I'm alternately swayed by arguments on both sides here - the Ballard view, the Seneca view - but i suppose the extreme popularity of CGI-action spectaculars involving the destruction of the Earth, natural disasters, suggests some kind of appetite for destruction in the hearts of the masses
similar to the Sublime effect of e.g. footage of mushroom clouds.... or Stockhausen on 9/11 as Aesthetic Triumph (it weren't at all fun upclose i can tell you - we lived about 1 and half miles from ground zero)
Then there's the "tabula rasa" fantasy (John Carey discusses it The Intellectuals and the Masses), a response to a verminously overcrowded world, the dream of starting again, a more heroic - dangerous, but satisfying - life. Mad Max, even.
As a kid i was a big fan of this series The Survivors, a very-near future England where an escaped biological warfare germ had wiped out 99 % of the population. Used to daydream similar sort of "empty England" fantasies myself - the more exciting world that would open up.
See also: punk as a reaction to boredom - "no future" not as a dire warning but as kind of promise. Punk's been so rationalised and validated by historians etc, there's a sort of social worker version of punk (youth energy, DIY, anger at the Shitstem), but a lot of it was just pure nastiness, completely indefensible. i remember me and my brothers thrilling to tales of the Pistols puking at airports, Vicious slashing his chest onstage, the cynicism of the Swindle narrative, the nihilism, the sick joke of "Belsen Was A Gas" or turning Ronnie Biggs into a pop star.
Ballard is key but before Ballard was Freud, right - Civilisation and Its Discontents - the death instinct. Not that I've read it...
Apropros of almost nothing, I've been watching - in small increments, cos it's so bad - the 90s ramraider-sploitation movie Shopping. That is some pulp Ballard kitsch.
Also on a 90s tip, tried to watch Tank Girl - another 'after the collapse' fantasy.