Doomsday Revisited

Ensuring the Continuity of our Species: It doesn’t look good for the home team. (Part 2 of 4)

Nostradamus, 1999

The heavily obfuscated and metaphorical writings of Michel de Nostrdame have intrigued people for over 400 years. His writings, the accuracy of which relies heavily upon very flexible interpretations, have been translated and re-translated in dozens of different versions.

One of the most famous quatrains read, "The year 1999, seventh month / From the sky will come great king of terror." Many Nostradamus devotees grew concerned that this was the famed prognosticator's vision of Armageddon.

Y2K, 2000

As the last century drew to a close, many people grew concerned that computers might bring about doomsday. The problem, first noted in the early 1970s, was that many computers would not be able to tell the difference between 2000 and 1900 dates.

No one was really sure what that would do, but many suggested catastrophic problems ranging from vast blackouts to nuclear holocaust. Gun sales jumped and survivalists prepared to live in bunkers, but the new millennium began with only a few glitches.

Antarctic, 2000

In case the Y2K bug didn't do us in, global catastrophe was assured by Richard Noone, author of the 1997 book "5/5/2000 Ice: the Ultimate Disaster" (Three Rivers Press). According to Noone, the Antarctic ice mass would be three miles thick by May 5, 2000, a date in which the planets would be aligned in the heavens, somehow resulting in a global icy death

While it may have been responsible for a lot of book sales, global warming must have kept the ice age at bay.

God's Church, 2008

According to God's Church minister Ronald Weinland, the end times were upon us, again. His 2006 book "2008: God's Final Witness" (The-End.Com, 2006) states that hundreds of millions of people will die, and by the end of 2006 "there will be a maximum time of two years remaining before the world will be plunged into the worst time of all human history.

By the fall of 2008, the United States was supposed to have collapsed as a world power, and no longer exist as an independent nation. As the book notes, Ronald Weinland placed his reputation on the line as the end-time prophet of God.

Harold Camping, 2011

In May 2011, radio preacher Harold Camping drew international media attention with his predictions that Judgment Day would come on May 21, kicked off by earthquakes around the globe and a rapture of the faithful. According to Camping, this dreadful day would be followed by months of torment and the end of the world on Oct. 21.

When May 21 passed quietly, Camping retreated from the limelight for a brief time before announcing that Judgment Day had, in fact, come and gone on that date. Instead of physical earthquakes, Camping wrote on the website of his radio station, Family Radio, May 21 brought spiritual earthquakes as God completed His judgment of souls.

Camping continued to contend that the end of the world would indeed come on Oct. 21, albeit quietly and without fire and brimstone.