JIM HENDRICKS: What kind of world will we leave behind?

It’s times like these that I wonder just what kind of world we’re leaving our grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Not a very good one, I’m afraid.

The murders in Las Vegas late last Sunday night were heartbreaking news to wake up to on Monday morning. It makes you wonder what’ll get you first — a hail of bullets fired by some deranged, evil gunman with a personal armory that rivals the military capacity of some small nations or an equally deranged, evil despot in Pyongyang with a shiny new red button to mash that goes with his new ICBM nuke arsenal.

It almost makes you long for the fears of your youth, when all you had to worry about was the Cold War and its occasional Cuban missile crisis or a less proficient madman like the Zodiac killer leaving California and heading east.

Those were worrisome enough at the time. Especially the Cold War. I remember thinking, OK, we hear a nuclear missile warning siren, we just drive up to Albany, get into a fallout shelter, and hang out a while. I was sure they’d have some games and maybe ice cream in the shelter so we could pass the time until we got the all-clear. If we were in school, we’d just sit in the hallway with our heads on our knees for a while, like we were told to do for a tornado.

At worst, I figured I’d just use any radiation that came my way to become a real-life Spider-Man or one of the other comic book heroes I read about who got super powers from it. I didn’t really want to become the Hulk on account of he didn’t have a costume, much less a red cape, and he tore his britches every time he turned into the Hulk, which I knew would get me in really bad trouble.

Russian nukes and California serial killers were one thing, but I truly dreaded the thought of constantly coming home and dealing with Mama’s reaction to another pair of perfectly good pants that I’d ruined in the noble pursuit of superheroing.

It wasn’t until I saw a cartoon on the wall of my lawyer uncle’s office that I realized how dangerous the world was. The picture was a line drawing of a contorted man who was demonstrating the proper safety procedure in the event of a nuclear strike. The steps were (1) stand up, (2) stick you head between your legs as far as you can and (3) kiss a certain part of your anatomy you normally sit on, one that I sincerely doubted would merit the adjective “sweet” that was used in its description, goodbye.

Step 3, by the way, was the one that was clearly illustrated.

I thought it was funny until I said something about going to a fallout shelter. My uncle shook his head. I don’t remember the exact words, but what he said, more or less, was, “Fallout shelter won’t do you a lick of good. If the bomb doesn’t blow you to kingdom come, the radiation poisoning’ll kill you deader’n a door knob.”

He could be eloquent.

I’ve never been quite sure why door knobs — in my circles, anyway — were considered the deadest form of household hardware, but I got the gist of what he meant.

I didn’t sleep well that night. I didn’t sleep well a lot of nights after that, just like I didn’t sleep well after 9/11, or when my son was overseas during the Iraqi War, or when the storms hit in January, or when we thought Irma was going to hit, or when there’s a bombing like the one at the Boston Marathon, trucks slamming into crowds, or shootings like the ones in Sandy Hook, Charleston, Tennessee and Las Vegas.

And that’s not even taking into account the environment, the economy, personal privacy or health care. You can’t even talk about any of it without getting categorized, marginalized and crucified on social media, where everyone is presumed guilty and summarily sentenced to pariahism in 140 characters or less.

I thought the 1960s were scary, but they pale in comparison to today. It worries me when I think what the world will be like when my grandchildren and their children are grown and out making their own way.

Usually, people like to think that, in some way or another, they’ll leave the world in better shape than they found it. Some days, I just hope we leave future generations a world at all. Instead of a better place, we’re leaving a mess, one I hope and pray won’t be as dead as a door knob.

Just a thought to sleep on. If you can.

Email [email protected]. Follow @ABH_JHendricks on Twitter.