Will duct tape or plastic sheeting keep out the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse? Probably not, though no amount of duct tape can hide the "apocalyptic" perils that seemingly threaten life on Earth today -- war, global warming, pollution, genetic engineering run amok, among others.

John Hall, a sociology professor and director of the UC Study Center in Edinburgh, Scotland, says that the belief in the "end times" or a "doomsday" has proven remarkably resilient over time and throughout many religious traditions. "Apocalyptic ideas are almost like DNA," said Hall, who has studied apocalyptic social movements in North America, Europe and Japan. "They can mutate and recombine across great distances and in very different social and historical situations."

Why the appeal? Hall said that apocalypticism holds that the world can be "transformed" or suddenly changed, either by an outside power, often God, or through the actions of social groups. These groups may include revolutionary organizations or lone individuals, he noted.

Apocalyptic movements tend to emerge, Hall explained, under circumstances in which large numbers of people "feel excluded from or oppressed" by an established social order, he said. "Such movements tend toward one of three resolutions -- gathering people together to await a savior, waging apocalyptic war to overthrow the order, which they deem to be evil, or escaping the social order."

When peaceful, the dynamic may involve migrations, such as the Pilgrims to the New World, or the founding of Utopian communities, Hall said. When it becomes violent, revolutions and wars follow.

Or it may just be confusing, like the Y2K millennium mania that amounted to a hill of beans. For the apocalyptic-driven, the year 2000 was a serious letdown. Not that you want an apocalypse, but when so many people are talking about it, well, you brace for impact.

9/11 and the apocalypse?

As Hall points out, the word "apocalypse" means "unveiling" -- specifically, the unveiling of things to come. Hall is researching the impact of 9/11 as it relates to apocalyptic ideologies in the West and in Islam. He describes the clash between the West and Islam as the "defining challenge" of our era.

"The great challenge facing the West," Hall said, "is how to respond to the apocalyptic war of radical Islam in a way that decreases its legitimacy among the wider audience of Islamic believers."

Force alone seems inadequate, Hall said. "Symbolically, an apocalyptic war feeds upon itself, and in this sense, no one can win such a war by escalating the use of force."

He believes that the U.S.-Iraq war has "fanned the apocalyptic flames" in the Islamic world. In the United States, fears of a massive attack have prompted the federal government to suggest that people buy duct tape and plastic sheeting to seal their dwellings. "We are faced with a puzzle of world-historical dimensions," Hall said. "It will not go away next week, next month or next year."

Hall said people can be quite diabolical and ingenious when it comes to communal apocalypses. In his 2000 book, Apocalypse Observed, co-authored with Philip Schuyler and Sylvaine Trinh, Hall explored tragic conflicts such as the Peoples Temple's mass suicide in Jonestown, the Branch Davidian conflict in Waco, and the Heaven's Gate deaths near San Diego.

"There are many cases of peaceful groups holding strong apocalyptic ideas," he said. "Probably the most famous are the Shakers, who followed Mother Ann Lee's insistence that they cease to have children, because the second coming of Christ was deemed so close at hand."

While the end of the world can be a real bummer, the concept has been popular with some religions seeking to add urgency to their causes. For example, the Jehovah's Witnesses have predicted the end of the world at least seven times since 1914, and televangelist Pat Robertson famously predicted the world's end in 1982.

Does believing in an imminent end address some deep-rooted psychological need?

"It's more a matter of collective social circumstance than personal psychology," Hall said, "though some people are more given than others to embracing an ideology that makes sense of an otherwise confusing world."

Sometimes, Hall said, that ideology represents a "dramatic call" to people to become part of a higher cause. "If a person believes that the world is coming to an end, they can radically change their priorities."

Unraveling ancient texts

Naomi Janowitz, UC Davis religious studies professor, says the apocalypse is inherent in Christianity, Islam and Judaism, all of which originated in the Middle East.

"There's the belief that this is the way things are now, but it is only temporary," Janowitz said. "While we live day to day, at some point life will change."

"A certain view of the world begins to arise the last few centuries before the time of Jesus," she said. "We find it in the Dead Sea Scrolls, we find it in other Jewish writings that have survived. The Book of Revelation becomes for Christians the most prominent example of that kind of view of history, but certainly not unique."

People who believe in the apocalypse, she said, may view it in a "million different ways" and with "tremendous variation." Some traditions hold that a "king" or "Messiah" will come or return, or that a large "cosmic shift" is underway.

Many apocalyptic tales are traced back to ancient texts such as the Bible and its Book of Daniel and the Book of Revelation in which the famed Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse represent Conquest, War, Famine and Death.

Janowitz noted that when religions or cultures collide in all-out war or strife -- the kind with an apocalypse tone -- it is usually an attempt to force one group's timetable or vision on other people. "The rise of radical Christianity here in the U.S. and radical Judaism in Israel and the growth of radical Islam abroad drive conflict and apocalyptic thinking," she said.

Can we avoid the apocalypse? Will peace overcome the urge for a societal immolation?

Maybe, maybe not. Janowitz said the jury is still out on how humanity can coexist in positive ways. She noted the difficulty India in how tolerant the majority Hindu population is towards the minority Muslim population.

"The experiment is ongoing," said Janowitz. "We haven't had a civil war in America lately. "If one religion for example, became aligned with the government, thus breaking down the traditional American separation of church and state, that might lead to civil conflict."

Like Hall, she pointed out that the apocalypse may not always be violent. "Sometimes it is about humans building for a new and better society," she said.

As the mythologist Joseph Campbell once wrote, maybe the Apocalypse does not point to an Armageddon but to the fact that "our ignorance and our complacency are coming to an end." Or, consider the lines in a T.S. Eliot poem:

"This is the way the world ends; This is the way the world ends; This is the way the world ends; Not with a bang but a whimper."

Just don't invite the Four Horsemen.