The End of the World as We Know It

Three perspectives on TEOTWAWKI

'The Fall of Babylon' (1819) by John Martin

This week I have been playing with ChatGPT, a remarkable AI chatbot that answers wild queries with uncannily accurate responses.

ChatGPT’s dialogue between 16th century Scottish reformer John Knox and English dandy Quentin Crisp on the morality of the Chapman Brothers’ art.

I’ve asked it to create a dialogue between John Knox and Quentin Crisp on the morality of the Chapman Brothers’ art, it has been helping me code an On Kawara daily date painting, and, as you’ll see later in the newsletter, it has been writing articles for me in the style of Tom Wolfe.

ChatGPT starts out as fun, soon becomes useful, and ends up scary — but not in an AI-takes-over-the-world way. What makes it scary, to me at least, is how deeply, boringly reasonable it is. Despite prodding it to be megalomanical, it always ends up offering liberal platitudes.

Ever since ELIZA, the Rogerian chatbot developed in 1964, people have been happy to talk to any computer that will listen. We are soothed by talk therapy and this week it has convinced me that the collapse of civilization is not imminent. As someone who has been vividly imagining the apocalypse for decades, this was something of a relief…

The End of the World as We Know It (TEOTWAWKI)

When the pandemic hit and lockdowns were being hinted at back in March 2020, there was an odd fixation on making sure you had enough toilet paper. It's one thing to be confined by the government, quite another to have it happen without a clean bum. For those of us who had read up on 'prepping' literature, this felt incredibly lame. What you needed was tinned food, bags of rice, bottles of water and medical supplies — not toilet paper.

Thankfully, civilization survived COVID-19, largely thanks to the efforts of manual labourers who carried on working through it all. But what if it hadn't? I remember thinking to myself at the beginning of the pandemic: “OK. This is it, you knew this was coming. Get your act together.”

When did I first become obsessed with the end of the world …

Radiation poisoned Steve Guttenberg in The Day After.

Perhaps it was after watching The Day After (1983), a TV movie in which my hero from Police Academy, Steve Guttenberg, suffers radiation poisoning after a nuclear blast. I remember cocooning myself within my duvet cover as I imagined the bombs falling down. The duvet cover protected me and helped me to sleep.

Or maybe it was after reading Z for Zachariah, a book for children about a girl living in a village that has miraculously escaped from mutually-assured destruction.

At school, we watched the BBC’s adaptation of The Day of the Triffids (1981) and saw how quickly society could go from civil to savage overnight. There were even cartoons explaining how to deal with radiative fallout. The apocalypse was something you got used to if you were born during the Cold War — it permeated your mental landscape.

But the end never came: the Soviet Union collapsed, the Cold War was over, and we enjoyed the mindless hedonism of the nineties. Things could only get better …

Interest in the end of the world returned at the end of the century, with some taking seriously the millennium bug, a supposed flaw in computer systems that would render useless all computers on 1 January 2000. I remember my Gran receiving a Christmas card from the owner of the village pub telling her to prepare for societal collapse. This was it. He had his 4x4 and his survival kit, ready to live his best life as the masses scavenged. Again, it never happened.

Still from Threads (1984)

Around 2004, I became a regular reader of K-Punk, Mark Fisher's seminal blog, which turned me on to the ultimated post-apocalyptic drama, Threads (1984):

So many electrifying images, worthy of the most intense film: an almost oneiric scene in which, amidst swirling radioactive dust, a woman — her eyes coalmine black and totally devoid of affect — clings onto the shrouded corpse of a baby. The eyes, the eyes: vaguely questioning but dazed, dazed. This can't be happening, this is happening, the trauma victim's mantra. Soldiers frisking the dead body of freshly shot looter for a packet of crisps. 'Salt n vinegar. It would be. I hate those.'

The noughties was a good era for the end of the world: Jared Diamond wrote Collapse (2005), Children of Men came out in 2006, then, in August 2007, the first hints of the financial crisis started to be reported:

One key factor unnerving the markets is confusion about the extent of the chaos that could ensue on the back of more risky loans in the US housing market going bad. The sub-prime woes have already prompted concern that Countrywide, America's biggest mortgage provider, could face bankruptcy.

