Apocalypse...Whenever

By Ken Mooney

The end is nigh! But just how nigh? And who on earth uses that word anyway?

 

Apocalypse…Whenever looks at just some of the ways our world and our lives might come to an end, all from the safe space of knowing it just hasn't happened…yet.

 

Ken Mooney travels from the dinosaurs of the distant past to the future of an exploding sun, visiting AIDS to zombies, with some stops for whacky weather, divine destruction and villainous viruses. Not to mention the horrible humans determined to destroy us all.

 

Be scared. Be amused. And be prepared!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brave Gods Press
• Release date: Oct 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201915087

Ken Mooney

Since a young age, Ken Mooney wanted to save the world. Or at least to talk about it. It’s sort of an ongoing theme of his work, and he doesn’t realise that until after he’s written something, only to find out that it’s bang on-trend, and that just makes him love it all the more. Ken has worked in TV advertising, market research and even got his start in the dreaded world of call-centres. He holds an MA in English from Trinity College Dublin. Stories have always been his first love, and in amongst reading all those comics, watching all those films and playing all those video games, he wanted to share his own stories. Ken has written two fantasy novels: Godhead and The Hades Contract bring the Greek gods to the present day in a dark horror, with a number of complimentary shorts. He has contributed to a number of anthologies and published two non-fiction books: The Little Book Of The End Of The World is a tongue-in-cheek look at different thoughts and theories on the end of the world and The Astrocytoma Diaries chronicles that time he got diagnosed with a brain tumour. He has also written Tackling The Issue and After The Tackle, gay romance focusing on some of the angers and fears in the LGBTQ community, You can reach Ken on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads and his own website and blog. Ken lives in Dublin, Ireland with his husband.

Book preview

Also by Ken Mooney

(Fiction)

GODHEAD

THE HADES CONTRACT

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Stories From The Last Olympiad:

THE FALL OF BACCHUS

THE LIBATIONS

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TACKLING THE ISSUE

AFTER THE TACKLE

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TRUST ISSUES: A COLLECTION OF STORIES

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(Non-Fiction)

THE LITTLE BOOK OF THE END OF THE WORLD

THE ASTROCYTOMA DIARIES

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(Anthologies)

DARK CARNIVAL: Anthology Of Horror

THE FACES OF THE CRYING GIRL

Acknowledgements

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Life has changed since The Little Book Of The End Of The World was published in 2014, a book that I’ve updated and turned into Apocalypse...Whenever. Those involved in the original book still deserve thanks – and there are now extras too.

In its original form, the book was published while I was having treatment for a cancerous brain tumour, and that sure puts things into perspective, making the End Of The World feel like it’s very close. As such, I want to specifically thank the staff at Beaumont Hospital and St. Luke’s Hospital in Dublin who have been looking after me ever since, and really help to put the apocalypse into context.

Other special thanks go to:

My family, who gave me everything I ever needed: like most families, I didn’t realise this until years later.

Dan, my partner when The Little Book Of The End Of The World was published, and now my husband. At some stage, you won’t need to tell me that you believe in me, and eventually I might believe you. But that’s not an excuse to stop.

Sarah Cunningham – your illustrations brought to life crazy ideas and weird concepts I thought were confined to my head. Working together has been a pleasure and I’m looking forward to doing it again.

Roque Romero and MJ Amero – while Roque has rocked an amazing cover for this new-ish book, the two of you are great friends and it’s an honour to have you.

Declan Flynn – an old school friend and the original commissioning editor. Thanks for believing in this little book, and in my ability to make it happen.

Kiera Bruce, Michael Neville, Tim Nagle and anyone else I’ve asked random questions of – now you know why.

Dave & John Hendrick, Bruno Batista, JP Jordan, Tara Ferguson and everyone else involved in and around the creative world within Dublin, people who deliver ass-kicking confidence boosts and advice.

