When radium was first discovered in 20’s, people knew little of its toxicity. Its impressive glow-in-the-dark properties made this stunning heaviest alkaline earth metal a popular additive in products like paints, toothpaste, hair cream, and even food items, until years later the entire factory crew of the United States Radium Corp. fell to radiation-related sickness with decaying teeth, crumbling bones and spines that crushed under their own weight. Tragically most of them were to succumb to this lethal discovery not very long after.

Woefully, these weren’t Carl Sagan moments; not until 1995 when his Big Think 1995 stunner “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark” swayed the media with a passionate version of a better world that was all set to debunk a dystopian future. Contrarily, the world had just begun to morph into kinda eerie sink hole that many would today find disturbingly similar to ours. Who would have then thought that an unpleasant legacy of utterly devastating events from 20^th century was cursed to follow down to us!

We have heard of appalling stories of Black plague and the dreadful plight of poor in Victorian England, but all seem a distant reality when we imagine the outrageousness of the shattering events of last century that would pale even the Spanish flu of 1920; more than 2 million lives were lost then. Yep…sadly the blemish stays very real to this day!

I wish I could travel through time and do something to fix things right. Nah! I know that’s not going to happen. Maybe I’d step back and try to dig in the past. That’s little shade but I could be ready and waiting for more tumult in time ahead!

So, I hunker down and imagine what if I am born 100 years ago-that would be some horse and buggy days of 1923! At the age of 14, I would be seeing dark clouds of War gathering strength. Hindenburg disaster with 36 dead is already a fading infamy that has finished off the much touted commercial airship program finally. On the other side of the globe, six weeks of brutal Nipponese massacre has left thousands dead in the Chinese city of Nanjing and wrecked any chance of clarity in a chaotic World; it’s more jumpy now than ever.

Incredibly all this is happening when with 22 million dead, the planet is still struggling to recover from the dark days of WW-I! Looks like lessons from the past are gone to wind!

Eight years later Print screamers are everywhere-‘Little Boy’ has just flattened Hiroshima claiming more than 140,000 lives. I have turned 22 this January. A little later, the enormity of Holocaust would plunge the world into despair and remorse would prevails over every other catastrophe in telling history.  Genocide of six million Jews across German-occupied Europe has shaken even the most hostile cynic.

At 29, I am a young adult now and have survived the upheaval this far. It’s 1952; Polio epidemic has killed 3300 in the US, the Great London smog has smothered another 4000; Mau-mau rebellion has begun to maim Kenya; the 9.0 magnitude Kamchatka quake toll has risen to 4000; misery pipe for a Korean War across the 38^th parallel between North and South Korea is shrieking harshly. Tragically, this war will end with millions of casualties on both side and more than 100,000 dead for the UN forces involved.

Come 1956 and I’m 33 years old, the Hungarian Revolution– a countrywide uprising is lifting head. Damned to last for mere 12 days it would leave thousands killed or wounded and nearly quarter–million fleeing the country in its wake.

A year earlier Vietnam War had polarized the world. The second Indochina war that began in the fall of 1955 would end in 1975 when I would be 52.

Fast forward. It’s 1962 and I am 39 years old. Cuban missile crisis is here to bring the World to the brink of nuclear annihilation. As if that wasn’t bad enough, peace totters in South Asia as Sino Indian war turns into an awful reality.

And sadly we’ve just lost Marilyn Monroe this August.

I am 52 years old and its 1975. Together typhoon Nina and Banqiao dam breach in China – the worst in living history -have decimated 230000 lives.

Double time! Its 1983 and I’ve turned 60. El Niño– the strongest and the most devastating destruction of the century is here. Trade winds have collapsed and reversed. In just 24 hours, sea-surface temps along the coastal Peru have shot up to 7.2degrees F.

Another bite in the arse- the Little Boy lives on! Twelve years later a wave of warm water would trigger weather related disasters in almost every continent. Australia, Africa and Indonesia will be ravaged by droughts, dust storms, and brush fires. Peru will be hit with the heaviest rainfall-11 feet in recorded history. Some rivers would carry 1000 times the normal flow and would cause $13billion+ in damages and untold number of lives. 

Then there will be secondary problems as well. Warm, wet spring would mean an explosion in  mosquito stocks; frighteningly high incidence of snake bites will fall out as the hot, dry weather drive mice from high elevations downward for food and water; rattle snake nips would rally next; there will be exponential rise in bubonic plague incidence as wet Spring would favor flea-ridden rodents; shark attacks will spiral due to unreasonably warm sea temperatures; above-normal temperatures would maul Alaskan resources with a noticeable decline in the salmon harvest; and the weather altered phenomena will drive the warmest winter in American subcontinent in 25 years.

Wait! There is something more dreadful here. Earth has begun shifting its angular movement as a result of changing jet stream patterns. The day length has stretched by 0.2 milliseconds.

I wake up with a jolt-badly shaken and drenched in sweat. I could hear my heart pounding hard and blood thumping in my veins; a sinking gut feeling makes me very nauseated. What was that any way? See more see less type of warning about Judgment day perhaps? Shucks! Whatever that nightmare was about, mercifully it’s bubble only- for now. I sigh in relief and slump back. Its half past midnight and I’m all alive and kicking. I thank my lucky stars…Yeah! good times are still rolling for me.

So, what’s the takeaway? Few would think this freak’n’ throwback is no more than hard felt imagination. But if the heat this summer’s been bad enough for you, think of this backslide as your savior. It might just help set you up for more savage times ahead.

See… it took us more than 400 years to get used to the idea that the Earth is not the center of the universe, but it’s still unnerving. Antibiotics and vaccines have saved millions of lives, but aren’t some microbes evolving faster than we can find ways to fight them?

I‘ve survived SARS-CoV-2,two agonizing years of lockdowns, vaccinations, protocols, confinements and cutbacks and all the stuff. And honestly, I could no longer think that my grandparents had no idea how difficult life is; not really after knowing that they pulled through several wars and catastrophes.

Today, I live happily tired and anxious for what’s to come next. It’s been two years and we are living with the virus. Like many, I too have lost friends and relatives. It was a rough patch alright, but we’ve held on and pulled through.

You may come up with thousand and one reasons in argument but wouldn’t it be better to have a heart and save a little breath in a World that lives totally off-the-cuff? I think it’s the best we can do to endure and stop living our fears; it hurts nobody. Besides no time machine or a crystal ball is ever gonna tell you this; ‘Better days await us’.

And if this isn’t reassuring enough…Yep! there’s no way I could tell if you’d sleep easy tonight and thereafter.