The Apocalypse Goes Mainstream
About 40 percent of American adults believe that we are living in the “end times,” according to a 2022 poll. Where did that idea come from?
I grew up on a cul-de-sac in Arkansas, in a suburban house with a basketball hoop, a trampoline and a few years’ worth of food stored in the garage. My parents built industrial shelves and lined them with gleaming canisters of freeze-dried potatoes and green beans, boxes of stabilized milk and Ziplocs of beef jerky. They also stored hundreds of pouches of mac n’ cheese for me, the family’s pickiest eater.
My parents believed that the apocalypse loomed. They weren’t alone.
About 40 percent of American adults said in a 2022 poll that we are living in the “end times.” For much of the country, it’s an idea that’s almost mundane. The rapture is spliced into their Sunday sermons and enchants their world with a fearsome possibility. I’d hear bad news on television as a kid and think, is this it? Has the time come?