Rich kids are bugging out. Entrepreneurs want to escape to Mars. Celebrities are building luxury bomb shelters. Is the end of the world truly nigh? According to sociologists, it may as well be.

WESTERN society is slipping into despair. Where once people were filled with hope for a bright, prosperous, technologically advanced future - there’s now an overwhelming sense of powerlessness and fatalism.

Apocalypses are nothing new. People have been predicting them for millennia.

What is new, according to Vice President of The Australian Sociological Association (TASA) Dr Alphia Possamai-Inesedy, is that we feel we can do very little about them.

And that’s getting to us.

The Cold War threat of nuclear annihilation may no longer be at the forefront of our minds. It’s still there. But joining it are fears of climate change and pollution, asteroids and superbugs. And then there’s job security, health, accommodation and the uncertain future of our children.

“Our world is changing,” she says. “Our environment is warming up, the economy feels precarious. There are so many things making us feel less certain about our future.

“Envisaging an apocalypse is how we express our fears about change and uncertainty”.

Now, such fears are no longer just the domain of the marginalised.

Billionaires are recognising that they are not immune to these new types of risk. Worse, they are realising they can only buy their way out of trouble up to a point.

So they’re building bolt-holes in New Zealand. They’re digging immense luxury underground shelters. They’re even paving their way to different planets!

What’s with this all-pervasive apocalyptic vision of the future?

Why are even the mega-rich intent on preparing an escape?

RAPTURE, OR RISK?
Apocalypse obsessions are not just a fundamentalist Christian problem. It’s spread to all elements of society, with the popularity of zombies, killer asteroids and mutant viruses being the most obvious symptom.

Underlying it all, says Dr Possamai-Inesedy, is a growing sense of helplessness.

We’re surrounded by risks. And we have no control over them.

The threats we face in the modern world are utterly different from those perceived in previous time periods.

“Risks and hazards used to be seen as fate or Fortuna - from the hand of God(s),” she says. “Today they are recognised as human created”.

But our ancestors also knew they had to prepare for winter: it could be extended and cold. They knew not to venture too far into the jungle, lest a leopard drops on them from among the trees.

Now, human risks are no longer limited by time and space, or solely defined by religion.

“We used to be able to sense risk. Now many are invisible,” Dr Possamai-Inesedy says.

“Chernobyl is an example - we’re still feeling the effects of its radioactive fallout. And climate change is unfolding over the course of decades, so we can’t see its incremental steps”.

And to extreme heat, radiation poisoning or plague, wealth is no barrier.

“Risk today I think has been democratised,” she says. “The wealthy have realised they’re not immune”.

While they can use their immense cash reserves to safeguard themselves and their families somewhat, “they know they still can’t be completely safe,” she says.

It’s not just a new concept to the rich.

It’s something we’re all having to come to grips with.

CULTURE SHIFT
After World War II, Western society shifted its imaginative focus from civilised utopias to barbaric dystopias.

Dr Possamai-Inesedy says an excellent example of this is the evolution of the apocalyptic story I Am Legend, originally writtenby Richard Matheson in 1954.

It was one of the inspirations behind the whole modern zombie-vampire genre.

In the case of the book itself, it has been adapted into film three times: The Last Man on Earth (1964), The Omega Man (1971) and I Am Legend (2007).

The original book saw the hero come to realise that humanity itself had changed and that he was now the monster.

Omega Man reflected the fears of its era by emphasising the threat of fellow humans, with a cure being grasped at the last moment.

The I Am Legend movie began and ended in uncertainty; the hero died and the survivors fled towards the fragile sanctuary of a country town.

It represents a common theme in modern apocalyptic thought.

“There is no explanation given - we already understand,” she says.

In previous generations, such stories needed a long preface to explain the disastrous situation a protagonist found themselves in.

“Now, with apocalypses, we don’t need to be told why … we get it. We messed up.”

And that’s the core of the problem.

MATTERS OF PERSPECTIVE
Our brains are imperfect. They’re not machines. Our thought processes are filled with short-cuts and bypasses to minimise the amount of effort expended on coming up with an answer.

