For /u/MyNameIsRevan: I have to ask - I've wanted to know since I saw your abstract - how on earth did you come up with your research topic?

As a huge fan of dinosaurs, I was very interested to see an apocalyptic discussion of them! For /u/MyNameIsRevan, do you think there's something about dinosaurs in particular that really seems to grab the attention of people, as opposed to other animals?

For everyone, I was very interested in the way the panel discussed such powerful emotions like fear. What I'm curious about is how often an emotion like Hope showed through in your fields. It was mentioned a few times, and I was especially thinking about it in the discussion of Samantha Smith for example, but I'd like to hear more about how hope affected the people and cultures related to everyones talk?

Question for u/Wyrd_Writere:

While you generally focus on use of Revelation and the New Testament in your talk, you mention the use of terms like "sons of Belial" as meaning unchristian, indicating that people like the writer of the Wurzburg Annals were turning to the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament for concepts and terminology. Does the author of the Chronicles have a similar Christianized interpretation of the Noah's Ark story as apocalyptic (with a big or small a) imagery/history?

Its very interesting to see how often all these Apocalypti (whats the plural of apocalypse?) involve such extensive "othering". From Islam with Nukes, to the enemies of the crusaders. These seem like age old methods of forcibly pulling a community together. Did it work? Did it actually lead to a nation or culture coming together in some kind of solidarity against the 'other"? because it really just looks like it ultimately leads to more internal division.

It seems the papers here show how different ends of authority feel this anxiety. u/Soviet_Ghosts and u/MyNameIsRevan have a bit more of a bottom up perspective with their sources emphasizing that 'the government isn't stopping nuclear war' whereas u/DrMalcolmCraig and u/Wtrd_Writere discuss views presented by authorities, warning of threats to society.

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It seems that elites and non-elites can come to the same fears of warfare, but their perceptions are related to who has political power. So I'm curious, how do these narratives change with further circulation as elite and non-elite narrative control changes hands?

Hello experts, thanks for the really neat panel. I'm wondering if any of you have any thoughts on why apocalyptic texts appeal to young readers or why it is so many modern young adult novels seem to focus on post-apocalyptic settings.

Speaking of dinosaurs, what's your favorite dinosaur? Asking all four of you. :)

Really interesting paper /u/Wyrd_Writere!! (You've definitely convinced me that I should go have a look at the Würzburg Annals.)

The question of apocalypticism in mid C12 is super fascinating (and has a massive German literature to boot X_X) but I wonder how (or if!) you see the Würzburg Annals fitting into two of the major trends in the interpretation. On the one had there is the sort of Brett Whalen (2009) interpretation, based on Kerby-Fulton's idea of 'reformist apocalypticism', who interprets this whole drive as part of the 'ordering' christian society by establishing the 'internal' relationship of Papacy and Empire, and the 'external' relations of Christendom to Jews, Muslims, Heretics, etc. (this of course building to the more imminent and politicising apocalyticism with Joachism). On the other hand, there is the more psychologising interpretation of Jay Rubenstein (2019), where this is driven by the dynamics of success and failure in the prophetic Babylon narrative that underscores the eschatological expectation built into the first crusades. So contrasting this post-Crusade 2 response more with something like Otto of Freising's comment about the wide circulation of the Sibylline prophecies in the lead-up.

Anyways, lest this turn into "more of a comment..." the point I'm driving at is: how do you see the Würzburg Annals fitting into a bigger picture of the period? Is it's potential critique of the Papacy, or at least this diabolic machination underlying the Crusade's failure, usefully understood in terms of a political narrative of 'reformist apocalypticism' or in terms of a psychology of prophetic failure? (Or both, or neither, or do you think I've completely misconstrued the relevant aspects of the field?)

