Some fear we’ll be buried in brimstone; others expect to be extinguished by A.I. But is there comfort to be found in our apocalyptic visions?
Apparently, we’ve been thinking about wholesale termination at least since about 1800 B.C., the date ascribed to the myth of Atrahasis, a Mesopotamian creation story that predates Biblical writings by several hundred years and features a world-cleansing flood. In Zoroastrian scripture, a comet called Gochihr collides with the Earth and wreaks havoc, as comets will. Hebrew prophets, in turn, began transforming pagan cycles of birth, death, and renewal into a rectilinear history. They kept the flood but lost the comet and installed a monolithic God who thundered and roared against his land, threatening to pass judgment on all mankind and to put the wicked to the sword.