conqueror worms of the apocalypse

Three worms to fear on this world-ending day:

1. The Worm of the World's End, perhaps one of my favorite creatures from modern fiction. As Wikipedia notes:

The Worm of the World's End, whose body underlies the lands and ocean and whose thrashings will destroy the world when it awakes, [appears] in The One Tree, the second book of the second trilogy of The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever fantasy series written by Stephen R. Donaldson. According to the most recent book in the series (Against All Things Ending) the worm is not physically very large, but its hunger will nonetheless lead to global ruination.

In Donaldson's novels, the myth is told that the Worm is as old as the universe, and when the universe was born, the ravenous Worm began plowing through the heavens and eating the Creator's children, the stars. Once it had eaten its fill, it curled up on itself and settled into slumber. As it slept, the Earth formed around the Worm: mountains, oceans, rivers, its sea-dragon offspring the Nicor, and the forests-- including the powerful One Tree. Alas, one day, the Worm will reawaken, and on that day the world will be no more.

The following photo, found here, is of a threatening cloud that reminded the photographer of Stephen R. Donaldson's works. In a flash of insight, she named the cloud the Worm of the World's End. It does indeed look like a massive worm, come to destroy the city:


2. The Worm at World's End, a legless dragon (making it a Korean imugi?) that apparently hangs out with a really hot chick. I saw this Boris Vallejo-inspired piece of artwork while searching for the above Worm of the World's end, and was impressed enough with the mean-looking dragonling to include the image here:


3. Of course, the above threats to our world are fictional, so I had to include at least one real-life giant worm that could undo us all: The World's Largest Gummi Worm. Weighing three pounds, measuring a little over two feet long (about 1.36kg and 65cm for you metric-heads), and packing over 4000 calories, this worm, if eaten in a single session, will destroy you. All that sugar in your veins will thicken your blood to the consistency of syrup, and your life will simply stop. Since the worm looks suspiciously like a double-headed dildo, it might serve an alternative, non-lethal purpose for the sapphically inclined.

Behold the madness:


So on this day, the dawn of a new Mayan era, we contemplate the many ways in which we may be obliterated. Could the Worm of the World's End wake up, unravel, shed the shell of our planet, and head off once again to devour the stars? Could the Worm at World's End bring along a hot goddess-chick and pass evil judgment on us all? Could we each find ourselves with a giant gummi worm in hand, contemplating a sugary demise? Only the gods know.


_