Probably permutations and combinations of all of what you list. 

Every tragedy in our collective conscious tells us that when you reach the top, the only place to go is down.  The United States is the only superpower, and a strong empire (at least culturally).

The fall of Rome led to a retreat from cities to subsistence farming and rural life.  I think we imagine that when (or if) our empire collapses, there will be a new dark age.

This is a way for people to think about what it means to be the global leader.

You wrote:

"So, the 2006 TV mood is strongly eschatological...I wonder what meaning is of all this? What does this steady stream of end-of-days shows say about this country?...Or is it just a kind of national fear of death, fear of witnessing the end of the untrammeled American way of life – complete freedom, insulation from the complex world and big cars?"

One could point to a number of factors or indicators which may help account for the present national mood.

It seems to me there is a lot of anxiety of the particular sort you put your finger on--"witnessing the end of the untrammeled American way of life."  Economic globalization has left a lot of people wondering where the decent-paying jobs are going to be for themselves, not to mention their kids, as India and China in particular develop their economies.   

Economic life seems to have become more brutally competitive than ever.  The broad middle class doesn't hear politicians offering hope for finding our way through the morass.  The stresses seem only to grow for many.  Wages stagnate while the costs of health care, postsecondary education, gas, housing in some parts, and other goods and services seem to keep rising (query: if inflation is as bad as it "feels" why don't the official inflation rate trends look worse than they have been?).  

We do a terrible job of supporting families with high quality child care, leave policies, portable health insurance, etc.  Yet because we have never done a good job of this Americans don't experience the status quo as a remediable failure by politicians but as part of the fend-for-yourself American way.    

Polls have long shown that large numbers of Americans believe that End Times are not far away. 

The political left believes the country is going to hell in a hand basket on Bush and the Republicans' watch.  The federal government, relative to its commitment to bring in revenue, is spending money as though there is no tomorrow even as the country's leaders reinforce the vague sense that might be correct with reckless policies and rhetoric which have compromised the country's security and future.  A lot of bad stuff has been happening, between NOLA, the Iraq quagmire, rampant corruption in Washington, and now possible criminal conduct at the highest levels in government.

The group running the country for its part seems in the grip of an embattled, siege mentality, seeing itself as in a state of perpetual conflict, if not war, with much of the rest of the world as well as the political opposition at home.  They act as though they are in a death struggle with forces of darkness that surround them everywhere and that will, and will alone, can enable them and our country to tough out these times.  

Large percentages of Americans when asked say they believe the country is on the wrong track.  There is a sense even among many who don't see him as their political enemy that the country is being steered by an unsteady Captain, prone to ill advised ventures.   

So, even allowing as it is a Monday and daylight hours continue to shrink, it does seem as though there is a good deal of angst in our country at the moment.  And TV market research people make it their business to understand the national mood.  So, no surprise that we are getting a lot of eschatological TV--movies, too, I would add--and will be getting more. 

Unfortunately, I think the last part of your comment is the most relevant.

Consider that Republicans and the Christian Right are trying to take us back to the mythological Fifties, which boomers like me can supposedly remember as being "when we were on top of the world."  Unfortunately, it wasn't true then and it isn't true now, but if you buy the mythology of old TV shows that is passed down via Nickelodeon and such, you can feel it was easier back then when "those people" - starting with African-Americans in the civil rights movement and on to the uppity women and everyone else who go around saying that the white male <i>Boobus.Americanus</i> is the problem - weren't running things. The Dominionist Right with its program of male "headship" and the "submission" of women is a prime example of this.

For these people, shattering their myth of being Top Dog is something akin to death.

I think you hit it on the head when you mentioned "escaping history" and "dream".  Both seem to fit.  You can't be too pessimistic at this point imo since we haven't hit bottom yet.  Bush is still where he is and we are looking at unleashing US airpower against an insurgency in the Middle East, in a country we occupy rather imcompetently . . .

Such a mismatch of military means to political purpose would be difficult to find in history.  I guess that is what happens when war is seen as the pursuit of business opportunity by other means.  Our vaunted military prowess has been deflated before our eyes, a force organized and equipped to fight World War III, the problem being that WWIII never came.  Not that the American people can be told that.  Instead of thinking about speaking the obvious, our betters figure that the mass of atomized pulp is ready for a series of violent, egocentric pseudo-dreams to keep us all from paying too much attention to what goes on "in history" over the next six months. . . better that we think of ourselves as "victims" as shown on the big screen.

