Correct, my mistake. 1200s. I was just reaching for a historical example of when a real “apocalypse” did in fact come to pass—when not only are you and everyone you know going to get killed but also your entire society as you know it will come to an end—and the brutal Mongol conquest of China was the first one that came to my mind, probably thanks to Dan Carlin’s excellent Hardcore History podcast on the subject. I didn’t take the 2 seconds on Wikipedia I should have to make sure I was talking about the right century.
I was thinking of other contenders like the smallpox epidemic in North America following the Columbian exchange, but in that scenario you didn’t really have “doomers” who were predicting that outcome, because their epidemiology at the time wasn’t quite up to understanding the problem they were facing. But in China at the time, it’s feasible that some individuals would have had access to enough news and information to make doom predictions about the Mongol apocalypse that turned out to be unfortunately correct.
Small historical nit: China was actually ruled by the Mongols for most of the 1300s.
Correct, my mistake. 1200s. I was just reaching for a historical example of when a real “apocalypse” did in fact come to pass—when not only are you and everyone you know going to get killed but also your entire society as you know it will come to an end—and the brutal Mongol conquest of China was the first one that came to my mind, probably thanks to Dan Carlin’s excellent Hardcore History podcast on the subject. I didn’t take the 2 seconds on Wikipedia I should have to make sure I was talking about the right century.
I was thinking of other contenders like the smallpox epidemic in North America following the Columbian exchange, but in that scenario you didn’t really have “doomers” who were predicting that outcome, because their epidemiology at the time wasn’t quite up to understanding the problem they were facing. But in China at the time, it’s feasible that some individuals would have had access to enough news and information to make doom predictions about the Mongol apocalypse that turned out to be unfortunately correct.