Here’s some Grade-A doomer porn, from the LA Times: A fire truck races from a blaze in Victoria, Australia.

It feels like Armageddon. Part of Australia becomes a raging inferno, killing more than 170 people and perhaps millions of animals, and elsewhere Down Under floods have forced people from their homes, and into watery streets they now share with crocodiles. Costa Rica still reels from an earthquake and subsequent landslides last month, which killed more than two dozen people and left hundreds homeless. In parts of the continental United States, ice storms and tornadoes, during the past two weeks, have caused death and destruction. Meanwhile in Alaska, a volcano near the Cook Inlet appears ready to blow its top and threatens to rain smoke and ash over much of the Pacific Northwest. All of this–plus a good deal more, I’m sure–at a time when the economy, thanks to years of corporate greed and consumer naivete, has tumbled into an abyss so deep and gooey it might not climb out for years. Reaction: What is the cause of all this? Can anyone age 50 or younger recall a more depressing or frightening time on this planet? Are all of these disasters some karmic response to man’s blight-like existence on earth, or pure coincidence?

Armageddon? In wake of so many disasters, one can’t help but wonder