Music albums, novels, TV shows, films, computer games, real life ancient rituals, astrology, pagan worship, calendars (Mayan), religions, apocalypse … UnameIT.
The word apocalypse is defined: Old English, via Old French and ecclesiastical Latin from Greek apokalupsis, from apokaluptein ‘uncover, reveal’, from apo- ‘un-’ + kaluptein ‘to cover. so this gives us a clue as to one nature of doomsday, that is
1) to obtain hidden knowledge, maybe to gain an edge for survival.

A paragraph from Scientific American article by Daisy Yuhas (in 2012) is here: “University of Minnesota neuroscientist Shmuel Lissek, who studies the fear system, believes that at its heart, the concept of doomsday evokes an innate and ancient bias in most mammals. “The initial response to any hint of alarm is fear. This is the architecture with which we’re built,” Lissek says. Over evolutionary history, organisms with a better-safe-than-sorry approach survive. This mechanism has had consequences for both the body and brain, where the fast-acting amygdala can activate a fearful stress response before “higher” cortical areas have a chance to assess the situation and respond more rationally.”

2) to be able to take comfort in KNOWING when the end is coming… by prophesy or guessing.

This might allay fears and allow one to just “wait languidly” for the end to come.

This blog actually has some interesting ideas. And a combination of conspiracy and doomsday believers make up a vocal and determined religious group.

Here is another interesting take on doomsdayers – or survivalists… the preparedness for the end.

Earliest recorded apocalypse predictions are associated with the three Abrahamic religions: flood, rapture, tribulation, armageddon last judgement, second coming of Christ, natural disasters, astronomical events.

Quote from wikipedia: “According to psychologists, possible explanations for why people believe in modern apocalyptic predictions include mentally reducing the actual danger in the world to a single and definable source, an innate human fascination with fear, personality traits of paranoia and powerlessness and a modern romanticism involved with end-times due to its portrayal in contemporary fiction.”

Chronology table from wikipedia: here.

What is interesting is that the number of endtime events recorded has increased dramatically with each passing century. This might still represent a small number of people calling such dates out, because the total number of persons has increased as well.  But at least in this century we are looking at catastrophic cosmic events, ha ha.