In January 1941 President Franklin Roosevelt told Congress that by assisting Britain in its struggle against Nazi Germany, America was standing up for four universal freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. All very uplifting but two of those four are pipedreams.

The West manages to feed most of its citizens but throughout much of the developing world three square meals a day are as realistic an aspiration as a supermodel girlfriend. And the human race will never be free from fear; it's part of our make-up.

Homo sapiens spend much of their lives in various stages of funk ranging from anxiety to numbing dread.

Maybe we're addicted to fear. Nostradamus cried wolf in 1555. Since then his book Les Propheties has rarely been out of print even though there's no evidence that reading it provides any more insight than peering at tea-leaves or poking through chicken entrails.

Research unmasks another killer in our diet daily. Sugar, dairy products, red meat, coffee - you name it, it's out to get us.

And while the threat of nuclear annihilation may be in temporary abeyance, its big shoes have been filled by global warming whose threat level seems to be inflating faster than Al Gore's reputation.

This week Britain's Ministry of Defence provided a "probability-based rather than predictive" snapshot of the world in 30 years' time. It's all there: climate change, resource wars, doomsday machines. Electromagnetic pulses will wipe out communications systems and neutron weapons that kill people but leave buildings intact "might become a weapon of choice for extreme ethnic cleansing in an increasingly populated world".

There are some interesting nuggets among the common sense and science fiction.

The report suggests, for instance, that the Islamic world's hostility towards the West may be increasingly redirected towards China "whose new-found materialism, economic vibrancy, and institutionalised atheism will be an anathema to orthodox Islam".

Meanwhile, in the leafy suburbs, the soccer mums and labrador owners are getting restless.

According to the report, fear and loathing of an unruly urban underclass and resentment of the super-rich might cause the world's middle classes to become "a revolutionary class, taking on the role envisaged for the proletariat by Marx". You can hear them chanting now: university-educated professionals of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your Volvos.