Few of us expect the year 2000 to coincide with Armageddon. So why do we behave as though we are living at the end of the world?
An original inquiry into humanity's obsession with its own ultimate demise, Marina Benjamin asks whether it is possible to tap the secrets of the future, and if so is religious prophecy or rational prognosis the more reliable guide? Why did the Jews all but banish apocalyptic books formt he Bible? What has the universal bar code to do with the book of Revelation? And what does any of this have to do with the rest of us?
The apocalyptic myth has lived many lives; from Patmos to Waco, the Reformation to the French Revolution, Joanna Southcott's virgin birth to Joseph Smith's empire building. Now, argues Benjamin, it imbues film, fiction and fitness culture, Biosphere 2 and the bizarre practice of cryonics. Religious or secular, the apocalypse is a grand narrative that refuses to die.
