A is for Armegeddon

One of the best ways to deal with with anxiety is to expose yourself to situations and thoughts that make you uneasy, rather than avoid them. As your mind is trained (or conditioned), through repeated exposure and response prevention (ERP), that nothing harmful is happening, a type of learning overwrites the stark feelings of fear and avoidance thanks to the moderating influence of the cortex. Fear has nothing to do with rational logic, it's the lymbic system's lightning quick emotional response, a evolutionary survival mechanism gone into overdrive. When successful, this form of habituating the mind to phobia is termed extinction. However, the learned fears are still encoded in the lymbic system and under certain stressful conditions, the possiblity of relapse is there, and a "refresher course" to learn not to give into fear might be neccessary.

Now, who's afraid of the end of the world? Everyone, it seems. What's the official Mayan date -- December 21, 2012? This has freaked out several people I know. It's the great existential anxiety. I've read that 99.99% of all life in Earth's history has gone extinct. Why should we be different?

I found A is for Armegeddon in the humor shelves of the book store. Take a moment to expose yourself to every dark fear of total annihilation known, in the clever Table of Contents' Periodic Chatastrophic table show below. You'll soon realize you'll just have to live with uncertainty, and realize how pointless it is to even worry about the Doomsday. We'll never see it coming. My favorite is the super volcano scenario. Lose the fear, and just enjoy your time on Earth.

Richard Horne’s beautifully illustrated new book A Is for Armageddon: An Illustrated Catalogue of Disasters is the perfect last-minute gift for the end of days alarmist on your holiday list. Check out the table of contents above — a periodic table which illustrates some of the many threats to your life, from natural occurrences to man-made disasters and universal catastrophes — and you’ll inevitably find yourself in the fetal position, bracing for Doomsday. Click here to view the full size version.