Disaster movies, how we love them? Nope? Well, good thrillers are a well established genre and although a happy ending is a crowd-pleaser, it's not compulsary. In science fiction also, there's a tradition of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic writing.
All of which is a short prequel to a gratuitous reference to the
Large Hadron Collider (
has it destroyed the world yet?)
Exercise:
a) Write a short story inspired by a news event (any news event will do)
b)It's the end of the world! Write a story about how it happened.