The Decades, by sci-fi themes

At the Science Writing in an Age of Denial conference, one of the opening speakers was David Krakauer, director of the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery. I forget the greater point of his brief talk, but he discusses what, in his view, were the major themes of science fiction movies in each of the decades since World War II. Here is his list, discuss:

50's - Nuclear fallout/winter. Easy to explain in the wake of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
60's - Evolutionary disaster. Think Planet of the Apes and Godzilla.
70's - Human caused disasters, such as epidemics.
80's - Human evil in the aftermath of the apocalypse (think Mad Max)
90s' - The Michael Crichton era. Jurassic Park, enough said. This one made me laugh.
00's - rehashes of all the previous decades, but with prettier special effects.

My only problem is that this analysis is that it omits an important period from about 1995-2005, where non-anthropogenic, physical catastrophe ruled Hollywood sci-fi. This may just be the period when I first became really conscious of movies, but films like Armageddon, Deep Impact, Dante's Peak, Volcano, The Core, and The Day After Tomorrow all came out in this time period.

Going deeper, I wonder if these films were popular because of a wishful thinking that human beings won't be the end of themselves - it will have to be a volcano or comet that ends humanity, rather than nuclear winter, or global warming, which The Day After Tomorrow finally addressed.