There's this concept called quantum suicide-- it basically asks, "what does the Schroedinger's Cat experiment look like from the perspective of the cat?"

According to the Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics, when a quantum measurement is made, the universe forks, in each timeline one of the possible measurements is observed, and the probability of entering that timeline is determined by quantum mechanics. (It is a reasonably well accepted interpretation, and IMO the only one that is self-consistent, since the alternative-- the Copenhagen interpretation-- does not define what measurement is. In other words, it is likely true but not certain).

So back to Schroedinger's cat. The particle is measured, and each time, the universe forks. In one fork, the cat lives, in another, it dies.

But what does the cat see? The cat sees itself as always surviving. Every time, "click... click... click..." the gun doesn't go off. Why? because being dead is an experience the cat cannot have. It's dead, after all! The only experience the cat can... experience... is that of having an experience, i.e. living. It's like the [anthropic principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle): There is a [selection bias](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias) on the conditions we observe ourselves to be in, because we can only exist in certain conditions.

So after 10 or so rounds of this experiment, from the outside world, the cat is almost certainly dead (what's the probability of the particle coming up heads 10 times in a row? (1/2)^10, which is around 1 in 1000). But from the cat's perspective, it is certainly alive.

My fear is that I'm the cat. Or worse, the human species is the cat, and actually we've put ourselves through nuclear apocalypse in 99.999999% of timelines, but here we are derping along in the one universe that escaped because some electron went left instead of right inside of [Stanislav Petrov's brain](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov).

Maybe we put ourselves through nuclear apocalypse on the regular, like on average next Tuesday we're probably going to blow up. And with 99.999% probability we do, but one little sliver of reality escapes and gets to derp along a little longer until next Thursday, and that's where the versions of ourselves that didn't die horribly happen to find themselves before dying horribly next week.