Was there any time in history the world in worse situation than now? What's happening to us?

Answer 1

There are plenty, especially if you include prehistory.

World Wars - especially to be in Europe.

Great Depression - title says it all.

Inquisition - especially if you ever pissed off a neighbor.

Dark Ages - Black plague killed off 25% of Europeans.

30-312 AD - Not a good time to be a Christian...

Going for prehistory, just look at all the cataclysms during the last ice age, 100s to 1000s of Mt. St. Helens going off during just a couple millenia (1 every 2 - 20 years). Humanity almost didn't survive this period of time.

Answer 2

The beginning of World War II had to have been much worse than this. My dad fought in that war and tells stories of those times. All the world was going to fall to vicious dictators, and tyranny was on the march. We only think it wasn't as bad now because we know it ended well, but to the people of those times it was not clear who would prevail. And, the war started after years of economic depression.

Also, the cold war was really bad, in the sense that the situation was such that the world truly could have ended at any time in a massive nuclear war. I often went to bed not knowing whether I would wake up in the morning, or whether I would be incinerated in my sleep along with a billion other people. It didn't happen, but again we didn't know it wouldn't. Believe me, there is a difference between thinking you might die, and thinking you might die along with everyone else. The latter destroys any reason for living, since no matter what your accomplishments, from raising your kids right to contributing in some creative way to the advancement of humanity, all would be rendered meaningless by the end of the human race. So today's troubles are not nearly so bad.

What's happening to us? In my opinion, too many are abandoning reason for fanaticism, and without enough reasonable people, the world is held hostage to fanatics who cannot settle their differences except by fighting.

Answer 3

It is on-going. You need to touch up on your history! This is not
even half as bad as it has been. The best thing about right now
is that we have an awesome president in office who won't
back down for anyone or anything. We need him now more than
ever. Could you imagine if we had some coward in office that
was afraid of "rocking the boat". That would be scary. We would
get walked on all over. At least we can rest knowing we are in
good hands and that even though the U.N. is a bunch of wimps
that our president has the final say no matter what the u.n. fails
to accomplish!

Answer 4

There were the plagues in the 1200 to1400 that almost wiped out almost half the people in Europe.

The Great Depression was real bad too...so bad that dozens, sometimes hundreds, of people in every city around the world were committing suicide every day as the world was building up to a world war. Most people in the US had literally nothing, no food, no job, no place to live. My mom grew up on a farm in upstate New York in the middle of nowhere and she told me two and three families a week would come by begging for food. My dad grew up in L.A. and he said every place people could camp they were.

WWII happened because there was a polarization of ideas between democracy, communism and fascism...very similar to the religious polarization happening now. Add that to the fact that every country was trying to claw its way out of the depression leading to an economic life and death struggle.

Many of the major cities of Europe and the orient were bombed to dust during the war.

It would have been easy to think the world was ending during the 1930's and 40's.

Answer 5

As much as I like to complain about the idiocy of our current
administration (see other answers if you like), no, this is not
the worst period of time in our or world history.

Its easy to forget the Nazis, Stalinism, the crusades, the
Spanish inquisition, etc.

As to "What's happening to us" - well, part of it is that people
are easily led by fear.

Consider how panicky people were when those snipers
were killing off people in the DC area a few years back.
They stopped sending their kids to school.

How many children didn't go to school vs. how many people
died due to those snipers? I think, all told, less than 30 people
died - but there were reports of parents keeping their
kids out of school all over the country. Considering how
precious education is - that's a hell-of-an-overreaction.

We have a system of media (news reports, magazines,
newspapers) that loves to ring the alarm loudly when
something bad is happening but seems to be incapable
of putting it in perspective.

The further back in time you go, the less frantic the
media was for your advertising dollar. That's not to say
that the media was necessarily better (consider Randolph
Hearst actually getting us into a war to sell papers), but I don't
think it made us feel as panicky.

For one thing, a bomb going off in a harbor in Cuba didn't
seem to have much effect on the rest of the world back then.
However, consider how much smaller the world seemed
less than a hundred years later when Kennedy was handling
the Soviet missiles in Cuba.

Consider all that is going well (despite Bush): Consider
the number of diseases that we don't die from now, the
mean life span, the fact that women are actually allowed to
vote, etc.

Its easy to look backwards through rose colored glasses
and remember how much better things were way back
then.

Isn't that the Bob Dole cliche? Gee, weren't things better back
in the 1950s?

Well, I guess if you were a white American male, they probably
were!

Answer 6

No.

Currently we are seeing the worse weather, the worse temperatures, the worse man kind has been against each other, the worse famine, etc.

It is why many are saying or thinking this is the end of times. Cause it is the worse it has been in history. But part of that has to be contributed to the fact there are more people here now then in the past.

Answer 7

Theoretically there was an asteroid that struck the Earth back in the day and killed the dinosaurs and about 90% of life on the planet. I'd say the world was in a pretty bad situation then.

Answer 8

The dark ages, both world wars. The reason things seem so worse now than then, is because you are living in the now, you can't hope to truly know the experiences of others unless you experienced what they did, it's the whole grass is always greener analogy.

Answer 9

Both World Wars...

Answer 10

Yes, by far. You should have stayed awake for history. These things going on now, are NOTHING compared to the US Civil War, the French Revolution, the conquest of Alexander the Great.....to name just a few...
We just get to watch it all on 24 hour news.