What's so entertaining about the end of the world?

[Triumph]

In the time that I have been an aware observer of pop culture (at least in the U.S.A.), let's say the past couple decades, I noticed a ubiquitous theme. Many, many works of fiction center around the premise that the world is coming to an end, or the civilization is collapsing, or that the world as we know it has already ended and civilization has disappeared. Sometimes, the cause is nuclear war. Or evil robots. Or alien invasion. Or a completely inexplicable zombie plague. Or global warming. Or... You get the idea. There are a lot of stories being told about the collapse of civilization, or set in the aftermath of such a collapse. Many of these are set in the "real world," but not all. I was astounded to learn these forums that the happy world of My Little Pony has received apocalyptic treatment, for example.

 

I am curious about the cause of this phenomenon. At first glance, "collapse of civilization" doesn't strike me as a promising theme for entertainment. That's really what drives this question. I have not cared for the plethora of end-of-the-world fiction that has inundated pop culture in the past couple decades. Yet there must be some appeal to it. I come to you asking for other perspectives.

 

I've considered a couple possibilities which I find wanting. I don't believe it's adequate that such fiction is driven by fear of nuclear war or horrors of world war. The atomic bombs fell on Japan nearly 70 years ago. The Cold War ended over two decades ago. Given the way people tend to remember the past, I just don't think pop culture's avidity for apocalyptic / post-apocalyptic fiction can be explained by saying we're all still fretting constantly about a nuclear war. I think perhaps those events may have given some impetus to the present-day phenomenon, but I don't think they are sufficient to explain the ongoing 21st century popularity of such stories.

 

Another possibility I find inadequate involves political messaging. Sure, maybe there some stories that were intended to promote nuclear disarmament or some other cause. The movie The Day After Tomorrow is relatively recent, particularly heavy-handed example of using the end-of-the-world premise to promote a political message. But sheer number of ways the world falls apart seem to me to make it impossible to dismiss the entire body of fiction as mere political messaging.

 

Many of the stories involve technology gone awry. This could relate to the fears of nuclear war, but I think the distrust of technology is a larger theme. However, again, the sheer number of ways the world comes to an end, and the number of settings in which it does so (some of which are not particularly technologically advanced), lead me to conclude that the popularity of end-of-civilization scenarios cannot be lumped entirely into a distrust of modern technology.

 

I do feel that this fascination with the collapse of civilization is a (relatively) modern phenomenon. While I'm not a lit major, I do feel like I've read enough to be safe in saying that collapse of civilization was not nearly as prominent in the past works as it is in the last couple decades.

 

So, I shall conclude with the question in the subject line: what's so entertaining about the end of the world?

 

Thanks!

[Cairo Jim]

I wonder if these end of ze world things observe time zones. Those that try and say that it's going to happen on a certain day plays with my head a bit. Do I cop it 16 hours ahead of California, but 2 hours before Western Australia?

[Dintiradan]

Bunch of random thoughts:

 

- Zombies and other post-apocalyptic fiction is just big right now. These trends just snowball sometimes. Consider also the large number of superhero movies out there now. Sometimes, all it takes is one or two big successes for every Hollywood studio to jump on a related project.

 

- There might be some other things that could explain the trend. I've heard some people say there's a correlation between wars and fantasy films in theatres; think of all the fantasy films that came out after 9/11 and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

 

- Losing control over our creations has always been a major theme of science fiction. The earliest work I can think of that definitely fits under science fiction is Frankenstein, and even then you've got the idea of the creation rebelling against the creator.

[Lilith]

man literature about the end of the world is really not a new thing at all. look at norse mythology or hinduism or literally any culture that has a flood myth

[Cairo Jim]

Things like Norse mythology generally say that the whole world isn't going to be destroyed. Just a lot of it, and then from that something new comes from it. Sorta like the end of the dinosaurs type thing.

[Randomizer]

It's the same reasoning why people slow down to look at car wrecks. They find disasters to be fascinating and entertaining. What bigger disaster is their than the end of the world other than the universe.

 

Lilith is right in that almost every culture has end of the world myths. The New Testament has Revelations for the end of days. Although most Biblical apocalypses were meant to provide hope for the down trodden masses that the end was soon and their suffering would be over.