The Guardian, August 2007

The entire house of cards financial system looked liked it was going to come crashing to the ground. What was the economy actually based on? What if we could no longer afford food, medicine and energy? How would we survive?

I started reading survivalist blogs that planned for TEOTWAWKI. They discussed what would happen when there was a breakdown of law and order, mainly what kind of guns and ammunition you’d need. For me, living a relatively cossetted life, the idea that reality would come to bite was exciting.

But I didn't act … at least, not much more than buy some extra packets of lentils. I watched Chris Martenson (whose ‘crash course’ outlines the consequences of peak oil) and didn’t act. I built my life around skills — web design — that wouldn’t be of much use during the next phase rebuilding the world. Was it all just a way of adding flavour to the daily drudgery?

Ewan Morrison, whose most recent novel is about a ‘prepper’, wrote recently about a man who committed suicide when his predictions of peak oil failed to be realised. As Morrison writes:

a belief in a fated and meaningful “end to all life” might seem a more consoling option than a life lived without any kind of guiding narrative at all—a life of meaningless fragments that is itself a “great disappointment.”

To see how I deep I went into this obsession, check out this previously unpublished 2008 piece that I asked my wife to write when I wanted to edit a zine dedicated to TEOTWAWKI.

Living with an apocalyptician

By Laura González

If we talk about going to the cinema, it will be to see Doomsday; if moving home is mentioned, discussion around a self-sufficient compound, near a water supply, will take over any other option. Reader, I married an apocalyptician. This is no ordinary disorder. Like obsessive-compulsion, it involves painstaking study and minute, annoying attention to detail; like psychosis, it requires inhabiting a parallel world, role playing; like neurosis, it implies the certitude that it, a catastrophe, will occur; like hysteria, it revolves around desires and fantasies projected on others. It has the need to ask everyone what they would be and do in the new society, or the rapidity with which one would be dead in the event of different cataclysms. The scenarios are varied: Nuclear attack, climate change (with a variety of different approaches, ranging from hurricanes to droughts or incessant rain), virus, aliens, energy shortage…

The illness even has a technical name: TEOTWAWKI (tee-o-twa-kee), or the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it. Suffering it must be tremendously inconvenient but those of us who help our loved ones through it also need a support system. First, there is the guilt. Here’s how I think: ‘Why am I not caring enough about it? What if it is true? And if it were true, what would I do? What would my skill, my contribution be? Oh my God! I am useless! I do not know how to make cheese, let alone electricity or even candles’. Then, the panic: ‘How would I be able to live without central heating?’

It doesn’t stop there either. One goes through a further stage of fear of hunger, of rape, of anarchy, of the demise of culture, books, films, everything. These fears are particularly confirmed and increased if the ailing husband’s only solace is watching post-apocalyptic films. The genre is vast: from Michael Haneke’s Time of the Wolf (2003) – one of the bleakest – to the charming A boy and his dog (1975) and the endless remakes of Omega Man. In all of them, the stages of fear are carefully rehearsed, ruthlessly displayed, realistically thought through. In the squalid 70s TV series Survivors (re-made by the BBC in 2008), food looks awful, in The invasion of the body snatchers people are correct but empty, in Silent Running, what is left of the world is a ridiculously stuffy spaceship full of sulky residents. It is relentless. What happened to comedy? Oh yes, there’s Idiocracy. Relentless, then, and I haven’t even started with the self-sufficiency oriented, conspiracy based, premonitory, metaphysical, scientific books, (from Philip K Dick’s fictional accounts, to Raymond Kurzweil’s eerily despairing visions of the certain future), or the blogs. TEOTWAWKI talk is everywhere.

These symptoms are accompanied by the side effect of preparing, with the corresponding annoyance at the amount of tinned food that needs to be bought ‘just-in-case’. Apart from inside suitcases and under beds, there is nowhere to fit an extra preserve in our humble two-bedroom home. Camping gear, which we take out on reconnaissance weekends where we try out equipment takes most of our cupboard capacity and makes weekends in Paris a thing of fantasy. Luxury is too luxurious when the end of the world is near. And let me tell you a secret: you should not tell anybody you are preparing, because when TEOTWAWKI happens the people you casually told in the pub, the supermarket queue or in a lift, will come looting. They will remember you told them where you keep those precious cans and water bottles, of course. If there is something that the literature agrees on is that people will be violent, animalistic, lawless, fuelled with hunger, cold, instinct. So, keep your plans to yourself. On top of everything, I have to suffer in silence.

