How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Apocalypse: Imagining Mass Destruction
Channel: AskHistorians
Date: 2020-09-15

Religious, nuclear, or environmental, the end of the world continues to entrance and terrify people. How have societies responded to the real and imagined threat of mass destruction? Got your 2020 bingo card handy? The idea of the “end of the world” has the power to entrance, excite, and terrify. This panel explores the explosive impact of the combination of apocalyptic excitement and fear on societies and popular culture--even if the apocalypse isn’t real or isn’t ours.
Learn more about this panel at: https://www.askhistorians.com/imagining-mass-destruction
This panel includes a live Q+A with the panelists: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/itf6ze/how_i_learned_to_stop_worrying_and_love_the/

Featured in this panel are:

"Samantha Smith: Citizen Diplomacy in the Cold War", by Joshua Porter
"More Powerful Than The Atomic Bomb: Dinosaur Extinction and Nuclear Warfare", by Kenneth Reilly
"'The Nuclear 1979: Revolution, Islam, and 'The Bomb'", by Malcolm Craig
"'The great peril of their bodies and souls’: Failure, Response, and History in the Würzburg Annals", by Corranne Wheeler

Moderated by Jason Dyer
Subtitles Courtesy of Hannah Friedman

This panel is part of the AskHistorians 2020 Digital Conference. For more Conference content, please go to: https://www.askhistorians.com/2020-digital-conference