[Student of Trinity]

I wonder if part of it is that technology has advanced to the point where a lot of good old plots won't work any more in a present-day setting, because the challenges on which they're based now have easy solutions. So you could go for a historical or fantasy setting, but then it would be an unfamiliar setting to your audience, so you'd have to waste time on exposition, time you could have spent on something else if you had set in the real world present. End-of-world scenarios conveniently start with everything the audience already knows, with characters readily identified in terms of their familiar life circumstances and so on, then poses the immediately comprehensible challenge of taking most of the familiar stuff away.

 

You'd still have all that, I suppose, if you just went with the End of Toledo (say). But once you're ending Toledo, there's hardly any extra cost to ending the whole world, because you can do most of it offstage, with maybe a couple quick shots of the Eiffel tower collapsing or the Taj Mahal exploding, to show that it's really the whole dang world going down. Those few extra shots officially promote you into an Epic, so it's totally worth it, even if most of your audience thought the Eiffel tower was in Toledo.

[Student of Trinity]

I don't think anyone could make a movie based directly on the book of Revelation. Or to put it another way, there could be quite a few very different movies made which all did their best to be based directly on the book of Revelation. (It's singular: there is only one revelation reported in it.)

 

Revelation doesn't have a coherent plot or set a definite scenario. It's a sequence of startling images, almost like a music video. Every few decades ever since it was written, people have been declaring that its prophecies are clearly being fulfilled in their day and so the end must be at hand; but they have always had to use wildly symbolic interpretations of the text of Revelation in order to connect them to any actual historical events. If you're writing a script about the end of the world, you probably want to keep Revelation on your bedside table for inspiration, but you're not going to be discussing it in your plot conferences.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Cairo Jim

Things like Norse mythology generally say that the whole world isn't going to be destroyed. Just a lot of it, and then from that something new comes from it. Sorta like the end of the dinosaurs type thing.

this is also true of most recent movies/books about the end of the world though. it's not especially common for literally everyone to be dead or doomed at the end. i mean there are exceptions, but they're rare enough to be notable

[Men are from Slars]

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan

- Losing control over our creations has always been a major theme of science fiction. The earliest work I can think of that definitely fits under science fiction is Frankenstein, and even then you've got the idea of the creation rebelling against the creator.

One of the major themes of Faust is similar, if not identical: our dependence on our creations. Faust isn't really speculative fiction, though, although it is certainly speculative. But that's potentially another 10 years.

[Actaeon]

Perhaps it's simply a sign of discontent. A frequent side effect of First World privilege is a sense of Ennui. With seven billion people in an increasingly globalized world, it is hard not to feel replaceable. Add a trust fund or a decent job and suddenly you have a real risk of losing a sense of purpose. For many of us (though not the majority, even in the industrialized world), the only real challenges in life are those we create. We long for something to HAPPEN.

 

Of course, in the event of a real apocalypse, most of us would hide in bed, wet ourselves, and die in the first half hour. Those with the mettle to survive afterwords would probably not be the same crowd that had been silently hoping for the world to end. Fiction allows us to live in that stark, dramatic world without having to actually cope with the reality of it.

 

Personally, though I dig the fiction and keep well stocked on canned food, I'm not hoping for Armageddon. There is too high a possibility of total economic collapse, drastic climate shift, World War III, plague, or any number factors that could result in a partial or total break down of society. If things start going south, I'm right where all of the panicky refugees will be fleeing to.

 

And anyway, Ragnarok is cooler.

[Sullust]

It seems like the poles swapping never gets mentioned in these discussions...

[Trenton.]

My little pony has received end of the world stories? None sense! Ponies are forever. And their world can't end. They have clean burning fuels.

[VCH]

End of the world = Sun going Red Dwarf = Planet gone.

[keira]

I think the odds of human wiping out humanity (the end of the world as far as we are concerned) are a bit higher than nature doing it for us, at least in the short term. Especially in the age of nuclear weapons and early-warning/dead man switches/what have you, we're a red button away from being roach food. I mean, if it weren't for people like this bloke, we'd probably all be dead right now.

 

I mean, the odds of that actually happening now that the Cold War is over are a bit slim, but if we start having crazies like North Korea with their paws on nukes, who knows.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Homage

I mean, the odds of that actually happening now that the Cold War is over are a bit slim, but if we start having crazies like North Korea with their paws on nukes, who knows.

North Korea has had nuclear weapons since like 2006. You will note that the world has not ended yet, despite there being plenty of incidents where they could have decided to use them, and I don't know of any serious foreign policy thinkers in the US that think Iran will use them, either. A couple think Israel or Pakistan might, especially if the latter collapses, but not Iran.

