Apocalypse how

"In the past four weeks alone, wildfires virtually burnt a Canadian village off the map after it shattered the national record with heat of 49.6C. Floodwaters tore through German towns like a tsunami, tossing cars like corks. Terrified Chinese subway passengers stood in chest-high water as nearly a year's worth of rain fell in three days." - Pilita Clark, Financial Times.

Between floods, famine, forest fires and a global pandemic, the last few years have been filled with disasters. Yet even by these standards, July 2021 has been a rocky month. 

In her column this week, journalist Pilita Clark wondered whether we have entered a "new stage of climate change". Some might go further: is this the start of the apocalypseA Christian name for the end of the world. Descended from a Greek word meaning uncover, it was used to describe the Biblical book of Revelation.?

All scientists accept that the world will end. Astronomers believe that the Earth will run out of oxygen in about one billion years, bringing life to an end. Then, 6.5 billion years later the Sun will expand, destroying the planet itself.

Another type of apocalypse is the end of civilisation. A recent series of articles from the online magazine UnHerd sees writers layout how they think society could collapse.

Evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein suggests a "burst of charged plasma from the sun" will trigger societal breakdown. Novelist Paul Kingsnorth warns of an eco-fascista hotly disputed term. In Kingsnorth's article, it refers to a government that enforces environmentalist policies using authoritarian means. government leading to a return to a medieval-style life. And tech specialist Jamie Bartlett predicts an AI takeover, where humans gradually give over control to computer algorithms.

Humans have predicted armageddonAnother name for the world's end. It originally described the location of a battle during the Biblical apocalypse. for millennia. One AssyrianAssyria was an ancient kingdom and empire in the present-day Middle East, which lasted from the 25th Century to around 610 BC. tablet dated 2800BC states: "the world is speedily coming to an end." 

Our record in predicting the end of the world is poor. In 1499, German mathematician Johannes Stoffler predicted a flood would engulf the world on 20 February 1524. Astronomers identified world-ending comets in 1577, 1596, 1607 and 1618. And an ancient Mayan calendar set the end for 21 December 2012, a date that passed without incident. 

Science may have advanced, but there is still much we do not know. Biologists estimate that 86% of all species on land and 91% of those in water have yet to be discovered. Predicting the future seems an immense challenge when we know so little about the present.

One way might be to observe patterns. Many of the threats humanity faces today have also been faced throughout history. Writing of the pandemic, historian Suzannah Lipscomb says: "if this past year has shown us anything, it's that certain historic fears were not misplaced."  

This month's devastating floods in Belgium and Germany did not cause the end of days. But if the same thing happened repeatedly across the world, perhaps it could do.

Others believe such predictions are futile. From the ancient eruption of Vesuvius to the Great Fire of Londonthe fire began on 2 September 1666 at Thomas Farriner's bakery. The exact cause remains unknown, but some historians believe it resulted from a spark from Farriner's oven falling onto a nearby pile of fuel., many disasters have come as a surprise. The end may be no different. The apocalypse, says novelist Douglas Coupland, "will be quick, and completely out of left field".

Can we predict how the world will end?

Of course, say some. Our knowledge and understanding of science and nature has progressed enormously since the Mayans and Stoffler. Scientists, writers, environmentalists and sociologists have proposed dozens of possibilities for the end of humanity, life and the planet itself. If only one of them is right, the human race will have succeeded in predicting its own doom.

Of course not, say others. History is littered with apparent certainties turning out false. We naturally desire certainty about the future, and have a natural tendency to try to predict it based on the past. But the world is too complex, unpredictable and fast-moving for us to have any real understanding as to how it might end. When the apocalypse does come, it will come out of the blue.