Claire C Riley, Adam Oster, Eli Constant and Wulf Francu Goldgluck – I met a crazy bunch of people all embarking on weird literary journeys at around the same time. You’ve provided great company and friendship, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Introduction

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This is a book about the End Of The World: consider yourself warned.

It’s not a simple thing to write about; after all, the world is a big place and there are many ways in which it could end. This book addresses just some of them, whether they be interesting, entertaining, or just downright terrifying.

We humans think about the End Of The World a lot. We talk about it; we write about it; and boy, do we worry about it. We make plans for what we will do if, and when, it happens...and what we might do if, and when, it doesn’t.

With those hopes and fears, the End Of The World is an interesting phenomenon, capturing the imagination with imagery of fire, brimstone and gigantic monsters. It also reminds us of our own mortality and poses a massive question: what will we do when faced with our imminent death?

The End Of The World affects us on an intimate, personal level and in a larger, cultural way. Whole religions and philosophies have developed around it, taking fears about the End Of The World as a starting point, others insisting salvation is possible and, perhaps more importantly, the faithful won’t be affected at all.

Some beliefs don’t just have ideas about how the world will end, but exactly when, what can be done to ensure we survive...and to know exactly those that won’t.

The End Of The World has also become serious business. Waiting for it overshadows whole lives, destroys cultures and starts wars. It is no laughing matter...until you have lived through a similar crisis, and then it becomes something to joke about over a pint.

A lot of this book is more about near misses from the past than things that just might happen in the future; the human species have survived thus far, maybe even earning the right to be flippant about it. In just the last few years, the Mayans had us written off by 2012; the computers, or perhaps the computer programmers, were coming to get us for Y2K; and let’s not forget the mad scientists in their underground bunkers who threatened to wipe us out in the name of the Higgs-boson.

In this book, we will look at some of those misses, hopefully giving us a level of confidence to drive our fears away.

First, we’ll look at the real threats from our home planet, wiping out small communities and leaving us with horror stories that instilled fear in our ancestors. Some of these fears have turned into beliefs, and we’ll look at the religious elements of the End Of The World, how our collective faith, hopes and fears have influenced our thoughts about the Endtimes.

And then, we’ll look at specific cases, from people who thought the world would end (but it didn’t) to events so epic to have coloured our modern thoughts about the Apocalypse.

Don’t let that scare you; we’ve lived through it all. If that doesn’t make you feel invincible, nothing will.

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The Language Of The End Of The World

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There are differing ways of talking about the End Of The World just as there are different theories about how it could happen. These are words, meant to be spoken in whispered tones of fear, just in case the gods or alien overlords overhear. Others are shouted with the religious fervour of someone confidently among the righteous and confident that they’ll be saved.

For the purposes of this book, we’ll be using all these words. Sometimes, they might even be used in the right context.

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The End Of The World

Just in case you’re still unsure what this book is about, we will be looking at either the end of civilisation, or the destruction of our home-planet, however these things happen, and whichever comes first.

As humanity has grown and changed, so too have our thoughts on the End Of The World. For older cultures, unaware of the size or scope of the planet, the End Of The World would have once seemed as small as the elimination of a town or village. With that in mind, this book looks at both smaller acts of destruction and significantly larger ones.

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Endtimes/End Of Days

There are words and phrases used throughout different religious movements to talk about the End Of The World: the Endtimes and End Of Days are just two of them and, if correctly used, would be in a religious context.

These phrases imply that time and humanity will be ended by more than just natural disaster. While the Endtimes are typically seen from a Christian perspective, there are close similarities with the world’s other religions, some being uncomfortably close.

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Eschatology

A Greek word (the ‘ch’ is pronounced like a ‘k’), eschatology is the study of any Endtimes, whether an academic comparison of all religions and their views, or a specific look at a single event.

Eschatology is not exclusively religious: modern studies include politics and technology in such discussions and commentary, becoming as equally important as the religious elements.

