Hold on you don't honestly believe people weren't thinking about stuff along the same lines as this 1000 ago do you? It may not always be how the world will end, but anything along the lines of wondering what happens to us when we die or any other obsession with our existence ending. Since man could first abstractly conceptualize death as an event they wondered what happened afterwords, do we experience anything, heaven, hell, blah blah blah, which certainly isn't worrying about how to feed a family. It's a part of being human to wonder about our lives ending and what may come after, all that being said though I can agree with you that it is annoying as fuck to see the same rehashed apocalypse scenarios over and over again, but it's what people will do.