Drawing on the conception of the disaster as a "catastrophe" - i.e. in the etymological sense, a "point of no return", a "critical point" which marks an disruption, a radical change -, this paper focuses on "apocalyptic disasters", that is to say, those "catastrophic events" that evoke the "end of the world". This theme has always been very present in the collective imaginary, from mythical and religious eschatology to ecological politics, from dystopian narrative to contemporary journalism, etc. Regardless of the peculiarities of each text, the destruction of the planet and/or the annihilation of humanity is generally caused either by "natural" disasters, triggered by natural factors such as astronomical bodies, biological agents or geological phenomena, or by "cultural" disasters, directly resulting from human action. However, these typologies have always been interconnected: while natural disasters seem to be partly linked to ecological or social upheavals caused by human actions (sometimes unconscious, sometimes irresponsible), cultural disasters can also be conceived as forms of "natural" entropic degeneration of complex organizations. Moreover, as we will show through the semiotic analysis of relevant cinematographic texts, apocalyptic disasters inevitably affect both nature and culture, altering the natural environment and biological life as well as cultural artifacts and civilization itself, also including the ability to give meaning to individual and collective existence.