C’est la vie (I am still dreaming of Paris). I love my husband and I will stand by him through this, but I am getting very worried about a particular aspect of his condition. Just type in ‘survivalism’ into Google, to see what I mean. It is contagious! Still, I have to know what I am up against, so I read on. The majority of sites like the survivalist blog are informative. They discuss current affairs and help readers to prepare strategies for any disruption to the current order, economic, political or otherwise. The sensible advice is backed by sound philosophical and critical principles nurtured since the 60s. In fact, apocalypticians exist since the Bible, and TEOTWAWKI, if you think about it, has happened already a few times. Isn’t this what the Aboriginal Australians experienced when the Brits destroyed all they knew? Hasn’t the world seen ice ages before? What we are experiencing now, though, thanks to peek oil, capitalism and globalisation, is unprecedented in its scale. I have to say, the more I read, the more convinced I feel that a catastrophe will happen, if it has not already started. Look around you. The consequences will be unmitigated… Oh dear, the guilt and worry start again. I should go to bed with a Raymond Kurzweil book and try to prepare a little better. I live with an apocalyptician and I fear I am becoming one.

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Now, for a more reasonable assessment of the situation, let’s turn to ChatGPT.

TEOTWAWKI

By ChatGPT, writing in the style of Tom Wolfe.

DALL-E’s apocalyptic 70s sci cover.

As the sun set over the sprawling metropolis, a strange tension filled the air. The normally bustling streets were eerily quiet, and the city's inhabitants had retreated into their homes, nervously awaiting the impending doom that they were convinced was just hours away.

For years, they had been hearing about TEOTWAWKI – the end of the world as we know it – and now, finally, they were certain that it was upon them. Some had stockpiled food and water, others had fortified their homes, and still others had bought guns and ammunition, all in preparation for the day when society would crumble and the rule of law would disappear.

But as the minutes ticked by and the supposed end of the world came and went without incident, a sense of disappointment began to settle over the city. The people emerged from their homes, confused and sheepish, and slowly began to rebuild their lives in the aftermath of their failed doomsday predictions.

This scene, though fictional, is representative of the strange and fascinating phenomenon of contemporary obsessions with TEOTWAWKI. In recent years, the idea of the world coming to an end has captivated the imaginations of millions of people around the globe, inspiring them to take drastic measures to prepare for the end of civilization as we know it.

But what is it about TEOTWAWKI that has people so captivated? And why do they believe that it is just around the corner, despite the lack of any concrete evidence to support such a belief?

To answer these questions, we must first understand the origins of the TEOTWAWKI obsession. The concept of the world coming to an end has been around for centuries, appearing in various forms in religious texts, mythologies, and even science fiction. But it wasn't until the Cold War era that the idea of TEOTWAWKI really took hold in the popular imagination.

With the threat of nuclear war looming over the world, the possibility of the end of the world as we know it became a real concern for many people. And as the decades passed and new threats emerged – from terrorism to climate change – the fear of TEOTWAWKI only grew stronger.

Today, the obsession with TEOTWAWKI has reached a fever pitch, with countless books, websites, and television shows dedicated to the topic. Some people even go so far as to prepare for the end of the world by building elaborate bunkers and stockpiling supplies, convinced that the end is just a matter of time.

But what is it about TEOTWAWKI that makes it so appealing? For some, it may be the thrill of preparing for a disaster, a chance to feel like they are in control of their own fate in the face of overwhelming uncertainty. For others, it may be a way to escape from the dullness and routine of everyday life, a chance to imagine a world where the rules no longer apply.

Despite the appeal of TEOTWAWKI, however, it is important to remember that the end of the world is unlikely to happen anytime soon. While it is true that there are many threats facing the world today, there is no evidence to suggest that the end of the world is imminent.

Instead of focusing on the unlikely possibility of TEOTWAWKI, we should be working to address the real threats facing the world today. By taking action to reduce our carbon emissions, for example, we can help to combat climate change and protect the planet for future generations.