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Apocalypse How?

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Mixed media digital artwork combining found imagery from vintage magazines and books with painted and textured elements. The overall hues are blues, yellows and reds. The illustration is split in two by a red and yellow line running vertically through the image at a slight angle. On the left side of this line is the black and white archive image od the head and upper body of a man with a white beard wearing a suit from the Victorian era. The top half of his head from his nose up has been replaced with strips of newspapers arranged in a step formation to resemble a Mayan temple. The first level of newspaper has the word 'Revelations' in all caps. As the levels rise the words, 'calendar', December 21st', 'Maya' and '2012' appear in newspaper print. At the top of the temple structure is a bright light and an explosion of red and yellow wedges shooting up into the blue background. A large crack runs down through the temple. On the right side of the vertical lines, the image of this temple structure is duplicated and enlarged to reveal it in more detail and crop out the man's lower head. A small figure can now be seen flying through the air, propelled by the force of the explosion.
Deciding a date for the end of the world. © Gergo Varga (varrgo.com) for Wellcome Collection.

We humans have predicted our own doom over and over in a myriad of dramatic ways, from the Biblical apocalypse to movies like ‘The Day After Tomorrow’, with its enormous climate-shift tsunami. In this seven-part series, historian Charlotte Sleigh explores previous prophecies and sciences of annihilation, asking what we can learn from them. Hope, depression, fear, inspiration, selfishness and altruism resulted at different times and in different places. Our appetite for epic disaster tales makes it difficult to imagine how climate change will take place – or rather, is already happening. Climate change is different from the rest, but with the benefit of history, we might approach the brink a little more wisely this time.

Deciding a date for the end of the world

When will the world end? Charlotte Sleigh explores how our obsession with dates and dramatic imaginings of the end can distract us from the dangers slowly creeping up on us.

Devilry and doom in 1666

Disastrous events and a significant combination of numbers signalled the end – or perhaps a new beginning – in 1666. But for some, this feverish period fuelled unprecedented inventiveness and development.

It’s getting mighty crowded

Mid-20th-century population-density research on mice produced a whiskered apocalypse, predicted to become the fate of humans too. But perhaps a more compassionate approach could fend this off.

When the sun goes down

Despite the country’s colonial and industrial dominion, the finest minds of Victorian Britain began to fear the devastating effects of declining natural resources. Even the death of the sun.

The Martians are coming

For over a hundred years, antagonistic alien invaders have been a popular focus for the imagined end of the world. But the destructive consequences of human behaviour is far more frightening.

The big freeze

In recent years we’ve come to realise that global heating is our biggest threat. But it’s hard to shake off the fear of a return to ice-age conditions, the predominant narrative since the late 17th century.

Coasting to catastrophe

In climate change, everything – and everyone – is connected. The watery process that will gradually cut off the Isle of Thanet from the British mainland has begun, and everyone in the UK needs to pay attention.