Really great presentations, everyone!

u/MyNameIsRevan: very interesting paper topic! Two parter question:

1. To what extent did the Dinosaur Renaissance in the 1960s-70s impact this use of asteroid extinction analogies to nuclear war in 1980s (besides obviously giving rise to the asteroid theory)? Did the recognition that dinosaurs are warm blooded, mammalian, and active creatures (as opposed to the classic reptilian depiction) help "humanize" dinosaurs to the extent that humans could relate to an asteroid impact event?

2. Have you considered tracking how the discourse of dinosaur extinction and its relation to human apocalypse changed over the course of the Cold War? It might well be interesting to see whether previous depictions of dinosaur extinction by, say, volcanic events (like in Ray Harryhausen's "Animal World") had a similar discursive function in the early/mid Cold War.

u/DrMalcolmCraig: I don't know if you've addressed this in the Q&A (haven't had time to watch it yet), but to what extent did the "Muslim bomb" trope survive past the end of the Cold War? Can we connect 21st century tropes like the Axis of Evil or fears of Iraq-Iran cooperation in terrorism directly to the nuclear scare of the 1980s, or were those tropes developed independently of the memories of the "Muslim bomb"?

Thank you all!

My question is for u/DrMalcolmCraig but u/Soviet_Ghosts may also have thoughts: How did the Soviets understand the 'Islamic' bomb? Were there similar Soviet discourses surrounding other racial/religious nuclear proliferation?

u/MyNameIsRevan -

First, a thank you. I grew up in a creationist cult and wasn't allowed to learn about dinosours. I didn't get why people love them so much until your presentation, so thanks!

Second,

The Christian Right in America, spesifically "Creationists", have always had an issue with Evolution and dinosoaurs in general. Did you run into any of that in your research?

Thanks for this excellent panel, I do love how medievalists and modernists actually get to talk to each other here. It's such a rare occurrence!

u/Wyrd_Writere, my question's for you. Spinning off from the question of expertise, you mention that Bernard rhetorically asked who was not distressed by the failure of the Second Crusade, and you describe this burst of chronicle and eschatological commentaries on it. But, as far as I can tell, the corpus you describe operates in a very small group of clerical authors building on and critiquing established theological commentary.

You mention that the Wurzberg Annalist didn't have much impact, even though it demonstrates theological and historical expertise within itself, but I'm curious how widely Gerhoh's more "orthodox" explanation of the failure of the Second Crusade was understood in lay circles. Does that theological expertise and consternation spread out into the lay elite or, in non-elite, non-monastic contexts? (as far as it's possible to access broadly non-elite culture in the Middle Ages. Perhaps in vernacular sermons?)

In other words, is this "widespread" fear Bernard and others assign to medieval Europe truly widespread, or is it a construction by and for a very limited circle of people?

Great panel - all of you did wonderful work!

/u/Soviet_Ghosts - extremely interesting presentation on an episode I remember very well. I told my wife about your presentation and she, too, remembered Samantha Smith very well, and we both had the same impression: we were independently filled with hope that the escalation that we were feeling in the Cold War beginning in early 1981 might be tamped down a bit thanks to this school girl. I understand that your focus is on how the media and an administration was committed to its own approach to the Soviet Union and how they wanted to shape the narrative, but do you have information on any potential dissonance their approach created with how everyday people reacted to this episode? I have a feeling "we" were far more optimistic about the exchange than the US historical record might suggest.

Thanks again to you all!

Another question: u/Soviet_Ghosts, was Samantha Smith associated with the anti-nuclear weapons movement at the time? Was her 15 minutes of fame due to being against the backdrop of the anti-nuclear weapons movement, of was it in spite, or even because, of a lack of affiliation?

Good afternoon and welcome to the “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Apocalypse: Imagining Mass Destruction” conference panel Q&A! This panel explores the key question of how people and societies have responded to the threat of apocalyptic destruction from the Middle Ages to the Cold War.

Moderated by Jason Dyer (/u/jbdyer), this panel features:

Joshua Porter (/u/Soviet_Ghosts), presenting his paper, “Samantha Smith: Citizen Diplomacy in the Cold War”.

