What! You’re able to read this?

Whew! I guess the supervolcano that could blow at any moment has yet to begin spewing cataclysmic cascades of molten magma, flaming fusillades of obsidian and clouds of toxic gas, annihilating all life on Earth.

In his book “End Times,” author Bryan Walsh warns that an all-but-inevitable blast at Yellowstone National Park, measuring eight out of eight on the Volcanic Explosivity Index, “would be like nothing humanity has ever seen, an ultra-catastrophe that could lead to global devasta-tion, even human extinction.”

If this geologic Sword of Damocles weren’t sufficiently alarming, just last week the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which annually assesses threats of nuclear war and climate change, moved the Doomsday Clock to 100 seconds before midnight — the closest humans have edged toward Armageddon since the metaphorical timepiece was created in 1947.

End-of-the-world disasters loom everywhere these days: raging wild-fires, rising sea levels, the coronavirus, the upcoming presidential election …

I haven’t been this bummed since 2012, when a doomsday cult warned that because the Mayans never bothered to extend a 5,125-year-long cycle in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar beyond Dec. 21 of that year, there would be a “polar reversal” causing the sun to rise in the west. This would lead to earthquakes, tsunami, avalanches, and so on.

Back then, I wrote a column, “As long as the world is coming to an end, there’s a few things I need to get off my chest,” in which I lamented all the time I’ve wasted in senseless pursuits: running all those stupid marathons, climbing all those stupid mountains, kayaking on all those stupid rivers, swimming in all those stupid lakes and skiing on all those stupid trails ...

I’ve since had a change of heart. If time indeed is running out, we should seize the moment to head for mountains, trails or rivers for one final, epic adventure.

Anyway, it should be of some comfort that paranoid soothsayers who have been making apocalyptic prophecies for millennia don’t exactly have a stellar track record.

Smithsonian magazine reports that an Assyrian clay tablet bears the inscription, “Our Earth is degenerate in these later days; there are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end.”

That tablet dates back to 2800 B.C. To date, archaeologists have not unearthed additional inscriptions describing Assyrian outrage over fake news.

In 1499, German mathematician and astronomer Johannes Stöffler’s frightful prediction of a worldwide deluge prompted a boom in boat construction; in 1881, panic-stricken villagers wept and prayed all night because of a doomsday prophesy supposedly made by a “Mother Shipton” in 1641.

That prediction was later revealed to be a hoax, much like Orson Welles’s “War of the Worlds” realistic radio drama of a Martian invasion, based on the H.G. Wells sci-fi tale, which caused widespread hysteria on Halloween in 1938.

People may be gullible, but sometimes scientists and other respected authorities lend credence to alarms.

Shortly before the appearance of Halley’s comet in 1910, Chicago’s Yerkes Observatory announced it had detected the presence of cyanogen, a poisonous gas, in the comet’s tail. After the New York Times reported that French astronomer Camille Flammarion warned the gas “would impregnate that atmosphere and possibly snuff out all life on the planet,” panic spread.

People rushed to buy gas masks and “comet pills.” In Georgia, the Atlanta Constitution reported that citizens built safe rooms, and one man “armed himself with a gallon of whiskey,” and asked friends to lower him to the bottom of a 40-foot dry well.

Smithsonian also notes that a 1974 best-selling book, "The Jupiter Effect," by Cambridge-educated astrophysicists John Gribbin and Stephen Plagemann, warned that an alignment of major planets in 1982 would disrupt Earth’s rotation and cause a massive earthquake along the San Andreas fault, “the big one,” wiping out Los Angeles.

Hal Lindsey, author of “The Late Great Planet Earth,” issued a similar earthquake admonition in 1980, predicting nuclear power plant meltdowns, burst dams and massive flooding.

The Y2K panic prompted fears that computers would go kaflooey on Jan. 1, 2000, disrupt global economies and lead to a “Blade Runner” dystopia.

I think the best suggestions for coping with so much angst comes from two guys named Al.

The first, “I'd rather be an optimist and a fool than a pessimist and right,” is attributed to Albert Einstein.

The second is from Alfred E. Neuman: “What, me worry?”