Notwithstanding that these are, on an individual scale, preferable to the wars, droughts and pestilences of yore, they are still quite serious. Sustainability issues like climate change, ecological collapse, mass extinction—not to mention the looming threat of nuclear holocaust and other increasingly tangible doomsday scenarios (haywire AI or nanotech, biological warfare)—can potentially cause miseries worse and more irreparable than even the black plague.