The money made can be re-invested in the war.  What a deal!

I have two nieces and a nephew in their late teens and early twenties, all raised in the Pentecostal cult. They have been thoroughly conditioned to believe that the End Times are right around the corner.  Consequently, they are the saddest, most hopeless, hateful and depressed people I know. I think they would commit suicide if it wasn't for their religion. I even offered to pay their way through college, but their attitude is "why bother?"  They are miserable working at Taco Bell, and "couch surfing" among their relatives' homes. Apocalypse TV is their favorite form of entertainment, in addition to ultra-violent video games. And, they are staunch Bush supporters --- his base. 

BTW, the best Apocalypse movie is "The Rapture." Check it out. I don't think the Left Behind crowd would like it, though. 

I'd actually differentiate between "end of the world" fiction and "end of America" fiction. To me, the TV shows listed here fall in the latter category.

Call me crazy, but, I think it's a good sign that the (hopefully temporary) decline of America is being reflected in the pop-consciousness. I'd be much more worried if there were a new slate of shows glorifying our current era as the Ideal America.

Call me crazy, but, I think it's a good sign that the (hopefully temporary) decline of America is being reflected in the pop-consciousness. I'd be much more worried if there were a new slate of shows glorifying our current era as the Ideal America.

Thank you for that much-needed hopeful note. I've tended to take the more pessimistic view that things are so bad that people would rather end it all than shoulder the responsibility of repairing the damage. People are unable to project the current trends of unsustainable growth, loot-and-pillage economic policies, and environmental degradation into the future and see anything but the end of life as we know it. Hence the development of apocalyptic scenarios to speculate on how that end will come. If the second coming is at hand, conveniently, we don't have to fix the mess we've made. Corruption, incompetence, the hogs-at-the-feeding-trough mentality in government, the pollution of the entire earth become ordained symptoms of end times rather than man-made causes, in a bizarre one-hand-washes-the-other alliance of religion and greed.

Well perhaps William Strauss and Neil Howe have been named programming czars for the major networks.

I actually agree somewhat with Peggy Noonan (except for the part about the imminent threat of men marrying each other to the survival of western civilization). The wheels *are* coming off the trolley and the elites seem content to make a separate peace. A climate of crisis has overtaken this country, and although the themes are not yet entirely clear, the converging threats of Islamist terrorism, the possible end of cheap oil, a possible dollar collapse, our already ballooning deficits (which are set to mushroom as boomers retires), global warming, and apparently intergalactic war are making folks a bit uneasy, and we're almost to the point where our elites's refusal to adequately acknowledge many of these threats (I think we probably postpone ET mediation for now), let alone begin to deal to with them is making folks extra uneasy.

If one wants to get especially geeky, we might also mention the fact that there is no divine right to the nation-states of the west, and although the forces of postmodernity - fragmentation and globalization - have been less unkind to say America and Britain than Yugoslavia or Iraq, I think we need to acknowledge that the foundations of successful democracies in the west have been successful nation-states in the west, and both sub-national and trans-national forces have been eroding the primacy of central governments, national borders, and cultural cohesion in our neighborhood (as well as around the world) for a generation. You cannot repeal these forces, despite the fantasies of latter day nationalists and nativists, but nor should we underestimate their long-term implications (as I believe mainstream liberals and conservatives presently do).

America could well become a much looser federation over the next fifty years (a number of prominent political scientists have been talking up this possibility; people should read Bob Kaplan's great "An Empire Wilderness: Travels into America's Future"). Some kind of corporate feudalism could replace liberal deocracy and capitalism, with city-states replacing nation-states, and mediation replacing politics. With weakening central governments, local - premodern and postmodern - forces may replace national governments as the bulwarks against the excesses of globalization.

In any event, as I have said elsewhere on this site the primary forces shaping the twenty-first century will not be the brie and caviar niceties of twentieth century international relations, but (as Kaplan put it in "The Coming Anarchy")  sub-national and trans-national forces: ""disease, overpopulation, unprovoked crime, scarcity of resources, refugee migrations, the increasing erosion of nation-states and international borders, and the empowerment of private armies, security firms, and international drug cartels." Fragmentation, sectarian conflict, and terrorism will replace nation building, nationalism, and the Great Game, as the new miseries. And it will be the geographers, not the political scientists or international relationists, who could best describe this world. The maps, like the politicians with their nationalist pretensions, would often lie.