I'm actually quite sanguine about nuclear weapons- I highly doubt that humans will kill ourselves off in a nuclear götterdämmerung. If history has anything to say about apocalypses, if we all die it'll be because of a plague or famine, and not a mushroom cloud.

[Aran]

Originally Posted By: Lilith

man literature about the end of the world is really not a new thing at all. look at norse mythology or hinduism or literally any culture that has a flood myth

This. It's a trope that's been around long enough to have a real name outside That Wiki; in Greek even: Eschatology.

How and when the world ends is a natural thing to contemplate, along with the way it started. Interestingly, there seems to be a widespread conviction among people that the world will end in their lifetime - around 15% expressed that in a world-wide poll, and I'd be surprised if people haven't believed this, in one form or another, for centuries. Nuclear war, the rapture, the zombie apocalypse, the machine uprising, the technological singularity... it might be different ways, but the End Of The World As We Know it is always scheduled in our time.

[The Mystic]

Originally Posted By: Aʀᴀɴ

Interestingly, there seems to be a widespread conviction among people that the world will end in their lifetime - around 15% expressed that in a world-wide poll, and I'd be surprised if people haven't believed this, in one form or another, for centuries.

I for one am not among them. In fact, if I were a gambler, I'd put down some serious money on the end of the world not happening in my lifetime.

I've heard too many end-of-the world dates that have come and gone within my lifetime to take any future date seriously, except in a few billion years when the sun dies, or when the Andromeda galaxy is supposed to collide with ours.

[JamesMighty]

Originally Posted By: The Mystic

In fact, if I were a gambler, I'd put down some serious money on the end of the world not happening in my lifetime.

*Problem*
You would be dead so you couldn't collect your money.
*Problem solved*

[The Mystic]

*Another problem*

If the world does end, I'd be dead anyway, so I wouldn't have to pay anything for losing the bet.

*Another problem solved*

 

[Galactic Maiden]

I know quite a few people in my social circle who pine for a zombie apocalypse for a few reasons, depending on who you ask. Some see the collapse of society as a freedom from responsibility. Others find their First World life to be too mundane and feel like they haven't got anything going for themselves anyways. And then there are those few ones that just want to carry around a lot of guns and shoot people (or the gibbering husks of people) without repercussions from any sort of authority.

 

All the people who've said this to me, mind you, are young college students, if that changes anything. I guess it's just a twisted power fantasy sort of thing for some folks. I'm sure they'd feel completely different in the face of a real crisis.

 

I really, really don't want to world the end. Not that I ever buy into any of the pop culture apocalypse theories to begin with.

[Callie]

I need an excuse to walk around like those Monty Python monks.

[Cairo Jim]

I've always wanted those monks as a ringtone. Either that or have something from Tim the enchanter.

[Aran]

Originally Posted By: The Mystic

for one am not among them. In fact, if I were a gambler, I'd put down some serious money on the end of the world not happening in my lifetime.

I'll take that bet. Will pay you back as soon as, you know.

Originally Posted By: Peachie Pie

All the people who've said this to me, mind you, are young college students, if that changes anything. I guess it's just a twisted power fantasy sort of thing for some folks. I'm sure they'd feel completely different in the face of a real crisis.

Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest [...] in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad. - Stephenson

[Student of Trinity]

Galactic collisions don't hurt anyone. Stars are so far apart from each other that doubling the density of stars still leaves them really far apart.

[Randomizer]

Originally Posted By: Aʀᴀɴ

Originally Posted By: The Mystic

for one am not among them. In fact, if I were a gambler, I'd put down some serious money on the end of the world not happening in my lifetime.

I'll take that bet. Will pay you back as soon as, you know.

I'll hold the bet and pay off the winner.

[JamesMighty]

Originally Posted By: Randomizer

Originally Posted By: Aʀᴀɴ

Originally Posted By: The Mystic

for one am not among them. In fact, if I were a gambler, I'd put down some serious money on the end of the world not happening in my lifetime.

I'll take that bet. Will pay you back as soon as, you know.

I'll hold the bet and pay off the winner.

And if they both die?

[Men are from Slars]

Just a suggestion: if you are responding to the post immediately above you, and the post is short enough that's it's obvious which part you are responding to, it isn't really necessary to quote the whole post. Especially if that means you are building a quote pyramid. That actually makes it harder for others to follow the thread — not easier, as you probably intended.

