Critics say that warnings of impacts of automation, nuclear catastrophe and environmental collapse outlined by several candidates are not politically helpful, and even dangerous

Robots replace truckers, sparking a protest movement that snowballs into violence.

With just years to spare before a certain apocalypse, there is one chance left to survive climate change.

A small New Hampshire town far from any site of military importance is wiped out by a nuclear weapon on a snowy winter day.

These scenarios might sound like they are borrowed from science fiction but they are among the warnings of doomsday, dystopia and war being shared by some of the Democratic party’s 2020 presidential candidates.

In the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump surged into office spreading paranoid warnings to voters that if he were not elected, the US would become a failed socialist state and that immigrants entering the country over the southern border would spread violence and disease – talking points he is warming up to repeat in his bid to stay in the White House.

But some Democratic candidates are also outlining dramatic visions of impending doom.

The Hawaii congresswoman and 2020 Democratic candidate Tulsi Gabbard had warned that if the Mueller report released this month had found that the president had colluded with Russia, it could have led to civil war.

She has also frequently told campaign trail audiences that the US faces greater risk of nuclear catastrophe today than at any other point in history and has warned voters in places like New Hampshire that their home towns face the same threats of nuclear annihilation as her state of Hawaii, a state generally thought to be at risk in any potential nuclear conflict with North Korea and the site of a traumatising false ballistic missile alert last year.

Across the board, Democratic candidates acknowledge climate change is an existential threat that must be addressed immediately. But several have gone so far as to put precise limits on how much time is left.

Washington’s governor, Jay Inslee, who is running on a platform that would make climate change the nation’s top priority, has said that confronting climate change during the next presidential administration is our “one chance at survival”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Washington governor Jay Inslee has said that confronting climate change during the next presidential administration is our ‘one chance at survival’. Photograph: Karen Ducey/Getty Images

For entrepreneur turned politician Andrew Yang, whose platform centres on protecting the country from the negative impacts of automation, America’s downfall could come when the technologies put even more people out of work and exacerbate economic inequality.

In his book The War on Normal People, Yang warned that America was destined for a future as a science fiction-like dystopia or failed state if action was not taken.

“To me, without dramatic change, the best-case scenario is a hyper-stratified society like something out of The Hunger Games or Guatemala with the occasional mass shooting,” he wrote. “The worst case is widespread despair, violence and the utter collapse of our society.”

He goes on to imagine a scenario in which protesting truckers who lost their jobs to robots see armed white nationalists and anti-government groups rush to champion their cause, a move that sparks riots and violence across America’s heartland.

“Maybe the scenario I sketched above seems unlikely. To me, it seems depressingly plausible,” he wrote.

Such rhetoric is dangerous, according to Sheri Berman, a political science professor at Columbia University’s Barnard College, who argues that it further polarises the public and makes addressing the very real problems at the base of these apocalyptic visions – climate change, political divide and nuclear proliferation – more difficult to agree on.

The idea that we’re facing civil war, nuclear apocalypse, environmental apocalypse - I think that’s neither empirically correct nor politically helpful Sheri Berman

“The idea that we’re facing civil war, nuclear apocalypse, environmental apocalypse - I think that’s neither empirically correct nor politically helpful,” said Berman.

“It becomes increasingly difficult to see situations where compromise or reasonable policies on any of these issues could possibly be reached.”

Robots

“I would first suggest that people take a deep breath, because automation has been with us throughout the modern era,” said Michael Belzer, a former truck driver who is an economics professor at Michigan’s Wayne State University.

While automation could certainly change trucking, Belzer sees it as a gradual process.

“The notion of an abrupt change I think is kind of wishful thinking on the part of the technology people,” he said.

Darrell West, director of Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution and the author of The Future of Work: Robots, AI, and Automation, says job loss created by automation could create a “chaotic and turbulent” time economically and politically, putting even some white-collar jobs at risk. However, like Belzer, he does not see automation as immediate.

“I don’t see [Yang’s] scenario taking place, just because the impact on the workforce is going to be more gradual,” he said.

Civil war

Amid heightened polarisation, as well as the rise of armed “patriot groups” and episodes of political violence like the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville in 2017, the idea that the US could see another civil war has re-emerged.

Most talk of potential civil war has come from prominent rightwing internet, radio and television commentators. But as Gabbard shows, the idea is not confined to the right; even people like New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman have worried that the US may be destined for a conflict.

According to a poll last year, 31% of Americans said it was likely there would be a civil war within the next five years, including 37% of Democrats.

According to a poll last year, 31% of Americans said it was likely there would be a civil war within the next five years, including 37% of Democrats

Steven Webster, a post-doctoral fellow at St Louis’s Washington University who researches political polarisation, said civil war remains unlikely.

“It’s easy to shift opinions about some sort of legislation. But to actually follow through on something as costly as taking to the streets and engaging in violence? I don’t know, that seems like another step for me,” he said.

However, Webster says the polarisation is only set to increase.

“When voters are angry, they tend to vote loyally for their own party. So since elected officials are single-minded in their pursuit of re-election, they have incentive to stoke anger and heighten polarisation,” he said.

Nuclear catastrophe

Gabbard’s warnings did not emerge from a vacuum: Trump threatened nuclear war with North Korea in 2017 and experts have warned that Pyongyang’s ballistic missiles are now capable of hitting all parts of the continental United States.

Since those warnings, tensions have cooled somewhat, with Trump holding two summits with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un.

Vipin Narang, a professor of political science and a nuclear proliferation expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says that in contrast with Gabbard’s statements, the US and the world faced a much greater threat of nuclear catastrophe during the cold war.

“We probably have more flash points [today], but we traded a smaller risk of a world-ending event for maybe a larger chance of nuclear use,” he said.

Environmental collapse

Among 2020 candidates – and indeed the scientific community – there is unanimity in the view that climate change is real, manmade and poses an existential risk.

There is, however, disagreement surrounding the cutoff points for action.

Authors of the United Nations report that Beto O’Rourke seemed to be citing when he said the world had 12 years left to take action on climate change told the Associated Press that 2030 was used as a benchmark, not as a cutoff point for action.

“The earth does not reach a cliff at 2030 or 2052,” one author told the AP. But “keep adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere and temperatures will continue to rise”.

That said, climate scientists across the world have been urging the US and other nations to take immediate action on combatting climate change.