Are We Nearing the End of the World?

All our lives, people have been telling us we are just one catastrophe away from annihilation. Climate change is today’s most common concern, but overpopulation, nuclear war, pandemics, and the rise of artificial intelligence are also popular. Whatever the cause, the hypothesis is always the same: some disaster will lead to an irreversible collapse of civilization quickly followed by the extinction of humanity.

These apocalyptic fears have less to do with the rise of robots, sea levels, or global temperatures than we might imagine. Every generation has believed the end of the world is nigh. Fear of apocalypse is innate and primal, a bit like fear of snakes. The number of stories we tell about the end of the world increases not with risk but with population: there is always about one apocalyptic prediction for every hundred million people on the planet. 15 widely-publicized, specific extinction dates came and went in the nineteenth century, another 59 passed in the twentieth century, and the twenty-first century is on track for at least 84. There are also thousands of fictional accounts. The first apocalyptic novel was published in 1268, the first apocalyptic movie in 1916, and the first apocalyptic video game in 1988. As soon as we invent a new medium, we use it to tell tales about the end of the world. All these apocalyptic predictions and stories trigger our primal fear and make…