Interesting and thoughtful post. However, I believe your Google Ngram result is potentially confounded by the imminent rise of the Antichrist and ensuing Tribulation of convulsive war and death that will rip like wildfire across all the nations of Earth. This event is projected to occur sometime in the early 2040s, c.f. Angela Cotra’s “Forecasting Transformative AC with Eschatological Anchors” (though more recent estimates like “AC 2027″ have argued for shorter timelines), which is spuriously boosting mentions of the “apocalypse”.
Once you correct for this confounding variable (ie, that each and every one of us is about to be plunged into a world of ceaseless conflict and violence, mercilessly hunted down by the Four Horsemen, moon turned to blood, etc), you’ll see that eschatologically-adjusted mentions of “apocalypse” are actually no higher than the historical base rate, proving that there’s nothing to worry about and everything will be fine.
Interesting and thoughtful post. However, I believe your Google Ngram result is potentially confounded by the imminent rise of the Antichrist and ensuing Tribulation of convulsive war and death that will rip like wildfire across all the nations of Earth. This event is projected to occur sometime in the early 2040s, c.f. Angela Cotra’s “Forecasting Transformative AC with Eschatological Anchors” (though more recent estimates like “AC 2027″ have argued for shorter timelines), which is spuriously boosting mentions of the “apocalypse”.
Once you correct for this confounding variable (ie, that each and every one of us is about to be plunged into a world of ceaseless conflict and violence, mercilessly hunted down by the Four Horsemen, moon turned to blood, etc), you’ll see that eschatologically-adjusted mentions of “apocalypse” are actually no higher than the historical base rate, proving that there’s nothing to worry about and everything will be fine.