Ragnarok

"When the bond round the earth was loosed, other bonds broke. The hell-hound, Garm, snapped his chain and leaped out to join his wolf kindred. The sun in her chariot, and the moon in his, whipped up their horses in their everlasting rush round the sky. But the tireless pursuing wolves, joined by Garm, with crimson eyes and gullet, knew that their time had come, galloped faster, and fastened their teeth in the haunches of the silver horse and the swarthy. The horses screamed and swerved, and light in the world went mad, black, blazing white, dark as hell, lurid red."-A. S. Byatt, Ragnarok, pg. 136

Passages like this one exemplify the fragility of the system which keeps the earth in balance and keeps entropy at bay. The "bond around the earth" which sends the earth into chaos in Ragnarok is the giant serpent and her destructive forces. This phrase can also be seen in light of human unity as the great global link of a common cause. once this common cause is lost, whether it be environmental struggles, global economy, or peace treaties, can lead to the rapid descent of humanity and the earth into complete chaos in which everything is wiped out by opposing forces and there is nothing left, represented by the two battling armies that wipe each other out and take out all of the world with them. This chain-reaction apocalypse that Byatt describes in Ragnarok is not entirely impossible to replicate with the world powers today, and was especially possible during the time of World War II, when this was written. It seemed almost certain that the world powers would take each other out.