Solution to Apocalypse

Author: Galen Pickard

The 28 images correspond to phrases from R.E.M.'s "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)".

That's great, it starts with an earthquake
Birds and snakes, an aeroplane, and Lenny Bruce is not afraid
Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn
World serves its own needs, don't misserve your own needs
Feed it up a knock, speed, grunt, no strength no
The ladder starts to clatter with a fear of heights, down, height
Wire in a fire, represent the seven games
And a government for hire and a combat site

The images are, in song order:

[great]	[earthquake]	[birds and snakes]
[aeroplane]	[Lenny Bruce]	[Not Afraid]
[eye of a hurricane]	[listen to yourself]	[churn]
[world]	[serves]	[needs]
[Feed]	[up]	[knock]
[speed]	[grunt (no)]	[strength (no)]
[ladder structure]	[clatter]	[fear of heights]
[down height]
[wire in a fire]	[represent]	[seven games]
[government]	[for hire]	[combat site]

Each file name ends suspiciously in a two character bigram. Reading the first character of the bigram in song order spells READSECONDCHARACTERSHEXASCII. The second characters, interpreted as bigrams, are:

41 4E 53 57 45 52 20 22 41 52 52 41 59 22

Which is ASCII for ANSWER "ARRAY", and thus the answer to the puzzle is ARRAY.

Note: This puzzle pulls heavily from an old warm-up puzzle Erin Rhode wrote for the team in 2009 which used Billy Joel's We Didn't Start the Fire instead of REM.