And on that note, congratulations: by picking up this book, you’ve confirmed yourself as an amateur eschatologist.

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Apocalypse

One of the widest-used words to describe and discuss the End Of The World, ‘apocalypse’ is also the least appropriate.

‘Apocalypse’ is a Greek word meaning ‘removing a veil,’ used to refer to a realisation of knowledge. The word is often used interchangeably with ‘Revelation,’ the name of the last book of the Bible wherein the writer outlines a dream about the End Of The World – this dream is apocalyptic because of the realisations from the dream, not the events within.

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Armageddon

Derived from religious references to the End Of The World across Christian, Jewish and Muslim faiths, Armageddon specifically refers to the place where a great battle between good and evil will take place. The name is mentioned in the Bible, possibly coming from ‘Har Megiddo’ or ‘the hill of Megiddo,’ a real location since the Bronze Age, previously a city and now part of modern Israel.

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Dystopia

Dystopia is a word proven very popular in recent years, especially in a fictional context – if utopia is a paradise, then dystopia is its natural opposite, a place marked by corrupt governments, starvation and disease.

Sounds familiar, right?

Such worlds go hand-in-hand with post-Apocalyptic fiction, with writers, artists and philosophers who ponder how civilisation will respond to an event that changes the world dramatically. leaving some of us alive to forage in whatever remains.

Part One

The Angry Earth

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Given what the human ego is like, it’s very easy to pose with confidence for a selfie in the face of the Apocalypse – until we remember what this planet has already been through.

As a species, humans have only been occupying this rock for the last 200,000 years. On a planet approximately 4.5 billion years old, that makes us a tiny blip on the radar – for the mathematically minded, human occupancy of the Earth merely accounts for a portion of a single percent. In the intergalactic court of natural order, we humans probably don’t even have a case to argue for squatter’s rights.

During our tenancy, the Earth has thrown several things our way; we call them ‘natural disasters’ because of the effects they have had on civilisation, but they’re standard parts of the planet’s lifecycle.

Chapter One

Planet-Killers And Creators

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Of all the things this planet throws our way, they do more damage to humans and manufactured structures than to the planet itself. For humans, these events cause a loss of life or limb, but to the planet, they are just like a minor case of acne.

But before we look at internal threats, we should look at the bigger picture – what if those threats come from outside?

Like the neighbourhood’s bratty kids, the universe tends to throw rocks at our windows. As humankind looks to the sky with hope and dreams, there remain things out there waiting for their opportunity to fall on us.

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What Killed The Dinosaurs?

66 million years ago, dinosaurs ruled the earth. That’s what Richard Attenborough told us in Jurassic Park, and I won’t hear it any other way.

There was plenty of life roaming our planet around then, and scientists have found proof of insects, lizards, birds and fish not too dissimilar to the animals still alive today.

So why can’t we see any dinosaurs, dammit?

The idea of an asteroid killing the dinosaurs creates cinematic visions of a massive impact, with the dinosaurs dying rapidly in the shockwaves.

What likely happened was slower and far less dramatic, with any impact raising a dust-cloud that blocked sunlight, killing off needed plant-life and having lasting effects on the food chain.

Proof of this brings us to Chicxulub in Mexico. The area’s interesting topography and crater means this could be the site of a massive Impact Event, with geological studies in the 1970s appearing to confirm this, with said impact occurring around 66 million years ago.

Brace yourself for the figures; for an event affecting the Earth so dramatically, the Chicxulub crater is about 180 kilometres wide, probably caused by an asteroid of about 10 kilometres in diameter – about the size of New York’s Central Park.

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Asteroids, Meteors & Comets – What’s the difference?

Like the End Of The World, these three words are used almost interchangeably by us mere lay people, although there are specific differences.

But of course, only a certain type of person argues semantics when a giant ball of rock is flying at your planet.

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Asteroids

Asteroids are the dangerous ones, but there isn’t much