60,020 people submitted doomsday picks in Slate's "Choose Your Own Apocalypse" interactive feature (Here's my post about it). "Loose Nukes" was the top pick, with 10.5 percent of readers choosing it.
While "Israel-Arab War" (picked by 7.6 percent of users) represents another worry that's generations old, the "Peak Oil" (9.3 percent) and "China Unloads U.S. Treasurys" (8.2 percent) scenarios are new apocalyptic visions. Peak Oil–"Petroleum production reaches terminal decline. Oil becomes too expensive to extract, and alternative energies can't maintain our fossil-fuel-dependent lifestyle"–is the hobbyhorse of widely read collapsists James Howard Kunstler and Dmitry Orlov. It's the scenario of choice for the modern doomsayer who thinks Western civilization has industrialized its way to destruction. Fears of an economic collapse triggered by China pulling out from the American economy are a symptom of both our worries over the current economic crisis and anxiety over America's place in the world.
