Doomsday: The End of the World in Art, Science, Mythology and Prophecy: Part One

The end of the world has been a popular theme in the arts (film, literature, etc.) as we’re no doubt aware. It’s also been a popular theme in science, in mythology, in religion, in prophecy, and so on. The fascination with the end of the world theme is that while unlikely (in your lifetime), it’s plausible as the dinosaurs found out 65 million years ago. So, in the short term, in your lifetime, is it likely, and if so, what’s the means of delivery?

I’d better start by defining exactly what I have in mind with the phrase ‘the end of the world’ as ‘the end’ can take several forms.

Firstly though to the time it takes for an the end of the world event: A real end of the world scenario will be a short term event, lasting from mere seconds (say a gamma ray burster) to several months (say a pandemic, all out nuclear war, a super-volcano). I’m not talking multi-decades to centuries here as per global warming and rising sea levels or the coming of the next Ice Age.

The End of the World = the Destruction of Planet Earth (“When Worlds Collide” scenarios). That is, Planet Earth and obviously all and sundry on same go down the gurgler.

The End of the World = the Destruction of All Life on Planet Earth – a sterile Earth. Planet Earth survives, to a greater or lesser extent, but nothing biological survives.

The End of the World = the Elimination of All Human Beings on Planet Earth (“On the Beach” related scenarios). Planet Earth and most life forms, excluding humans, survive. Now the survivors might amount to only bacteria, cockroaches and rats, but all that matters here is that 100% of all members of the human species are no more. Welcome to Planet Earth: Human Population Zero.

The End of the World = Drastic Alterations to the Status Quo of Human Beings on Planet Earth. There’s drastic chance of ending humanity, but ultimately not enough to wipe us all off the floor. 

I think for most of the populace, the ‘end of the world’ means the demise of the majority of the human population, excluding them of course. In other words, it’s akin to the “drastic alterations of the status quo of human beings on Planet Earth”. It’s ‘Armageddon’, ‘the apocalypse’, the ‘end of days’, the ‘second coming’, ‘the rapture’, or, stripped of any religious connotation, some sort of nuclear war, global pandemic, a combination of nasties caused by global warming, an asteroid strike that cataclysmic but not too cataclysmic, say it only wipes out 99.9% of humanity – that still leaves some six million odd bods and sods inhabiting the globe. Heck, with that number of survivors coupled with a ‘be fruitful and multiply’ scenario, Planet Earth will again be overpopulated with human beings pretty quick-smart. I mean we lost millions in WWII, but still the population expanded. 

The End of the World in the Arts: A whole book could be written (and probably has been) on the end of the world theme in the movies and in literature, especially the science-fiction of the last 150 years or so. If someone can envision doomsday by one means or another, it’s been turned into a film or a TV series or a novel or short story, sometimes with, sometimes without, a happy ending. The end of the world theme in the arts might not be as popular as romantic fiction or crime fiction or even westerns, but it forms a pretty solid subgenre block of the overall disaster film or novel nevertheless.

The End of the World in Mythology/Religion: In mythology (or religion) there is no permanent end of the world. There’s always a rebirth, be it the Christian Armageddon or the Norse Ragnarok or within the Hindu mythology in India or even the various cyclic Mesoamerican cosmologies.

Take the Christian version: Well there’s no disputing the Biblical (tall) tales that ‘document’ some sort of domestic disagreement between ‘God’ and some sort of entity we call today ‘Satan’. If you believe those Biblical tall tales, the end result of that domestic dispute, Armageddon, isn’t in fact in dispute. There’s a decided element here of “This ain’t over till it’s over; this ain’t finished yet; I’ll be back”! However, if you believe the Bible and the Book of Revelation, then you realise that Armageddon should have taken place over 1900 plus years ago, at least according to Jesus Christ. He said that the final battle between good (‘God’) and evil (‘Satan’) – I bet he was biased in deciding who was what – would take place within a generation or two of his utterances. So, if it took place way back then it took place off planet and out of human sight – a real life ‘Star Wars’. But if it hasn’t happened yet, assuming ‘God’ and ‘Satan’ are really real extraterrestrials instead of mythological entities, then it probably isn’t ever likely to. I mean you can only hold off a grudge match so long. Maybe they’ve kissed and made up, or…   

If God or His scribes wished to make crystal clear the ideas and events and chronology central to ‘the end of the world’, Revelations, Armageddon, the Rapture, the Second Coming, etc., He or they failed – miserably. Any dozen Biblical scholars will give a dozen different interpretations of the ‘end of days’, from the literal to the metamorphic. The Book of Revelations, apparently that is, was intended for those of that era; that it was intended for generations far removed from those times is apparently not the case according to Biblical scholars. If you’re not going to make your point clear, well, what’s the point? How many hundreds upon hundreds of times have Biblical scholars prophesied the end of the world, or the end of days, or Armageddon, or the Second Coming, or Final Judgment (take your pick of relevant phrases) based on the Biblical verse? Well, we’re still here! We are indeed still here, so, so much for the reliability of The Bible, or God’s word, and/or the competence of so called Biblical experts. So, the next time some Bible-thumping Fundamentalist tells you that the ‘end is nigh’, take said message with a proverbial grain of salt and don’t lose any sleep over it!

Now the Biblical tale of the global flood is in fact global! Cultures from around the world tell similar tales to the Biblical flood. The argument is that therefore the story must be true as these diverse cultures had no contact with each other. My answer to that is related to bovine fertilizer! End of the world tales, or myths, the concept of Armageddon, punishing the wicked with total catastrophe was as common and popular then as now. We all love a good ‘end of the world’ story that has a moral attached. Alas, the choices or mechanisms available for said end of the world stories to myth makers’ way back then were rather limited. They had no knowledge of supernovae or gamma-ray bursts or massive solar flares or nuclear war and resulting holocausts or killer asteroids smacking into Planet Earth, etc. All they had to work with was the day-to-day sorts of routine natural events part and parcel of their daily lives. In fact, many tale-spinners might not have been familiar with, say, volcanoes, and while most relatively violent weather phenomena, like tornadoes, may be destructive, they aren’t destructive enough to wipe out the wicked that populate a wide area.  However, everyone would have experienced rain, heavy rain, even torrential rain say from hurricanes, etc. that resulted in minor flooding, or say witnessed storm surges from the sea that inundated the land, and/or witnessed rivers, ponds and lakes overflowing. It doesn’t take that much imagination to notch up minor real events, in the guise of story telling, to mega disaster proportions. If it rains heavily for one day and there’s some local flooding, up the ante to 40 days. It’s difficult to imagine any story teller from 5000 years ago coming up with any other sort of end of the world scenario!

The one point to the end of the world, mega disaster stories is that there must be at least one survivor to tell the tale! I gather in this case that includes survivors such as Noah and kin.
I have read of one other explanation for universal flood stories. If I recall correctly, a student of Freud came up with the idea that the tellers/inventors of flood tales got the idea from dreams in their sleep. And they dreamed the dream all because they were asleep with relatively full bladders. Personally, I think that’s a piss-weak explanation!

Then there’s the Norse Ragnarok. The gods and the giants battle it out and the gods come out second best. But, there are survivors who start things up all over again. It’s reflected in the Richard Wagner conclusion to his epic four linked opera series “Der Ring Des Nibelungen”. The final opera, “Gotterdammerung” (“Twilight of the Gods”) ends with the destruction of the gods, but a rebirth and a new beginning. The very characters who started off the whole Ring Cycle are the very same and only survivors at the end. Will history repeat itself?

To be continued…