You’d think the end of the world would be exciting enough on its own. But time after time, and in place after place, artists of all stripes have tamed the apocalypse and used it for their own purposes. The end of the world becomes a metaphor for a political issue, or a thrilling backdrop for a more personal story, or a useful way to explain a moral or philosophical idea.
We’ve collected some of the strangest, most interesting apocalypses concocted by writers, painters, singers, and other artists across cultures and eras. Some speak to the concerns of their generation. Others speak to the concerns of their own strange minds. But all of them are pretty scary, if you think them through. (Except maybe the bird thing. That’s just silly.)
I
Shane Carruth, «A Topiary», unproduced screenplay, 2011
Apocalypse by: PATTERN
A group of people discovers an uncanny repeating pattern, which presents itself in nature (e.g. bursts of sunlight) as well as in built objects (e.g. spraypaint sprays) and data patterns (e.g. the arrangement of traffic accidents in a particular locality; taped sound). They do their best to figure out where it leads. Years later, a group of young boys find a mysterious machine that can create modular, self-powered objects out of sawdust. They build these into monstrous machines, which learn to self-replicate and overrun the world, and then the universe. (While this fictional apocalypse remains unrealized, it caused another, smaller ending: Carruth was so distraught by his inability to get this film made that he recently declared himself done with the business.
II
Unknown author, «Matsya Purana», religious text, ~700 BCE
Apocalypse by: POISONOUS FIRE-BREATHING UNDERSEA HORSE
According to Hindu texts, all life was once nearly wiped out by a fire-flood combo: first, a mare who lived beneath the sea opened her mouth and emitted a torrent of poisonous flame, and next, seven clouds opened up and flooded the planet. Luckily, before this happened, the deity Vishnu visited a king, Satyavrata, in the form of a small fish. Vishnu instructed Satyavrata to bring as many varieties of animals and plants as he could aboard an indestructible divine boat. Satyavrata did as he was told and attached the boat to the horn of the fish, who took it to higher ground, preserving life on Earth. Similar stories of narrowly escaped floods are common to most of the world’s major religions.
III
Ward Moore, «Greener Than You Think», science fiction novel, 1947
Apocalypse by: GRASS
A scientist invents a fertilizer, the «Metamorphizer», that helps grasses flourish. Although she originally intended it for use in agricultural settings, a salesman in her employ decides to demonstrate it on a yard of dying Bermuda Grass. It works too well, and can’t be mowed, scythed, or shot down by the military tanks sent out to stop it. The humans charged with defeating the grass are too taken up with everyday struggles to succeed, and it eventually turns the whole world into a greener pasture, shoot by shoot. Moore’s writing was influenced by his experience in the Dust Bowl; this work takes the opposite catastrophe to an equivalent extreme.
IV
Ibn al-Nafis, «Theologus Autodidactus», novel, the 1270s
Apocalypse by: CLIMATE CHANGE DUE TO SHIFT IN POSITION OF THE SUN
Written by a doctor from Damascus, «Theologus Autodidactus» aimed to present the teachings of Islam through a rational lens. In it, an orphan spontaneously generated on a desert island is taken to the mainland where he learns many things. He uses what he has learned to deduce the eventual fate of the planet — the sun, he says, is slowly moving closer to the Earth, and is «bound to rise one day in the west.»* This will change the climate so, that much of the surface is either uncomfortably cold or hot. «Crimes and troubles will become prevalent,» including droughts, a diminished role for science, men who look like beasts, and a newly skewed sex ratio (too many women). Eventually, the sun will return to its original position and the dead will rise. *(English translations come from Max Meyerhof and Joseph Schacht’s 1968 edition.
V
Cixin Liu, «Death’s End», science fiction novel, 2010
Apocalypse by: REDUCED DIMENSIONALITY
After getting themselves into a protracted battle with one alien species, humans strategically reveal Earth’s position to the rest of the universe, putting themselves and their enemies in peril. Sure enough, they are soon targeted by more aliens, who send a special dimensional attack to reduce the entire solar system into two dimensions. One by one, the planets are flattened into colorful, geometric expanses – the layers of the earth’s geometry are spread into rings, surrounded by the ocean, which has frozen into snowflakes. It is revealed that the universe once featured a far higher number of dimensions, but slowly lost them due to similar attacks.
VI
Sandro Botticelli, «The Mystical Nativity», painting, 1501
Apocalypse by: CHRIST’S RETURN/THE RELEASE OF THE DEVIL
In the late 1400s, a friar named Girolamo Savonarola arrived in the wealthy, preening city of Florence and began preaching about the end of days. When war swept through the city in the middle of the decade, more and more people began to listen to him, including Sandro Botticelli. The painter’s «Mystical Nativity» is different from most scenes of Christ’s birth – sure, Jesus and Mary are there, and some wise men, but there are also angels embracing ordinary men, and seven small horned devils, fleeing through crevasses in the rocks to the underworld. Botticelli wrote at the top, in shaky Greek, that he had painted this «In the second woe of the Apocalypse, during the release of the devil for three and a half years.»
VII
Peter Greenaway, «The Falls», film, 1980
Apocalypse by: A MYSTERIOUS SCHEME PERPETRATED BY BIRDS
Shot in the style of a BBC Documentary, «The Falls» stitches together 92 vignettes, each starring a victim of the «VUE» or «Violent Unknown Event», that affected millions around the world. Each victim now speaks his or her own unique language. Many are also growing feathers, suffering from bird lice, and/or trying to fly. Evidence mounts that birds were responsible for the catastrophe – fair play for the apocalypse humanity is currently visiting on them.
VIII
Zager and Evans, «In the Year 2525», pop song, 1969
Apocalypse by: GOD SHAKING HIS MIGHTY HEAD
One of the stranger songs to top the Billboard charts: «In the Year 2525» describes various dystopian future scenarios over a haunting chord progression, complete with horn flourishes and brushed drums. 3535? You get all your thoughts from a pill. 6565? You’re picking your children out of «a long glass tube». Once 8510 comes around – in about two minutes, on the 7th chorus – «God is gonna shake his mighty head», they sing, and decide what to do about all this. One option? To «tear it down and start again.» The song was #1 in United States, the UK, Canada, New Zealand, and Ireland. The duo never had another hit.
IX
Mary Shelley, «The Last Man», novel, 1826
Apocalypse by: PLAGUE
After she created one archetype with «Frankenstein», Mary Shelley dipped her toes in another, writing what appears to be the first ever plague-based apocalypse novel. Centered around the trials and tribulations of a group of friends – several of whom bear a close resemblance to people in Shelley’s circle, which included the poet Lord Byron and her own husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley – the novel also makes reference to an encroaching plague. This backdrop slowly envelops the rest of the action, killing off all but one person, who befriends a sheepdog and wanders the lonely landscape. «The game is up!» the Last Man himself says, near the work’s end. «We must all die!»