The Search for Apocalypse

By Michael R Hutchinson

In "The Search for Apocalypse," author Michael R. Hutchinson delves into the compelling intersections of social media psychology, political theory ideologies, and the power of persuasion in politics. This thought-provoking, free-thinking book probes deep into how our social beliefs systems—from conspiracy theories to climate change crisis narratives—are manipulated by propaganda and woke fake news.

Drawing upon a wide range of historical, scientific, and philosophical perspectives, Hutchinson questions the prevalent societal norms that often rely on 'proof by consensus.' He uncovers the hidden mechanisms that fuel our collective anxieties, from topics ranging from Religion, Democracy, and Political Mass Control to sensationalism and post-truth politics. As we navigate through an era increasingly dictated by alarmist politics and media spin, Hutchinson argues that our responses are not merely reactionary but are outcomes dictated by our genetically inherited herd instinct.

As we find ourselves entangled in a web of mass persuasion, mainstream narratives, cancel culture, and alternative facts, are we merely prisoners of our own primal fears? Find the answers for yourself in "The Search for Apocalypse."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mulberry House Publishing
• Release date: Nov 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781739577216

Book preview

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THE SEARCH FOR

APOCALYPSE

Published by Mulberry House Publishing

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-7395772-0-9

eBook ISBN: 978-1-7395772-1-6

About the Author

Mike Hutchinson

Author

Michael R Hutchinson

AMIEE, MIERE, FIIE, FIMgt

Born 29 November 1941

Educated at Chiswick County Grammar School

And Brunel College (now University)

1958-1963 5 year Indentured Apprenticeship – Lucas Group

1964-1972 Electronic design engineer on Hawker Harrier Cockpit Head Up Display system - Smiths Aerospace

1972-1974 Project engineer on MRCA Eurofighter

1974-1991 Founder – Director – Arkon Group Ltd

1992-2018 Founder – Director – Chairman – The Traffic Group Ltd (Retired)

This book is for all the ‘Deniers’, Sceptics, Free thinkers and those who question the common view. It is also for those who challenge a ‘proof by consensus’ as being the only ‘truth’.

……..the path through life is scattered with cowpats, from the Devil’s own Satanic Herd!

Lord Edmund Blackadder (1986)

(with apologies to Rowen Atkinson, Ben Elton & Richard Curtis)

"Modern humans have a

subliminal genetic need to

satisfy an inherited fear of the unknown, so the desire for a

reactive response is pre-conditioned"

M. R. Hutchinson - Author (2021)

Contents

Chapter

Dedications

Acknowledgements and Bibliography

Foreword

Introduction

Chapter 1. Religion

Chapter 2. Democracy

Chapter 3. Pollution

Chapter 4. Pandemic

Chapter 5. The Internet

Chapter 6. Climate Change

Chapter 7. The Woke Revolution

Chapter 8. Summary

Chapter 9. The Armageddon Scenario

Epilogue

Dedications

This book is dedicated to my dear wife Hilary, for her patience, support, and understanding during the four years of its compilation and drafting, and our lifetime together. No matter how the winds of life have blown around the balloon of my ambitions, Hilary has never let go of the string.

It is also for our sons Peter and Philip of whom we are justly proud and to whom the contents of this book will come as no surprise.

Published 2023, Printed in England

All rights reserved including reproduction in whole or in part by any form

© Copyright Hutchinson family 2023

Acknowledgements and Bibliography

In an attempt to get an informed understanding of the human response phenomenon, and the resulting outcomes of the various cause and effect circumstances,

I considered it prudent to consult the views and conclusions of those scientists and specialists who have majored in what I believe to be relevant subjects. My research included, but was not limited to, books and reports by the following

authors as listed, covering the various topical subject matters and disciplines

referred to in my narrative:-

• Douglas Murray – The Madness of Crowds

• Douglas Murray – The War on the West

• Richard Dawkins – The God Delusion

• John the Elder – The Book of Revelation

• Charles Darwin – On the Origin of Species

• Stephen Clarke – A 1000 Years of Annoying the French

• Jacob F Fields – A History of Europe

• Dr Tim Ball – Human Caused Global Warming

• Dr Bruce Bunker – The Mythology of Global Warming

• Prof Ian Plimer – Not for Greens

• Senator Al Gore Jnr – An Inconvenient Truth

• Dr M J Sangster – The Real Inconvenient Truth

• Prof. Peter Taylor – CHILL – (A reassessment of climate change theory)

• Patrick Moore – Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom

• Dr Yuval Noah Harari – Sapiens

• Dr Yuval Noah Harari – Homo Deus

• Dr V Coleman – (The) Coming Apocalypse

I have listed those books which are of specific topical interest at the end of each chapter.

