The end of the world started in 1945. That's when everything changed and the threat of apocalypse was ever-looming for...well, forever. We're still living in the shadows of the two atomic payloads that the US dropped on Japan during the closing days of the Second World War, weapons that wiped entire cities off the map and clocked up hundreds of thousands deaths both during the immediate fallout and the long-term effects of radiation poisoning suffered by the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Unsurprisingly, Japan officially surrendered not long after, and the Axis crumbled entirely in due course. Meanwhile, America had just become the world's next big super power - and the rest of us were quaking in our boots. What they also did was doom us all to decades of constantly staring over the precipice of a nuclear armageddon. When Fat Man and Little Boy were dropped onto Japan and America demanded they surrender or face "prompt and utter destruction", the Soviet Union were also working on their own nuclear weapon and - once people realised the horrible might of such devices - soon, so was everyone else. The decision to nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki may have played a part in ending the Second World War, but it also provided the inspiration for every other end of the world scenario that we've faced since then. The rest of which we're going to go through now. Fun!
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