If we’re right often enough, we’re more likely to survive.

Unfortunately, in this complicated modern world, some of these shortcuts are causing more problems than they’re worth.

One is called the ‘availability heuristic’. Put simply, we tend to overestimate the chance of something happening if we’ve already seen examples of it. Likewise, if an event is something we don’t understand or have not experienced, we’re likely to underestimate the odds.

Apocalypse is depressing. And it’s not just because we’re likely to wind up dead. Ticking away in our minds is the realisation that it will mean the loss of meaning itself.

Hundreds of generations worth of innovation, creativity, problem-solving, benevolence and inspiration will end in nothing.

Everything humanity has ever created will become worthless. And that includes our own small contributions.

IT’S ABOUT WHO WE ARE
“The onus of responsibility has shifted to us,” Dr Possamai-Inesedy says.

The welfare of the community is no longer a priority. Instead, it’s increasingly our responsibility to look after our own health. We must prepare for our own financial security in retirement. We must educate ourselves.

Essentially, it’s up to us to survive. Any problems we may face are, accordingly, our own fault.

“It’s now up to us to safeguard our own future,” she says, “and with that comes the recognition that we are therefore now less safe than we were”.

The extent to which this attitude has taken a grip on society can be seen in the bunkers and bolt-holes of the mega-rich.

“They’re doing what they can to safeguard themselves,” she says. “They just have greater means of doing so than the rest of us”.

We may be increasingly burdened by responsibility. But our perception of risk is also under pressure.

“We are not good calculators,” Dr Possamai-Inesedy says. “Our perception of our understanding of risk is coloured by our emotions.”

Humans - rich or poor - want certainty. They want security.

But we’re all getting less and less of each with every passing year.

“Many people want to be told how their life should pan out”.

Sociologists call it a ‘biography’: a script of what to expect from the future.

It’s a time-honoured tradition.

“Our biographies used to be clearly structured. Gender, class, religion used to almost dictate our life chances,” Dr Possamai-Inesedy says. “Today, social changes mean that these have much less impact on us”.

And such changes create another sphere of uncertainty influencing our lives.

“Society has been taken out of tradition and placed in an open market”, she says. “Now even our jobs are risk related.”

For example, in the mid to late 1900s many people had just one career. Today, young people will most likely have a half a dozen.

“Our goal posts keep shifting,” she says. “And the responsibility is on individuals to figure their own problems out”.

And with that comes a stressful challenge: How does one protect one’s ‘biography’ in a world filled with uncertainty?

Prepare for the worst, in the best way you can.

BLAME GAME
Humanity has faced serious challenges before. So what is behind this societal loss of hope?

Whatever happened to the glistening white and flashing lights vision of our future?

According to Dr Possamai-Inesedy, people - including billionaires - have come to question the power of science and technology to solve our problems.

With every advance appears to come an unintended setback.

“There’s a recognition that risks are not only created by humans, they’re created by experts,” she says. “Despite the immense amount of positive things science, technology and medicine have done for us, there are also all these unintended consequences that we’re now facing. And that’s produced a backlash: we don’t trust experts anymore”.

With antibiotics came antibiotic-resistant superbugs.

With readily available electricity came pollution and climate change.

With nuclear energy came radiation.

With the internet came near-constant surveillance.

Making matters worse are our human coping mechanisms.

When faced with too many risks, we merely blank out those we perceive as being less immediate.

“If we take them all on, we can become immobilised”.

LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL
We’re overwhelmed by unseen risks.

It’s a depressing notion.

But it doesn’t have to be.

Dr Possamai-Inesedy says that, just as the cause of our anxiety is human, so is the solution.

And it’s not about having vast amounts of money.

Our democratic institutions give us a chance to change things for the better - if we make the opportunity to do so.

“We can respond to what’s happening,” she says. “We have purchasing power. We have a vote. We can contribute to our future.”

And when it comes to trust, we should place it in our democratic systems - and not individual experts, she says.