Dan Drezner points out today on his blog that we are having a spate of ‘end-of-the-world’ movies these days and wonders if this is a product of bad economic times.

That’s part of the answer, but end of the world thinking is permeating our culture more ways than one.  ‘End of the world’ scenarios shape our politics; look at the global warming controversy, fears over terrorists with nuclear weapons, or even at the worldwide rise in hot religion, religious movements that look to divine intervention and, often, the end of the world.

Frank Fukuyama wrote about the end of history, and in his book it ended with a whimper.  The world would turn into one big mall, a cross between the European Parliament and a shopping plaza in Singapore.

But the history could also end with a bang, something that has been hanging over us since the bomb at Hiroshima went off in 1945.

In the old days, it would take a divine miracle to bring about the apocalypse.  In our brave new world, it might take a miracle to stave it off.

The 21st century will be, among other things, an age of apocalypse, with fears of man-made catastrophe playing a large and probably growing role in religion, popular culture and, unfortunately, politics.

How does politics, domestic and international, change when some participants start to think that the stakes are infinitely large?  This, I think, is one of the problems that will occupy the minds of political scientists in the years to come.  They will have plenty of data to work with.