Foreign Perspectives

Except for several volcanoes of course.

The problem is that in recent years we seem to have had such a series of global problems that I’m sure that many people figure that it just can’t get any worse. Starting with the economic woes we seemed to be teetering on the abyss a number of times yet it just seemed to get worse for quite a while, far surpassing the worst that anyone thought they’d see at the outset of the difficulties. At least the swine flu seemed to be a non-runner in the disaster stakes. Yes, people died, but they all seemed to be people who’d have died with any flu that came along and the numbers overall, so far, were less than in many normal flu epidemics.

We’re not quite at the end of the volcano problem as I write this so who knows when that will truly end? In the 1820s it ran for over a year but, of course, none of the modern technology that we take for granted was in place at that time. Right now, nobody knows just when the eruptions will stop and there’s talk of another volcano in Iceland going the very same way (a bigger one too).

What we’ve not seen, yet, though is a really major solar flare. Little ones happen all the time but really big ones have only happened in other stars and, so far, there doesn’t seem to be any way to predict whether or not they’ll happen one day with our own sun. Still, at least that’s one natural disaster that we’d not need to worry about too much as within 24 hours we’d all have been wiped out.

Puts the last year in some context, eh?