In his book 1Q84, Haruki Murakami writes that everyone, deep in their hearts, is waiting for the end of the world to come. Well, I don't know about everyone, but I certainly am waiting for it.

The end of the world means everyone dead. So no need to worry about your loved ones being sad for you. All gone.

The end of the world is the only antidote for the desire to not exist. It's not the desire to kill oneself, not even some version of "I will not initiate it myself, but if something natural that is quick and painless is to come, then I am happy about it." But the wish of never having been born in the first place, that kind of nothingness. To go to sleep and not wake up, not not wake up as if you died in your sleep, but wishing that there was no night in which you went to sleep in order to wake up. Desire to simply get plucked out of existence.

Still from a video by Christian Bodhi from Pixaybay, text added by me.

The end of the world can deliver it. Though the desire to not exist means not existing and all other people not even noticing your absence. Whereas the end of the world means eliminating all observers, so that makes both things the same. For the wish maker only, of course.

Although you would have existed before the end of the world, but that's okay. Because on the other side, to have the desire to not exist, you have to exist in one reality.

But unfortunately, the world is not ending. And there is also no solution for this desire.

People die. Maybe thousands because of war or food poisoning. Water poisoning may kill hundreds of thousands. Some diseases may kill millions. But the whole world cannot end easily.

The only thing that can really kill the whole world is a big asteroid, but unfortunately that too can be detected beforehand and maybe nuked in the sky to completely reduce its impact or lower it. We have been looking with great instruments in all directions, and by far no world-ending asteroid has been detected around us, and that means we are safe. Mostly safe, until we are not.

But my favorite candidate that can end the world, the one I am counting on, is the Gamma Ray Bursts. We cannot detect it. Or, detecting it means getting hit. Because they travel at the speed of light. We first knew about these ray when a military satellite was hit in space by a very, very little amount in 1967, during the cold war. There is also a hypothesis that says that Gamma Ray Bursts did hit Earth once, 445 million years ago, an extinction event more powerful than the one that killed dinosaurs.

But anyway, the best thing about it is that it will not take any time. Maybe a few seconds to burn everything in Earth. Yes, that quick. Because it's so powerful. Imagine the total energy that the Sun could generate in its whole lifetime. These bursts release all that energy in one second. And these ray can last from a few milliseconds to a few hours. They pass quickly, burning everything in their path. We won't even feel it.

Although GRBs are so rare in the Universe, there is no guarantee for these beams to not be on their way towards us from some distant galaxy.

It could come right now. As you read these words. Maybe in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Ohh okay we are still safe.

But the more the end of the world doesn’t happen, the more one might get angrier. The desire to not exist increases as the time of existence increases.

Imagine living an ordinary life, where you earn just enough by hard labor and you are barely happy, desiring always to not exist. And when you reach 80 years old, then suddenly the world ends, probably of GRBs or some equivalent death-ray. Or probably because of some accidental black hole in the lab that is stable enough to grow and swallow us all. Or some really big asteroid incoming, and the scientists detect the asteroid but realize they can do nothing to prevent it. So everyone has been notified that all will be over in a week. What a waste. Wouldn’t you feel angrier? Not for the actual world ending, but like the world could have ended when you were 4 or 5, before all the struggles and heartbreaks and setbacks and failures. Before you found out that your dreams are never going to be real, before you found out that you are also going to be an average nobody.

It doesn't make any difference to the Universe to send an asteroid or GRBs when you are 80, instead of sending it when you are 5.

As if the Universe just wanted to watch you suffer and then when you were going to die naturally, decided to laugh. I would be so much angry if this happens. But anyway, whom would I be angry at? Who would answer me?

So, even better would be the world ending before I was born, maybe before my parents were born, maybe 200 years ago, or a 1000. Or at least in 1984, if Stanislav Petrov had not dismissed the alarm as a false alarm and initiated the attack on the US.

The end of the world is not coming it seems, but if it ever comes, then I wish not too late. Better be in my time than in my children’s. The best time for the end of the world was 100 years ago, and the second best time is now.