Volcanic eruptions and the end of the world

The eruption of volcano EyjafjallajÖkull has had its fun side. John Cleese allegedly paid a taxi driver $5 100 to travel 675 miles across a portion of Europe because he could not catch his plane. Oh, it was a car pool of people. As already argued, that taxi ride could be movie-making stuff, filled with one-liners.

“How in hell do we deal with a car crash in all this infernal ash?”

“Elementary”, intones Cleese in that dry, crisp voice of his, a smirk curling his stiff upper lip. “First, aim your head directly at the windshield. Then thrust your feet back to assist your sudden forward propulsion from the back seat. Resolutely take the windshield head on. Then rapidly fragment in all sorts of directions on the swiftly crumpling car bonnet”. Casually munches on a hamburger after flicking off some ash.

But I was more interested in any wannabe global doomsayers, now that half of Europe is lightly shrouded with ash. I knew I would easily be beaten to it: The internet was already rife with apocalyptic natter about the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull.

Our recorded history is filled with events that are or were regarded as signs of the end of the world. There is global heating/warming, the bubonic plague, Aids, the nuclear threat. Then there are meteors plunging close to Earth, which would have resulted in the virtual obliteration of humankind and about which movies have been made. There are the cults who give up their “flesh bodies” so their souls can make their way into spacecraft that came with meteors and so forth. Movies about one version of the apocalypse or the other are often standard Hollywood fare, because the viewership makes for worthwhile box office takings. The re-make of The Day The Earth Stood Still (2008), or The Road (2009) are just two of many examples. It seems built into our genes, our psyche, to keep reminding ourselves of some future obliteration, or recalling through myth previous ones (the story of Noah’s ark, versions of which are found in many world religions), but never doing anything concrete about it.

I have little doubt that humankind “as we know it” is going to end sooner or later. (The good thing is that we could do with the humility.) I don’t need to offer readers the obvious, but our destruction of the natural habitat alone will ensure that. It is one thing to read that in a textbook. But it is another to have lived for five years in a country like China where the land and natural water resources are either hopelessly overdeveloped or neglected (oh, you won’t see this on one of those neatly packaged, air-conditioned tours through Beijing). In factory areas around cities like Shaoxing, Shanghai and Hangzhou, the factories and pollution stretch for hundreds of miles. (I’ve been there. No tourists.) It left me speechless: engulfing me was a nature-less wasteland. Anyone with a love for Gaea, Mother Nature, would feel he was walking through a near-silent nightmare, a post-apocalyptic desert that was intensely sobering, like scenes out of the end of the world visions in the Terminator movies where human beings dissolve in drifts of ash. Countries like South Africa and New Zealand have nowhere near this wholesale rape of the land. Just reading about the damage to the environment does not convey the grim truth. And I know similar pillaging is going on in various parts of China. It simply cannot be sustainable as many have argued.

So a huge global change that may take us (well, those who survive it) back to primitive times is once again being speculated, thunderously prophesied or treated with derision. Whatever your reaction, “end times” are yet again topical. Why is it so compelling? Well the no-brainer reply is that the fate of humankind is of considerable interest to anyone able to think, even if it is only to scoff and recite loads of failed doomsday prophecies.

I used to be a Christian. One of the things that moved me to preferring having no beliefs was watching one of those “rapture” movies. One interpretation of New Testament end times is that “one will be taken, one will be left” (Luke 17: 26-37). In other words, you might be sleeping in bed and your missus suddenly disappears in the Lord’s “rapture”, while you are left in bed with no chance of more nookie because you were a non-believer. And your final days under the tender mercies of Satan are going to be filled with considerable inconvenience. Or perhaps you are walking along the road with a friend and he suddenly vanishes in the rapture. This movie (and there are many like them, never mind the lunatic sermons delivered from pulpits) showed literally this. Planes or cars crashing because the pilot or driver suddenly disappeared and so forth. While I was drawn to the Gospels’ superb teachings on love, generosity, self-sacrifice and regard for the poor and needy, this claptrap I could not stomach. I asked a few Christians what they thought of the movie, gently telling them about my inability to accept what was portrayed about the “rapture” and asked them if they believed what they saw. They all gazed at me with that Moonie, glazed look on their faces, and intoned, “It’’ in the Word” (the Bible). Soon after, I exited Christianity stage left, never to return.

Sure, church con-artists the world over, from Jimmy Swaggart to Ray McCauley, thrive on people’s fears and hopes, using visions of hell, Armageddon and heaven to cast their magic spell on the masses and get obscenely rich. This leads many thinking people to scorn doomsday stuff, quite understandably. But, in turn, this obscures the real issue, which needs to be stripped of all that Moonie hype and myth: our increasingly fragile planet, which may very well have a “doomsday”, a massive prophylaxis, to allow Gaea to survive and re-invent herself. Eyjafjallajökull may not be an event that could lead to a staggering world catastrophe. But a few eruptions like that, coupled with the economic ramifications and the damage already done to mother earth, could well trigger off the end of humankind “as we know it”. When are we going to heed the warnings? How are we going to survive a full-scale global catastrophe when it happens, and it is no longer a question of if?

Easy. First aim your head directly at the windshield …