A curated archive of catastrophes that failed to materialize.
A static web app and growing database of real historical predictions of doom — sourced from experts, governments, and major media — that didn't come true. Upvote entries to tune your feed. Add new entries to expand the archive.
- Fork this repo
- Go to Settings → Pages
- Set source to
mainbranch,/ (root)folder - Your site will be live at
https://yourusername.github.io/doom-scroll
That's it. No build step, no dependencies, no server required.
# Clone it
git clone https://github.com/yourusername/doom-scroll.git
cd doom-scroll
# Serve it (any static server works)
python3 -m http.server 8000
# or: npx serve .
# or: open index.html directly in a browserAll entries live in data/doom.json. To add a new entry, open that file and add an object to the entries array:
{
"id": "unique-slug-no-spaces",
"year": 1999,
"prediction": "The original scary prediction, as it was framed at the time.",
"source": "Who made it — publication, institution, named expert",
"reality": "What actually happened instead.",
"category": "Economic Collapse",
"tags": ["optional", "search", "tags"]
}Pick one of these exactly:
| Category | Emoji |
|---|---|
Economic Collapse |
📉 |
Tech Apocalypse |
🤖 |
Environmental Doom |
🌍 |
Political Catastrophe |
🏛️ |
Health Crisis |
🦠 |
Social Breakdown |
👥 |
Food & Resource Scarcity |
🌾 |
War & Conflict |
⚔️ |
- Must be real. The prediction should be verifiable and sourced from a credible publication, institution, or named expert.
- Must have clearly not come true (or significantly not come true at the scale predicted).
- No snark in the reality field. State what happened matter-of-factly. The contrast speaks for itself.
- Avoid highly contested events. We're not making political arguments — only archiving predictions that are clearly, factually wrong in retrospect.
- IDs must be unique. Use kebab-case:
my-prediction-slug.
- Fork the repo
- Edit
data/doom.json - Open a Pull Request with the new entries
The feed is locally personalized — no server, no tracking. When you click reassuring on a card, that category gets a +1 weight stored in your browser's localStorage. Future loads bias toward your preferred categories. Clear your browser storage to reset.
doom-scroll/
├── index.html ← The entire app (vanilla JS, no framework)
├── data/
│ └── doom.json ← The database — edit this to add entries
└── README.md
"Just go back to last year's doom and gloom reports and notice how none of it actually came to pass."
This project is not a denial of real problems. Antibiotic resistance is real. Many of the concerns behind these predictions were legitimate. The point is that human beings have a consistent tendency to forecast catastrophe at a scale and timeline that systematically exceeds what materializes — and there's genuine comfort in seeing that pattern documented.
MIT. Do whatever you want with it. Add entries, fork it, make it your own.