 

[Triumph]

On a completely different note, what is that in your avatar, Slarty?

[Men are from Slars]

It's the Simurgh.

 

After Nikki put my dog-head on a bird's body for Slarticuno, the potential of the comparison became impossible to ignore.

[Harehunter]

Slarty, I cannot picture you as a chimera. On the other hand, Simurgh fits you far better. You have the Knowledge of the Ages at your command. Nice touch.

[Little Fyora]

...The man leans back in his armchair, holding a cup of coffee and enjoying the beautiful sunrise. A horde of giant, horny beasts have invaded the planet and are going on a killing spree. The man beams at his wife triumphantly. "See", exclaims the man, "I told you the world would end today."

 

So many myths about the world ending, and in a variety of ways. What is it that makes them all, however different in culture, religion and geography they may be, point to the same old ominous declaration "The World Shall End" ?

[Student of Trinity]

Originally Posted By: Harehunter

You have the Knowledge of the Ages at your command.

Only for the people who completed his survey.

[Harehunter]

Unfortunately, I was not able to participate, being 16 layers into some low-level, persnickety code. Does that mean I remain an unknown 'X' factor?

[nikki.]

Oh, hey, I inspired something high-brow. I should make more of an effort to stop doing that.

[Student of Trinity]

Eh, if we were all Iranian, I bet a simurgh would be middle-brow at most. So is brow height culturally relative? If we were all Oxfordian, that would be a low-brow question.

[Erebus the Black]

Ah, Iran and the end of the world, now that's a funny coincidence

Do you think the Iranian government allows Jeff's games given some of the pics there?

[Aran]

Wouldn't think that has much bearing on the matter; don't US sanctions prevent them being sold there anyway?

[Erebus the Black]

Not until recently, no, and if someone really wanted a copy he could have gotten it through a russian mirror server, the russians mirror everything

[The Mystic]

Originally Posted By: Randomizer

Originally Posted By: Aʀᴀɴ

Originally Posted By: The Mystic

for one am not among them. In fact, if I were a gambler, I'd put down some serious money on the end of the world not happening in my lifetime.

I'll take that bet. Will pay you back as soon as, you know.

I'll hold the bet and pay off the winner.

Thanks for the vote of confidence, folks, but seeing as I'm not a gambler, the bet's off. I still say that the world won't end until long after I do.

[keira]

Originally Posted By: Y? Bcaus, IDK he's on 3rd & IDC

Ah, Iran and the end of the world, now that's a funny coincidence
Do you think the Iranian government allows Jeff's games given some of the pics there?

Actually, Jeff markets a special version of his games there. Avernum, for example, is told from a completely different perspective. In it, you play as a group of beloved Empire soldiers who throw the evildoing infidels into the portals to Exile. You are rewarded by hordes of virgins who feed you dates and, um, do other stuff too.

Iranian State Media gave it 4 of 5 barrels of oil, citing it's classic gameplay and inspiring storyline. Ahmadinejad himself said the graphics reminded him of his childhood.

[Randomizer]

Avadon didn't do well because it implied that the government was corrupt. Also the bribes were too small.

[Erebus the Black]

Originally Posted By: Randomizer

Avadon didn't do well because it implied that the government was corrupt. Also the bribes were too small.

WAIT, that has the Ottoman empire written all over it !
Did they also take prisoner soldiers (preferably of a different faith)and turned them into elite mercenaries?

Back to OP, A DM I played with once, destroyed the game world at the end of the campaign claiming that the destruction gives you a clean slate on which to write the next campaign. I myself was not in agreement, but it shows what other people are thinking

[Randomizer]

One table top RPG party I heard of marked their progress through the game world by destroying each town after they left with the magical equivalent of a nuclear blast.

[Student of Trinity]

The Ottomans didn't turn captured soldiers into mercenaries. They took non-Muslim children and trained them into an elite military corps. They became known in English as the janissaries, as a transliteration of the Turkish word for something like 'new troops'. Technically the janissaries all remained slaves of the Sultan, but much of the government was run by the Sultan's slaves, and as the main infantry of the Ottoman state's standing army, their status was actually quite high. 'Janissary' is also sometimes used as another word for mercenary, but that's really a misuse, because the original janissaries were regular soldiers of the Ottoman army, and slaves to boot.