It’s apocalypse now — or else!

Geoff Ward
5 min readSep 18, 2023
Fire and flood: is the end nigh?

Future apocalypse, prophesied down the centuries, has today moved out of the entertainment sphere, out of all those disaster movies and sci-fi novels, and into the political and scientific arenas.

Twenty-first century apocalypticism, for overtly political ends, now abounds in mainstream climate change and pandemic rhetoric where even well-educated people succumb to apocalyptic paroxysms — for example, utterances about ‘global boiling’, the ‘planet on fire’, the ‘climate timebomb’ and the ‘even deadlier’ pandemics coming our way.

To ensure general acceptance of such pessimistic scenarios and maintain control of the establishment narrative, suppression of cogent alternative and ameliorating viewpoints is a must, and dissenters, whether it be in politics, media or academia, must be persecuted and/or ridiculed, with livelihoods and reputations relegated to the chopping block.

Apocalypse now — or else!

Political, scientific and technological discourse and, of course, the mainstream media, is permeated with news of abounding cataclysmic threats couched in apocalyptic jargon and communicated with almost evangelical fervour.

If wrathful angels are no longer descending from heaven as in the old days, then unidentified anomalous phenomena certainly are. NASA, in its recent release of its findings on

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Geoff Ward

Writer, journalist, book editor, poet, musician and tutor in literature and creative writing (MA and BA Hons degrees in English literature).