It's 2019. Shouldn't we all be dead by now?

With the start of 2019 approaching -- a year that seemed incomprehensibly distant not all that long ago -- I started trying to think of all the books, comic books and movies from the 1970s and 80s that had us living in either dystopian, post-apocalyptic, or utterly bizarre futures by now.
Back to the Future seems to have gotten things closest to reality. Not a dystopian future, some versions of things that are commonplace items now (the internet and online newspapers, video phones, plenty of 80s nostalgia in pop culture).
On the other end of the spectrum are movies like Escape From New York (made in 1981, set in 1997) that had the city as a post-apocalyptic hellscape; and Death Race 2000 (1975/2000) and Soylent Green (1973/2022) that portrayed dystopian futures.

What are some of the other times Hollywood and authors said we should be dead or living nightmarish lives by now?

 

Well, Dr. Strangelove ended with the world ending, and I bet Kubrick would be a little surprised we’re all still carrying on.

I mean, unless the mineshaft plan worked.

 

Yeah, but that was set in the present day wasn't it? I'm thinking of movies set in what at the time was some distant future that has since come and gone.

 

"Children of Men," released in 2006 and set in 2027 -- we're now more than halfway there -- is proving creepily accurate in many ways.

 

Terminator movies had Skynet taking over in the 1990s and the world getting nuked.

Plus, there's been multiple apocalyptic predictions, including one that got heavy play from the conspiracy theorists around 2011.

 

It was based on the book Red Alert, and involved B-52s (which are amazingly still flying with avionics upgrades) and 24/7 Operation Chrome Dome. And the best clue was the vehicles used during the attack on the base. I’d say late 50s or present day (at the time) 60s was the setting of the movie.

 

Only in a rerun.

 

Dust Alert!