‘The End of the World is Nigh’ has been seen, heard and quoted ad infinitum all of our lives. In the comfort zone of our own arrogance and the resources that we humans have at our disposal it seems we are both inviolable and invincible. All is safe. We are in control.But Nature has a way of sending earthquakes, eruptions, fires and flood, and much else besides, at the most inopportune times and, in these more modern days, with increasing frequency and extremes.In this volume our classic authors conjure up all sorts of damnations and destructions in literary assaults testing our will to survive and our ingenuity to overcome situations where the outlook is bleak at best and the total extinction of us at worse.