Apocalyptic stories are everywhere, from movies to shows to video games, it seems like we can’t stop imagining our own downfall. Whether it’s ‘The Last of Us’, ‘Fallout’ or ‘Don’t Look Up’, it seems as if we’re drawn to watching the world fall apart. 

There’s something strangely compelling about watching civilization unravel, as if deep down, we already suspect that the world we’ve built is more fragile than it seems. 

Maybe that’s why these stories feel so freeing. They strip life down to its most basic form, no emails, no algorithms, no meaningless obligations. Just survival, movement, action. And in a world where so much feels artificial, apocalyptic stories offer something brutally simple: a life where every choice matters.

But beyond escapism, these stories also expose an uncomfortable truth: for all our advancements, we still don’t feel secure. We trust in systems, governments, economies, technology, but in these stories, those systems fail, and when they do, the illusion of control disappears, leaving only people, their choices, and whatever they truly believe in. 

That’s why apocalyptic stories aren’t just about destruction. They’re about revelation. They show us what remains when everything we once relied on is gone. Some characters cling to power, trying to rebuild the old world. Others realize that what they were missing was never the systems, it was something deeper, something they lost long before the world began to fall apart.

Survival in these stories isn’t just about food and shelter, it’s also about meaning. The strongest characters aren’t just the ones with the most weapons, but the ones who find something worth protecting. Loyalty, sacrifice, family, love – things that existed long before civilization and will exist long after. When the old world crumbles, these are the things that remain.

Maybe that’s why we keep returning to these stories. Not because we want the world to end, but because we wonder who we would become if it did. Stripped of distractions, stripped of comfort – what would we hold onto? What would guide us? What, in the end, would actually matter?

At their core, apocalyptic stories are about searching. Not just for survival, but for something real, something unshakable. In the ruins of the world, characters often discover what they should have seen all along; that meaning was never in the structures, but in the things too deep to be destroyed.

If these stories keep pulling us in, maybe it’s because we sense that we’re going through a kind of apocalypse right now, not of fire and ruin, but of distraction, disconnection, isolation, chaos & noise. 

And if that’s true, then the real question isn’t just how we’d survive, but what we’re holding onto now. 

Have we found something unshakable? Something worth fighting for? 

Or are we still searching for the truth in the ruins?

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Written by Ben Joshua