My particular thanks go to Jeremy Collins of Design 4 Results for his patience and expertise in creating the illustrations and his help with the structure and layout.

Foreword

I have chosen the title of this book to reflect the sentiment of the New Testament Book of Revelation, which I consider to be a very appropriate 2000 year-old prophecy, written by John the Elder in 96AD. It was forecasting what turned out to be a perpetually imminent apocalyptic event, which would now seem to be a very fitting sentiment for the current times. I believe it may be on the verge of coming true, for very different reasons to those originally perceived. It is Possible that John the Elder recognised the potential value in the human reaction to a predicted fear, and the control that it can facilitate.

The original Four Horsemen that John envisaged – Conquest, War, Famine, and Death - were represented by ghostly all-powerful spectres, able to deliver an apocalyptic end for non-believers, ostensibly dividing humanity into ‘believers’ and ‘deniers’. The interpretation being that non-compliance within a society will bring about an apocalyptic outcome for those who do not comply with the ‘official’ mantra. Although the Horsemen of The Apocalypse are still at the forefront of the affray today, they are representative of a rather different set of plagues and pestilences than those which were envisaged at that time. In today’s world, it is necessary to recalibrate such apocalyptic prophecies to give their magnitude more relevance and I have selected their titles to reflect a modern corresponding activity, which represents the focus of the related chapter content. It is the consequential conclusion of each chapter which inevitably leads one to believe that today’s Global Society could be facing an imminent evolutionary change which, if realised, could be the apocalyptic scenario so often anticipated.

The threat of an apocalyptic outcome has been used at various times for the enforcement of dogma, but such threats have seldom, if ever, materialised. It is the threat and not the event which plays most effectively on the instinctive human fear of the unknown, a fear with such an appetite that it can reach addictive proportions. This addiction appears to be most effective in the posting of political directives, which, owing to their short life span, are seldom achieved or held to account.

My intention is to show that the genetically embedded fear factor, inherited as a survival instinct, remains embedded in the modern human psyche and, consequently, there is a subliminal need to constantly satisfy this instinct. It is reflected in the ease with which modern humans react to a perceived threat, whether the threat be real, implied, sought, or contrived, and especially if it is claimed to herald an apocalyptic outcome.

Having read thousands of pages of structured fact-based arguments by eminent historians, scientists, and philosophers, in related topics and disciplines during my research for this book’s compilation, I am confident that the subject matter and examples I have chosen to support my theory are a firm basis for the considered opinion that I have presented.

It is worth noting however that, in the case of climate change and anthropogenic global warming (AGW), I found very little published fact-based arguments to support the claims made for a causation by human endeavours. It does appear that the majority of support is of an emotionally charged rhetoric in response to a deliberately dissociate correlation of data. Many of the arguments, in my opinion, reflect a perfect example of the misrepresentation of information, possibly with the explicit intention to mislead or even misinform. In other cases, I found that alarmist computer modelling predictions were sufficient to cause a disproportionate but predictable human response.

_______________

The theory that I am postulating is that humans will react in a very predictable manner when presented with threatening circumstances, owing to a genetically inherited response mechanism, the herd instinct, which is the physical manifestation of an evolutionary development.

I will present the case that this fear of the unknown, whether the source be real, perceived, or implied, will, once established, trigger this mechanism and give rise to a pre-determined outcome. I am convinced that a recognition of this genetically programmed response is now used to control and manipulate large numbers of people, and potentially whole populations, to behave in a required manner so as to achieve a desired outcome.

I have attempted to explain with the use of sample subjects how this phenomenon, exacerbated by a herd instinct, can have far reaching consequences of potentially cataclysmic proportions, especially when it is used to deliberately deceive an audience. Hopefully I have succeeded.

Introduction

I have always been fascinated by society’s propensity for bad news and its obsessive attraction to sensationalism, irrespective of the source of the information or its authenticity. I have observed that any news, irrespective of the subject matter, has to be an order higher than any similar news that preceded it, assumedly to keep the interest of its target audience. It is very noticeable that any ‘good news’ is always relegated to a low, or even the lowest, level of importance across the breadth of the media, especially by the ‘tabloid press’, and that if there is a sufficient supply of bad news available to report on, then any ‘good news’ will be consigned to the ‘insufficient time’ bin.

