Well my first foray into apocalypse-themed diaries was met with interest, confusion, and some mockery. Which tells be the topic has potential but needs some refining. So we're going to take this to the most refined room of the DK mansion, the library. And talk about Apocalypse books.
I'm pretty sure the first apocalypse literature I encountered was "Leiningen versus the Ants": http://www.classicshorts.com/...shorts.com/stories/lvta.html. Arguably, this isn't apocalypse literature, because it's just one guy on a farm, fighting ants. Grounded (as I now realize) in a Jack Londonesque / triumph of technology fantasy and written in 1938, as the sun slowly started to set on Imperialism, and was still rising on Technology. These days, I root for the ants and Nature, but as a child, the menace of a massive invasion of ravenous ants preceded my reading this source text by about 10 years (I was living in the tropics at the time), was the first Apocalypse I feared. I went to sleep each night expecting to wake to a seethe of ants, and hoped that I would have the courage to detour and rescue my younger sister (my parents were a lost cause - they didn't take the ant threat seriously, and so were on their own...) on my way to the pool.
After the jump, a taste of Leiningen...And more Apocalypse Literature!