Um, I expected a fair probability of being in a post-nuclear world by now. Global cooling wasn't real. Y2K didn't end the world. The population explosion didn't result in mass starvation. Peak oil didn't end civilization.

So no, I don't agree that "the fatalist philosophers and authors have been mostly proven right as time marched on." No, they haven't. There have been far more fatalistic predictions than there have been actual catastrophes.

That is because your idea of what is catastrophic does not align with ours. To us, this is full unthinkable dystopia. An uncivilized world weighs much more, is much worse to us, than the world of disasters you depict. Survival is a crude, lower ideal to us, when compared to that of living decently.