So, it's not just the Daily Mail that believes we are all doomed. According to a new survey almost three-quarters of Britons think the world is a more dangerous, war-like place than it was 50 years ago, writes Peter Walker.
Conducted to mark the UN Peace Day today, the poll found 74% of the public believes the globe is more violent now than it was in 1956 while 63% think the situation will get worse in the next 50 years. So far, so gloomy. But are they right? Well, not really.
Despite the daily headlines about violence and death in Iraq, Darfur and elsewhere, the statistics suggest that in many ways the world is a safer place now than in 1956. The number of conflicts around the globe has been dropping more or less steadily since the second world war.
According to the Human Security Report, an exhaustive round-up published by the Canadian-based Human Security Centre, even since 1992 the number of wars has dropped by more than 40%.
Still more dramatically, the average number of battle-deaths per conflict per year - a measure of the deadliness of warfare - has plummeted from 38,000 in 1950 to just 600 in 2002.
Dan Smith, the head of International Alert, the British-based peace group which commissioned the new survey, believes the public should perhaps lighten up a bit.
The survey shows there are serious misunderstandings about the true nature of conflict and peace. There is more room for cautious optimism than the British public feel.
Of course, there is one key reason for much of the negativity: terrorism. Almost 40% see terrorism as the greatest threat to Britain, only just behind the figure for crime.
Apart from the shocks of September 11 and July 7, a perception that the Iraq war has helped fuel global tensions has filled the public with what Mr Smith calls "a strong feeling of spiralling violence". More than half believe the government has made the country a more had dangerous place through its policies.
Of course, the actual danger from terrorism is very hard to quantify. Apart from the fact that the annual terrorist death toll in a country can leap from zero to thousands in a day - witness 9/11 - few agree on what actually constitutes a terrorist attack.
Some have attempted to make a tally. US thinktank the Rand Corporation calculated that 5,362 people died from terrorism worldwide in the year from March 2004, almost double the 12-month period before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Reports from Iraq this June showed that Baghdad's main mortuary had already received the bodies of more than 6,000 people since that start of 2006, most killed violently and probably due to sectarian killings, which many would see as terrorism.
But 1956 was not a peaceful year either. As well as the Suez crisis, thousands died when Soviet tanks rolled into Hungary.
