The world has been coming to an end for some time now. Take your pick of catastrophe: terrorism, financial crisis, nuclear war, cyber-collapse, natural disasters, climate change, or, hey, devastating pandemic. It seems as if the 21st century has been replete with world-defining catastrophes and we are barely a fifth of the way through it.

At the same time, however, it is worth remembering two important contextual notes when thinking about the end times. The first is that the world has ended many times previously. According to Elizabeth Kolbert, we are on our sixth possible extinction. Short of planetary apocalypse, plenty of civilizations have collapsed in the past. Even when catastrophes strike, like the Black Death or the 1918/19 Great Influenza, civilization adapts and overcomes.