On November 28, 1982, an eleven-year-old girl in Manchester, Maine ripped a handwritten note on yellow legal paper out from a three-ring binder and mailed it to Yuri Andropov, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The letter spoke of the unusual fear an eleven-year-old girl had of nuclear war, the destruction of the world, and that the Soviet Union sought to invade the United States. Andropov invited Samantha Smith and her family to come to the Soviet Union to visit and to see that “…everyone is for peace and friendship among peoples.” Smith, with her letter and her visit to the Soviet Union, subverted business as usual to open up a new dialogue and to change a system that almost led the world to nuclear armageddon. This paper focuses less on the trip and more on what led an eleven-year-old girl to write Andropov, why she was chosen by the Soviets and the United States media as a citizen diplomat, and what that says about gender, childhood, and perceived “girlish innocence.”

Kenneth Reilly (/u/MyNameIsRevan), presenting his paper, “More Powerful Than The Atomic Bomb: Dinosaur Extinction and Nuclear Warfare”.​

Historian Lukas Rieppel has analyzed the role of Gilded-Age business tycoons in funding and creating dinosaur exhibitions to demonstrate positive connections between unbridled capitalism and science, and the extinction of dinosaurs has been used as analogies between intense capitalism or socialism. Yet, the fact that the asteroid theory of dinosaur extinction became popular during the 1980s, an age of fears over human extinction through nuclear warfare, suggests that people saw themselves in dinosaurs in a way that extended beyond political ideology. This paper explores how this theory became understood during fears of nuclear annihilation in the United States throughout the 1980s, examining newspapers, music, and children’s literature that compared the demise of dinosaurs to nuclear destruction. It argues that in a decade that approached the 40th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a refusal of the American government to engage in disarmament of nuclear weapons, and a general feeling of imminent nuclear destruction, mass extinction from an asteroid became relevant for Americans, scientists and non-scientists alike.

Dr. Malcolm Craig (/u/DrMalcolmCraig), presenting his paper, “The Nuclear 1979: Revolution, Islam, and 'The Bomb’”.​

1979 marks a crucial but largely publicly ignored juncture in nuclear history. It was in this year that the Iranian Revolution, public disclosures about Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme, and a voracious media brought the 'Islamic bomb' into the Western public eye. Suggesting that one 'Muslim' nation would automatically share nuclear expertise with other 'Muslim' nations because of the bonds of faith, the idea of the 'Islamic bomb' quickly became a mainstay of discussions about the 'Islamic world' and nuclear weapons. It harkened back to long standing Western images of Islam, intertwining them with more modern anxieties about atomic weapons in the hands of non-white “others”. Based on original research, this paper explores how and why the 'Islamic bomb' exploded into the media in 1979, and why it continues to be a popular trope in newspapers, television reports, novels, films, and online up to the present day.

Coranne Wheeler (/u/Wyrd_Writere), presenting her paper, “The great peril of their bodies and souls’: Failure, Response, and History in the Würzburg Annals”.

The dismal failure of the Second Crusade sent ripples of panic through the clergy of twelfth- century France and Germany, who were well positioned to interpret the failure in political, military, religious and moral contexts. In Germany in the 1160s, two clerics put forward eschatological arguments to explain the crusade’s failure. Whilst the views of Gerhoh of Reichersberg have been analysed extensively, the Würzburg Annals have been dismissed as ‘unusual’ without real scholarship being dedicated to the text itself; the most extensive analysis remains that of Giles Constable in 1953. Detailed analysis of the text, however, reveals that the unorthodox views of the (anonymous) cleric were a complex theological interpretation of a crusade and its outcome, and an utterly unique response to what he perceived as a religious disaster. Furthermore, the Würzburg Annals were one of the earliest texts to challenge the legitimacy of crusading as an endeavour. This paper demonstrates how disasters contributed to challenges to papal policy by considering how this cleric positioned contemporary events within the biblical chronology of world history. In this text, this is considered with particular reference to the ultimate catastrophe: The Apocalypse.

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