The skies roared with thunder and the earth heaved,
Then came darkness and a stillness like death.
Lightening smashed the ground and fires blazed out;
Death flooded from the skies.
When the heat died and the fires went out,
The plains had turned to ash.
A translation of part of tablet IV of the 4000 year old epic tale of Gilgamesh – King of Uruk, Babylonia (Uruk being the biblical Erech, known today as Warka in Iraq).
This tale, well worth reading (or viewing), is from one of the cradles of civilisation, famous for some of the earliest developments in writing, agriculture, irrigation as well as storytelling.
Shame it’s being bombed back into the stone age.