Ice Lacks Catharsis

Noah's Ark is the Hebrew version of a myth that already existed in several other religions in the general Mesopotamia region. Religions are a bit like Hollywood in that way - they feel the need to remake every narrative in their own image. Anyway, the totally-derivative story goes essentially like this: God realizes he made a world full of a bunch of jerks and, rather than take responsibility as the CREATOR OF LITERALLY EVERYTHING decides to start again with a blank slate. This is essentially what many of us would do given the opportunity to hit the reset button on human society, but you'd kinda hope that God would have a little more self-control. Anyway, apparently there just so happened to be precisely one worthwhile human being on the face of the planet, and so God instructed Noah to build a huge boat made of something called cubits. How Noah finished this boat, when there's an entire community out in Maryland who have been trying for years to do the same thing with no success, is beyond me. Anyway, Noah finishes the boat, shoves his family (who, again, are apparently the only people worth saving in the whole world? Okay God) and 7 of every "clean" animal and two of every "dirty" one (because God is exceptionally unapologetic about his speciesism) onto the boat, and shoves off. Then God instructs the Heavens to give 'em all they got - all life on Earth magically disappears (only God knows where all the debris went) and Noah's boat floats around 40 days and 40 nights until he finally lands on a mountain or something. God sends a rainbow (apparently the first one, because I guess light reflecting off water molecules hadn't been invented before) which is apparently Godspeak for "If I ever wanna destroy all of humanity again I'll at least be more creative about it."

The whole "will the world end in fire and ice question" is pretty hard to answer if you're not clear on what "the world ending" means. Does it mean the permanent extinction of humanity? Or the destruction of the Earth itself? If the latter, need not worry - that'll come a few billion years down the line when the sun enters its red giant stage and burns up all the water on Earth, and soon after when it becomes so big that it envelopes the sun inside of it. If the former, that's a tad more philosophical, or at least speculative, of an idea. For me, at least, I hope the world ends in fire. Ice is slow and boring, and lacks catharsis. In fact much of the time ice doesn't really even destroy anything, it just slows it down to the point of stasis. That's not a satisfying end to anything - just ask anybody who watched the season finale of hit anime Attack on Titan. Fire, on the other hand, is unapologetically destructive, and I have to admit if the world's going to end anyway, I'd like to have the pleasure of seeing its most unpleasant elements violently destroyed.