There’s a YouTube channel I watch when I can’t sleep called What If. Maybe you’ve heard of it, and maybe you even follow it (it’s pretty popular and has nearly 5.5 million subscribers).

If you’re not familiar, the channel is exactly what it sounds like: a collection of scenarios along with what would likely follow were they to actually happen. For instance, in this video titled, “What If All the Passengers on a Plane Jumped at Once?”, the narrator calmly explains that the answer is… barely anything. What a relief!

In “What If Earth Were Sucked Into a Black Hole?” we learn that the planet would go through something called “spaghettification.” No need to worry, however, as we’d all likely die from being hit by asteroids or fried by the radiation. Less of a relief!

Some scenarios are fairly realistic:

• What if we had a worldwide pandemic? (From early February 2020… eek!)

• What if an asteroid were on a collision course to hit Earth?

• What if a COVID-19 vaccine were available tomorrow? (This was obviously published prior to vaccines being available, but the video breaks down the realities of vaccination campaigns — they take time!)

• What if the coronavirus mutated?

• What if World War III happened tomorrow?

Others were just a bit little less realistic:

• What if half the population of Earth was wiped out? (This came out around the time as Avengers: Endgame.)

• What if Earth was shaped like a donut?

• What if we sent our trash into the sun?

• What if the moon exploded?

• What if we knew the exact time we would go extinct?

And others still were… well, for lack of a better term: nightmare fuel:

• What if you were the last human and trapped in space?

• What if mosquitoes were the size of humans?

• What if spiders were the size of humans?

• What if Earth were teleported to the edge of the universe?

• What if your tongue were twice as long?

Why do I watch these? Oddly enough, I think it’s that I find it somewhat comforting that I’m not alone in understanding what would happen if some of my most bizarre and irrational fears came true.

I have a tendency to catastrophize. The inside of my head is a collection of horrors I can’t stop obsessing over. I fully understand that some fears — like human-sized spiders or being the last human alive and trapped in space — are completely and totally irrational. Others — like “What Happens If You Get COVID-19?” and “What Happens If You Were Hospitalized With COVID-19?” — are absolutely reasonable things to be concerned about.

There are some helpful guides to managing catastrophic thinking online. For me, the most important step is simple: realize when I’m doing it! Once I realize that I’m catastrophizing, I can start to address the problem at its core. For some weird reason, the What If YouTube channel helps out with that.

What are some YouTube channels that help you get through tough times? I’d love to hear about them.