Whether it's ghosts or the afterlife or god, most humans tend to lean towards thinking something funky and unknowable is out there, even if they can't pinpoint what it is or prove that it exists.
In an alternate 1985, American movie audiences saw a movie called Spaceman From Pluto, wherein Eric Stoltz's time-traveling DeLorean is sent back to the 80s by driving straight into a nuclear explosion -- nuke the fridge style.
Kurt Vonnegut's 1985 novel Galapagos is a day after tomorrow story of the world ending, but also not ending, told from one million years in the future.