The media is so aware of this phenomenon that reported events that are considered to be insufficiently sensational to attract attention are enhanced, in the majority of cases, to increase the level of sensationalism. There is now, apparently, a need to shock the audience to ever increasing levels, which in itself creates the need to continually escalate matters to hold their interest. It is as though the reporting of good news is no longer acceptable as news worthy.

For example, the weather is now frequently reported as the hottest, wettest, coldest or driest ‘since records began’ and if it isn’t a record, then since some specified date for a negatively inferred comparison such as ‘in living memory’, or alternatively it is compared to some distant venue that is even hotter, colder, drier or wetter, irrespective of its relevance.

This application of sensationalism now seems to apply to nearly every facet of reported life. It could well be the cause of untold levels of stress across all age groups, now generally referred to as ‘Mental Health Issues’. The constant threat of apocalyptic events is a heavy load for anyone to bear, especially when one is accused of being the source of the problem.

It may be that, apart from the need to sell news, this situation has been exacerbated over recent decades by a technical innovation which has unintentionally conspired to feed the human fascination for news of a sensational nature - The Internet.

I will illustrate in the following chapters how I believe that evolutionary factors have created a subliminal desire among humans to react to events in a certain way and how the Internet in particular has reinforced and magnified that effect and created an expectation of, or even a need for, an apocalyptic scenario.

First, we need to consider how this hunger for fear and sensationalism has arisen!

Despite the fact that all life on earth is made up of a multitudinous variety of life forms, the higher more recently evolved species can be divided into two categories. Those that have an instinct for small family units and those that favour a community structure based on a mutually supportive existence.

The family unit operates on a hierarchical system with a dominant alpha male or female leader who is constantly challenged to test their ability to remain fit to lead and protect the family group. The primates and predators tend to fall within this category. The rest of the animal species fall into the ‘community’ or ‘mutual support groups’ category, whether that be for the benefit of an adequate food supply, defence, or just for group survival. Such instincts have developed

over many millions of years and have, with few exceptions, proved to be a successful strategy, especially within their own environment. The success of this structured community arrangement is borne out by the stability of the framework within which it has operated for so long. Any significant disruptions caused by natural outside influences such as extreme weather or violent physical events, for example ice ages or volcanic activity, have done little to change this evolutionary order.

However, when modern humans (homo sapiens) appeared on the scene around 100,000 years ago, a new aspect in the order of things is introduced. Evolution had conferred on these humans the ability to adapt to whatever environment was prevailing at any given time and, later on their travels, to actually change the local environment to meet their needs. Also, they could survive equally well in small isolated family groups or in larger mutually supportive communities.

They had developed an increased level of intelligence and the ability to organise and co-operate as a group. Evidently evolution had given them the ability to alter the established order for survival. Being descendants of the higher primates, they had also inherited dexterity, group thought and binocular vision, together with the predatorial nature of the hunter, which was to prove a key factor in their future success. In addition to this they had, by some evolutionary means, developed imagination, something that was possibly to set them apart and to become a deciding factor for successful and progressive human development.

So, when modern humans began their exodus from Africa some 75,000 or more years ago, although their numbers were small, they were socially organised. Their hunter-gatherer skills and ability to adapt enabled them to survive and multiply, irrespective of the variety of environments they encountered on their journey across the globe.

Evolution had produced an intelligent animal that could organise itself, individually or in groups, as predator hunters or in gatherer communities, and for whom the variety of environments and obstacles that were encountered on their travels presented no insurmountable problems. It would seem that the process of evolutionary selection had produced the ultimate species. However, there was one other trait which had been passed down and which may have lay relatively dormant until a later time when expansion of the populations created larger communities - The Herd Instinct. It was this Herd Instinct that kept the communities safe from predators by triggering a mutually communicated reaction to a danger signal.

_______________

When it became technically possible to create millions of micro transistors on a single silicon wafer in the 1970’s, the design and production of low power high performance products became limited only by the imagination of the designers. This increase in electronic design capability gave birth to a new electronic communications network which expanded rapidly and soon reached into all areas of the world, and which was to be christened ‘The Internet’. By the early 2000’s, the development of personal mobile phones had advanced to the point where they were now mini computers, complete with a whole range of communication capabilities, including an inbuilt high-resolution photo and video camera. The convenience of such small personal handheld devices, connected directly to The Internet, drove demand for them to the point where, within ten years, they were a necessity for everyone under the age of 60 years old, worldwide. The market and technology drive had been such that, within only a few more years, instant worldwide communication, complete with video link, was not only available, but ‘de rigueur’ for the vast majority of the populations.