If the "united" part of the United Nations was at times facetious in the last century, it may be the "nations" part of the United Nations that is rather presumptuous in this one.

This tendency among the Washington elites and the chattering classes to think out loud that the history of the twenty-first century will be linear, and incremental, is probably a fallacy. Revolutionary forces are lurking...

Your Southernmost Window

A series of half hour programs for TV, videotape, DVD and other digital media

What you can do with one south-facing window, or how to live within a solar budget, including designs viewers can replicate at home to provide heat, light, ventilation, and/or stimulate ecological growth.

Program 1. What You can See from a Window - one square foot of sunlight, orientation to the sun, design principles, window types, glazing, heat loss, infiltration, insulation, heating ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC), air purification, breathing

Program 2. Every Window in the House - window types take 2, radiation and convection, caulking and weatherstripping, drafts and infiltration, how to chart your airflows, how to use them, window insulation, whole house HVAC

Program 3. The Electric Window - solar electricity/photovoltaic/PV, small battery charger, solar/dynamo flashlight radio, one window systems, permanent emergency capacity, battery switching and your car

Program 4. Hot and Cold Windows - windowbox heaters, passive and active ventilators, advanced airflow usage, active and passive water heating, your northernmost window, a nod towards refrigerators and low heat differential heat pumps

Program 5. The Greenhouse Window - windowsill gardens, bubbling out/bubbling in, heat storage, aquaculture, vermiculture, and ecological housekeeping, the neighborhood

Program 6. Most Windows in Town -what if everybody did it?, the economics of sunlight, systems thinking from community to region to country to world, globalization of solar physics

I think this is simply evidence of the tail end of the fad started by the "Left Behind" series of books. The TV folks always seem to be the last on the train of fads. That they are all trying to do the topic to cash in on it means it's already out of style--ask anyone in trends, fashion, or 'Hollywood.'

Of course this fad, the reason for it has been because of 9/11 and tsunamis and the like. But that's no different than in the past when there was interest in "life on other planets" movies during the "god is dead" movement, or movies about post atom-bomb scenarios during Cold War hostile words.

Have Stephen King explain it all to you. He "gets" all of this, and has made a ton of money on it.

Has nothing to do with religion. Fads do, however, have something to say about what people are thinking about. Doesn't mean that they agree with the narrative depicted; they might fall for it, they might not. Rather, it means that they are thinking on a certain narrative theme and enjoy someone pricking their imagination about the meme that's going around. For some, it's actually soothing to find that others are thinking much wackier stuff than them.

A discussion about Apocalypse Media and no mention of A Thief in the Night? I'm shocked. For the IMDB, follow this link http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070795/
This is a film that helped make Marilyn Manson who he is today (God bless him), and a great adjunct to the 1970s Sci Fi of Despair that has an eery relevance to today.
Watch Rollerball with James Caan and you are amazed they could come up with something as oddly relevant to today's world events. Too bad the remake sucked ass, but hey! Remakes of 70s film of despair usually does. See "Planet of the Apes" by Tim Burton for a refresher.
I think though that the show you should really be looking at is Battlestar Galactica. Shut up, no no that darn 70s disco BS version, Im talking about a remake. It's got more to say about issues of war, peace, torture, ethics, and life in the end times than anything out there. And it beats the CRAP out of stupid Star Trek.
Lost is a unique property....they spent the money on good acting and good writers, and created a multi dimensional expeirence that forces the viewer to reconsider first impressions and judgements. The pale imitations of Lost and BG that were spawned this season suck and will die a quick death.
And don't forget! "24" is making a comeback in January. With Sen. McCain playing himself.

People interpret "reality" according to their beliefs and opinions and, if one takes a look around, people don't seem to agree on much of anything concerning what has happened, what is happening or what is going to happen. 

This provides an opportunity for egotistical belief and opinion "salesmen" to play on the fears and prejudices of others, many others and to cash in on the opportunity.

How about a great deal on a rapture, a president, a war, a tax cut and access to public lands?  What can have more meaning than that?