I WAS talking to a pal recently about predators - snakes, sharks, tigers - and it got us thinking about fear. Are they frightened of anything - perhaps other snakes, sharks or tigers? And what about whales. They don't seem frightened of anything, not even other whales, or the whalers who hunt them.

Fear is an emotion, it cannot hurt you. Yet there are some people who only have to see a snake and are horrified whether or not they are bitten. Sometimes the shock can kill them.

It's the same with the fear of crime. People see something in the street which gets their hearts beating quickly but they pass it by without anything happening.

What is fear? Why do we become frightened? We came to the conclusion that the less intelligent the creature or person the less they suffer from fear, mainly because they are oblivious to what is going on around them. But I defy anyone not to be afraid of something.

When I read in The Northern Echo about the fossil of a reptile which was 185 million years old I realised one of my greatest fears - the future of mankind. The ichthyosaur was 185 million years old and the species has been extinct for 90 million years. By comparison, a human lifetime of about 70 years is a blink of an eye.

Yes, I'm concerned about what society will be like in 30 years time when my kids are in their forties; how safe society will be then. But my biggest fear is what is going to happen to a world we have abused more in the past 50 years than the previous 1,000. Some would say we have destroyed the environment for the good of mankind. I question that.

When you start looking at the environment, do we really think it will exist as it does now in 185 million years time? When you look at the threats to the world from within, they are nothing compared with the threats eminent scientists claim come from outer space.

The dinosaurs, like the one found near Whitby, were wiped out by a meteor the size of Manhattan, an impact so large it threw debris into the atmosphere which blocked out the sun for years. All we need is an asteroid seven-15 miles wide to hit the world and that would be the end for us.

When you look at television and read the papers, hardly a day goes by without a story warning about what is flying around space and the asteroids and meteors that could hit the Earth.

These eminent professors say there is masses of such space debris heading for Earth. The balance of probability says that if it has happened once millions of years ago there is no reason why it cannot happen again.

Yet the governments of the world will not put enough resources into projects looking at an issue which, to some, is the biggest threat of all to mankind.

Astronomers have recently discovered ten new planets, a significant find. Yet it takes nothing to get them back round to talking about meteors and asteroids. I share their concern.

Their fear is that one day something out there will be too close to Earth to do anything about by the time the scientists understand what it is.

Don't worry, I haven't gone mad, I am not predicting the end of the world. But there are threats out there many politicians play down.

Comedian George Burns once said it was too bad that the people who knew how to run the country were busy driving cabs and cutting hair. It's too bad that all the politicians speak on subjects they know nothing about and they don't take enough notice of the experts.

On this I think the governments of the world are mistaken. We are only human and the danger is that we can become too comfortable with our surroundings.

After all, something did wipe out the dinosaurs; it leaves me wondering just how intelligent a society we are.