Perhaps this comes from living my formative years under the threat of nuclear annihilation. With the amount of firepower aimed around the world, it did not seem to me that it was so much an issue of "if" as "when" concerning our mutually assured destruction. Even with the cold war over for two and a half decades, I suppose I still feel that cloud.
Currently, I'm playing Horizon: Zero Dawn which is set over a thousand years in our future, a future which had to rebuild from the destruction of technology gone awry. It has taken some interesting twists that presents a compelling tale. Even the newest Legend of Zelda has a post-apocalyptic feel to it, even with machines that have run amok. Meanwhile, one of my all time favorite games is The Last of Us, another post-apocalyptic tale which deals with the events of the apocalyptic (zombocalypse) event and the decade immediately after.
Perhaps I am craving assurance that humankind can survive such a terrible event, that should one happen, we would be able to rebuild and perhaps avoid the mistakes of the past.