You know that music is crucial to epic battle scenes, and the soundtrack to the end of the world will be A Banjo at Armageddon (Berton Braley, 1917).

From Satan, His Origin, Work, and Destiny by Carlyle B. Haynes, 1920.

The grim reaper rides on the earth.  From Jugend, 1896.

"All the wicked will be brought to nothing and be as though they had not been."  From Satan, His Origin, Work, and Destiny by Carlyle B. Haynes, 1920.

"Where the map ends is where the world ends." —Sword of Tilk Trilogy: Book One: Worlds Apart

Perhaps for each and every doomsayer throughout history there has been a J. G. Broughton Pegg to remind us of The Improbability of the Destruction of the Earth (1829).

"It was to have been the end of the world the day before yesterday."  From Judy, Or The London Serio-Comic Journal, 1884.

"The end of all."  From Judy, Or The London Serio-Comic Journal, 1876.

It's commonly believed that the world's longest-lasting light bulb is the Centennial Light in Livermore, California, having glowed for 113 years.  But we know better, that the earth itself is the longest-lasting light bulb (and hence our looming fear of the lights going out in Georgia [again], for, like the font, Georgia is everywhere [except Linux]).  From Bell Telephone Magazine, 1972.

"Army, Marriage, the Church, and Banking: the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse."

—Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

From Horae Apocalypticae by Edward Bishop Elliott, 1862.

From Louis Napoleon, the Destined Monarch of the World and Personal Antichrist by Michael Paget Baxter, 1863.

Here's a precursor to the global warming scare, from Old-Time Schools and School-Books by Clifton Johnson, 1904.  The caption reads, "Earth must burn."

The world is always ending.  Here's what the apocalypse looked like when it occurred in 1833.  From Upper Canada Sketches by Thomas Conant, 1898.

"The earth," from Coal, Iron, and Oil by Samuel Harries Daddow, 1866.