In one way, the end times are always with us. Starting with Mt Toba volcano in 70,000 BC, when the human population went down to fewer than 10k and possibly as low as 40 breeding pairs, there have been many many endtimes. The Black Death comes to mind - between a third and a half of the population of Europe died. The smallpox and measles pandemics in North America which so conveniently reduced c 100 million First Nations down to a few hundred thousand (helped by the US cavalry of course). The Mongols wiped out millions. So did Hitler (20million?), Stalin (50?) and Mao (60?).

It seems we can expect a normal endtime to happen every 70-100 years or so. A fancy one (volcanic) is random but kills more via starvation, plague and war.

So we're due a new endtime, even without a volcano. Millions will die. Most of us will die in various unpleasant ways, a few will live and think of the endtime as the best and luckiest time because they survived.

Remember it's the survivors who write the history.

And part of that history will be the survivors' memories of why the endtime happened.

Which will probably be wrong.