforts to fix this problem, and they did across many sectors.

The fact that people don't understand how big of a deal this was is due to the efforts of those that did and were able to correct it.

The media talking about power outages and nukes launching due to Y2K was standard news hype/fear mongering during a crisis with rather boring (to the layman) causes and fixes.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

Computers were not designed to roll over the year.

I get that, but I would assume that this only applied to a few old systems? Didn't programmers in the 80s want to make sure that their code would last for more than 20 years? And people knew Y2K would be a problem so they had plenty of time to fix the issues right?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 43 minutes ago

but I would assume that this only applied to a few old systems?

You might be shocked at how much of our infrastructure ran on those old systems. But thankfully, yes, the rest of your comment is exactly what happened. Programmers knew what was up, and jumped on the problem early enough to avoid any major issues. However, this didn't stop the media from selling panic for ratings, which became the worst part of the entire Y2K experience. If you've ever seen the 1995 movie 'Strange Days' with Ralph Fiennes (and a great cast overall), it's only a slight exaggeration of what the media was hyping for Y2K.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 45 minutes ago

It had to do with memory and storage limitations on computers back then. It didn't make sense to store two extra digits for the date when that space could be used for other data. It affected pretty much every system made before a certain date. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2000_problem

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 hours ago

the people problem of any crisis.

If you did nothing, and it becomes a big problem, everyone riots over why you did nothing about it.

If you raised awareness, busted ass, and prevented the issue from happening.. then everyone riots over how much of a "waste" it all was since nothing happened.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 hours ago

It’s less about the y2k bug itself and more about the cultural phenomenon. It was everywhere, and it was huge, and then absolutely nothing happened. It was the best possible outcome AND the funniest possible outcome.

With stuff like that, it hits different when you live through it and it’s part of popular culture for years. It leaves grooves in the ole neurons.

In contrast I could think about how terrifying the Cuban missile crisis must have been. The fiery end of the world could happen at any moment and everybody knows it. And we even find out afterward that the world was basically saved by one Soviet service member. I can empathize with living through that, but since it happened long before I was born, I don’t have the vivid memories of the actual emotions invading my normal day to day.

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[–] [email protected] 124 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (13 children)

A lot of us are 40+ but I appreciate your meaning.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

Do people not remember that they didn't have cars until like 1920? Do people not understand that most roads weren't paved until like the 50s? It's foolish to think we're the only generation living through lifetime events. Motherfuckers they were people that went through World War I and World War II. They were veterans of World War 1 that enlisted in World War II. There are people born in the fifties that lived through the computer Revolution. Do people not understand that the internet is only 30 years old?

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