Welcome to the National Hysteria Museum here in Washington. Our tour will take only a short time. After that you may wander among the exhibits. Or spend time re-examining one of the hysterias we touch upon on our tour. And yes, we will finish at our Global Warming exhibit. Everybody’s favorite.

We begin with our Nuclear Weapon Hysteria section. This stoked up hysteria in this country in the sixties. People in England and the continent went over the edge in their ban the bomb demonstrations. Here we settled for a goal of a bomb shelter in every yard. At any rate, hundreds of millions figured we’d all snuff it within a year or so.

Here we have the Population Scare section. Some of you middle-aged folks will remember this hysteria. Many books. Lots of authors touring the western world and scaring the daylights out of us. One of the more effective hysterias, our experts tell us.

The gist of it was that the planet could not support the teeming billions who were going to be born. Yes, sir, it does seem a bit quaint now. Most of the hysterias in here do. As for population, well, the birth rates are falling dramatically around the world these days. And the percentage of people living in abject poverty keeps dwindling. In other words, the hysteria was unfounded.