‘What’s a ticking time bomb you believe will explode during your lifetime?’ – 17 disasters people are waiting to happen

If you’ve been paying attention to, well, anything, it’s all too easy to feel like the world is falling apart.

But realistically speaking, what are the threats that loom large on the horizon? It’s a question that’s clearly weighing on the mind of Thick_Caterpillar379, as they turned to r/AskReddit and asked:

‘What’s a ticking time bomb you believe will explode during your lifetime?’

Here are the top answers that are just waiting to go off…

1.
‘As someone a few years removed from healthcare: elder care is currently a widespread issue, which will only be exacerbated over the next 10 years, as people age into needing services and residential care, as many places in the US still haven’t rebounded from the mass exodus of healthcare professionals during covid’
-zhakhmir

2.
‘Antibiotic resistant bacteria’
-JailYard

3.
‘Betelgeuse hopefully, would be cool to see on the night sky’
-Venca12

4.
‘The dead internet. It’s not a theory.’
-Fun-Space2942

5.
‘Fresh water wars’
-taintedtowel

6.
‘My piece of shit washing machine’
-FrontSpecialist6720

7.
‘State pensions. The money won’t be there in the future’
-StGuthlac2025

8.
‘Cascadia Subduction Zone will move. I’m 35.

‘It’s 320+ yrs into an average cycle of 220yrs between major earthquakes over the last 10,000 years. The last one was about 1701ish IIRC.

‘If one like Fukushima or worse happens, it will be the largest natural disaster in human history and it won’t even be close. I’ve seen FEMA plans that list 6+ months of airlift operations into affected areas since literally none of the infrastructure is ready to withstand a quake of that level. Almost 20% of Seattle city proper is located on a liquifaction zone where the ground will go almost liquid.

‘It’s going to be catastrophic. Tens of thousands could die in minutes. They are so unprepared up there.’
–RandomDudeYouKnow

9.
‘Social Security. The year it becomes insolvent happens to be the year I’m supposed to retire.’
-rworne