We will consider (in Chapter 5) how the Internet has boosted the effect of the Herd Instinct by increasing the natural transmission of mutual communication.

For many decades previous to the Internet, news was transmitted around the world by telex, fax or telephone to a receiving office and then into print or a recording. It then had to be transported to distribution centres for sale to the public. The news items would, by necessity, have been transmitted via several levels of media and passed through various checks prior to distribution. Consequently, there would have been a time lapse between the event and public receipt of the news. This had the effect of limiting the news to targeted audiences, especially on a national basis, and generally at that time, to a relatively mature male audience after work in the evening.

So, for example, an event in Australia may have reached a limited and discerning audience in England several days after actually happening. The world was still a relatively large place. By contrast, the advent of the Internet and mobile phone technology, allowed for the instantaneous transmission of information, by text, voice or video, to anywhere in the world, as it was happening, 24/7, and most importantly among the younger elements of the populations. What’s more, such a transmission would certainly be lacking any local, circumstantial or topographical information, which could seriously affect its authenticity.

I will use the following example as an illustration of such a possibility.

Let us assume that a large copse of Gum trees in Australia is on fire, not an unusual event, but, capture it full screen on a mobile phone video and send it to several friends in England with the caption ‘the forest here is on fire’ and a different scenario arises. Within several minutes of the video being taken it could have been shared with a million people, some of whom may have friends or relatives in Australia who are then duly concerned and pass it on, possibly even before their national media has reported it. It may also possibly have been picked up by a freelance journalist surfing the media for the odd news tit-bit and BOOM, the information has just moved to a much higher level. The internet has made the world a very small, very well-connected, and potentially, very scary place.

The following reports illustrate just how easily the herd instinct can be triggered by the media, whether by accident or intention.

In 1938, a radio programme of H G Wells’ ‘The War of the Worlds’ had been transmitted in America, narrated by Orson Wells and unheralded, for effect. A large section of the viewing public had taken it as a news bulletin and panicked, leaving their towns in droves. Admittedly it was at the height of an interest in interplanetary travel and occupation by Aliens, but it serves to show just how easily panic can be transmitted, especially without a check on the validity of the news.

Similarly, there is the instance of a whole town, again in America, being instantly evacuated when someone called in with the urgent news that the ‘dam had burst’. The news had gone unquestioned but was in fact an unfounded rumour, and the dam was many miles away anyway, but it illustrates just how easy it is to trigger the herd instinct.

Panic, arising from a fear for your safety, is the trigger for a reaction which can spread through a crowd with alarming speed. It is the ‘flight’, with or without any attempt at ‘fight’, which is the manifestation of self-preservation. In the animal world, a herd of deer, a shoal of fish or a flock of birds will react immediately in response to a single input of perceived local danger. The warning is transmitted mutually, coherently and instantly, no matter how large the herd, shoal or flock.

Imagine for a moment that you are standing next to someone in a crowd. Unbeknown to you a suspicious item has been discovered in the area. The crowd around you suddenly starts to move and the man next to you shouts ‘Run!’.

You now face a choice. You have a split second to make a decision.

You can either:-

1) hesitate to consider the circumstances and your options:-

eg. (i) is it a real problem? (ii) do I need to run? or

2) listen, react and run, without question.

If you choose 1) – it may be real and you could die, or – it may be a false alarm and you’re safe.

Or 2) – react immediately and run – it’s the safe option.

All this to be decided in a split second. It’s a no brainer, instinct kicks in and you go for the safe option 2) – every time. Even if you choose to question the alarm, you will still be swept along with the crowd reaction.

One only has to observe the reaction of a flock of birds or a herd of deer to a sharp noise to appreciate how strong and effective the instinct for a reaction to a perceived threat is. It is this ‘Herd Instinct’ which we have inherited after millions of years of evolution that may express itself in varied or modified ways. But the need to satisfy the inherited trigger mechanism is greater than the need to verify or authenticate the source of the fear, the reaction is subliminal. An effect that can be utilised by the powers that be for whatever purpose.

It is interesting to note that in cases or events where a threat is recognised or can be quantified, then a herd instinct reaction is less