And Samson took hold of the two middle pillars upon which the house stood, and on which it was borne up, of the one with his right hand, and of the other with his left. And Samson said, Let me die with the Philistines. And he bowed himself with all his might; and the house fell upon the lords, and upon all the people who were in it. So the dead whom he slew at his death were more than they whom he slew in his life.—Judges 16: 29-30
Ever since I was a kid I’ve been fascinated by the end of the world, by eschatology. From H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds to The Day the Earth Stood Still, I’ve been rooting for humankind to falter, and for a plague of hail to fall out of heaven. It’s a particularly adolescent view of history, I’ll admit, that says the world must end when our own lives cease. But this is the sort of stuff I think about. I love Sir Martin Rees’ elegant Our Final Hour, and John Leslie’s cheerful End of the World (which offers mankind a 30 percent chance of lasting 500 years). I’m a pessimist, but I’m not ashamed by my worldview, which I hope will one day be vindicated when the skies are darkened by marauding spaceships. Lately, I find myself contemplating our devastation even more than usual. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been thinking about the insanity of offshore drilling. Or maybe it’s because I’m reading two books from Princeton University Press: Apocalypse: Earthquakes, Archaeology and the Wrath of God by Amos Nur with Dawn Burgess and T. rex and the Crater of Doom by Walter Alvarez. As a geophysicist, Nur contends that earthquakes—not war or the wrath of god—are what brought about the end of Troy and Teotihuacan. Nur’s neo-catastrophism is disappointing from a religious perspective, but it offers hope from other quarters. Alvarez’s book details an event some 65 million years ago when a large comet or asteroid slammed into the north coast of the Yucatan peninsula, causing half the genera of plants and animals to die. Geology and paleontology have traditionally held that changes in earth history were calm and gradual. But now it has become apparent that catastrophes have played a critical role. Whatever the agent of change, I’m ready. My pleasure in contemplating the demise of our civilization remains undiminished. As our president once said, bring them on.
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