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If you’d really like to depress yourself some evening, watch “Doomsday Preppers” on the National Geographic Channel. The show details the plans of normal, well adjusted people to cope with the aftermath of fiscal collapse, nuclear holocaust, the eruption of Yellowstone, solar flares, and so on. The New York Times noted with outrage that many of these people were accumulating guns and ammunition in order to defend their 1,500 pounds of MREs and dried brown rice, but stockpiling guns is fine with me. My concern is that most of them seem pretty inexpert with guns. One prepper was counting on...

A year from today the world will come to an end, according to some who cite the end of the Mayan Long Count calendar as evidence of a Dec. 21, 2012, apocalypse. But both astronomers and experts on Mesoamerican history say the Mayan apocalypse is likely to be another in a long line of failed doomsdaysAccording to the Maya Long Count calendar, the winter solstice of 2012 — Dec. 21, 2012 —is the end of a b'ak'tun, a 144,000-day cycle that has repeated 12 times since the mythical Maya creation date. The b'ak'tun that will end in 2012 is the...

A laser powerful enough to tear apart the fabric of space could be built in Britain. The major scientific project will follow in the footsteps of the Large Hadron Collider and will answer questions about the universe. The laser will be capable of producing a beam of light so intense that it will be similar to the light the earth receives from the sun but focused on a speck smaller than a pin prick. Scientists say it will be so powerful they will be able to boil the very fabric of space and create a vacuum. A vacuum fizzles with...

In case you had forgotten (or made other plans), the world is supposed to end tomorrow. The prognosticator who predicted that the world would end this spring, Harold Camping, has updated his forecast, and the new End Date is October 21. In May, the world was supposed to end with a series of rolling earthquakes that began at 6PM in New Zealand (and then rolled through all the world's time zones). This time, Harold Camping says, the world will end quietly. As far as we know, he hasn't specified a particular time. In the intervening months, unfortunately, Camping has suffered...

Ready or not here she comes. New Yorkers are scrambling for last minute provisions today as Hurricane Irene draws closer to the city. The forceful storm — a Category 1 with ferocious 85 mph winds — is expected to wallop the city by 4 a.m. tomorrow. -snip- "How can I get out of Coney Island?" said Abe Feinstein, 82, from an apartment with view of the boardwalk. "What am I going to do? Run with this walker?"

The Christian radio station belonging to Harold Camping, who twice incorrectly predicted the world would end, plans to replace his weekday segment Open Forum with new programming after rebroadcasting the last show he recorded before suffering a stroke on June 9. Family Radio on Hegenberger Road began playing repeats of Open Forum after a stroke hospitalized the 89-year-old Camping. On Monday, staff again started airing 20 segments recorded by Camping from May 23 -- two days after he most recently predicted Judgment Day would arrive -- through June 9. "When those are completed, we will have other programming that is...

ALAMEDA -- Harold Camping, the Doomsday radio preacher who sparked international media attention by predicting the end of the world last month, has been hospitalized after suffering a stroke at his Alameda home Thursday night. The 89-year-old radio evangelist and president of the Oakland nonprofit Family Radio was taken by ambulance from his house Thursday night, a neighbor said, but his well-known, gravelly voice that led many believers to donate millions of dollars to his cause may never be the same. "He had a stroke, it was on his right side," said the neighbor, who declined to give her name...

What I learned from the End of the World… Once again the movie wasn’t as good as the Book. By movie I mean 2012 and by the book, I mean the Bible. Book Better than Movie Some would say, that from a Christian perspective while Harold Camping got the date of the rapture wrong – he was right about one thing. He was right in saying the Bible says the rapture is coming. Will Graham, the grandson of Billy Graham on Harold Camping's failed doomsday date: "Harold couldn't be more right. The end * * * * * Camping’s Explanation…...

End of Days Did you believe the world was going to end on May 21? Yes, my bags were packed and everything. No, everyone knows that doesn't happen until 2012.

The religious broadcaster who made the world's biggest mistake, twice, is bewildered that things did not go according to his prediction and the world did not end at 6 pm on May 21. Harold Camping, whose radio network is reported to be worth between USD 70 million and USD 120 million, was nowhere to be seen publicly Sunday after his prediction didn't come true, according to media reports on Monday. Camping's Family Radio network in Oakland, California, broadcasts on 150 stations in the US, as well as reaching audiences in Europe, Asia and AfricaTom Evans, a Family Radio board member,...

<p>OAKLAND, Calif. — They spent months warning the world of the apocalypse, some giving away earthly belongings or draining their savings accounts. And so they waited, vigilantly, on Saturday for the appointed hour to arrive.</p> <p>When 6 p.m. came and went at various spots around the globe, and no extraordinary cataclysm occurred, Keith Bauer — who hopped in his minivan in Maryland and drove his family 3,000 miles to California for the Rapture — took it in stride.</p>

USGS is reporting a 10.0+ earthquake, the largest ever reported in the islands of and around American Samoa. It seems to be splitting the fault and creating rift, moving Eastward. It is predicted it will go around the world. Just kidding- can we officially call Camping a fraud now?

I thought it would be nice to minimize the silliness (as if) and at the same time save bandwidth, so I am setting up this "DAY AFTER" Live Thread, in honor and remembrance of all of those who will be "LEFT BEHIND" after the Rapture on May 21st, 2011.

In truth, the ideas and images in men’s minds are the invisible powers that constantly govern them. - John Locke, English philosopher, physician The American evangelicals whose frenzied scriptural arithmetic points to the Second Coming of Christ 2,000 years after his birth are engaged in an activity which has been threatening the stability of the Christian Church since the second century; they are trying to align God’s calendar with man’s. - Damian Thompson, author, ‘The End of Time’ ________________________________________________________________________________ MIDDLE EAST, INDIA, May 19, 2011 —I bumped into Harold Camping when I came across his book ‘1994?’ Since he put...

Family Radio says the rapture will start at 6 pm local time. Kiritimati is 16 hours ahead of UTC which gives the rest of the world plenty of time (and the U.S. by midnight Friday into Saturday) to figure out if this supposed rapture is to take place. Check out what time it will be at your home when Kiritimati reaches 6 pm.

NEW YORK (AP) -- For some, it's Judgment Day. For others, it's party time. A loosely organized Christian movement has spread the word around the globe that Jesus Christ will return to earth on Saturday to gather the faithful into heaven. While the Christian mainstream isn't buying it, many other skeptics are milking it. A Facebook page titled "Post rapture looting" offers this invitation: "When everyone is gone and god's not looking, we need to pick up some sweet stereo equipment and maybe some new furniture for the mansion we're going to squat in." By Wednesday afternoon, more than 175,000...

Throughout human history and especially in recent centuries, cults of all kinds have predicted the end of the world. You’ve probably noticed that they’ve all been seriously wrong. The latest such silliness has come from 89-year-old Harold Camping’s Family Radio network of 66 stations. Based on his study of the Bible, Camping calculates that doomsday will be on Saturday, May 21, 2011. Christianity is particularly prone to such nonsense. After all, the Book of Revelation is all about doomsday, though with details from a clearly delusional mind. The “son of man” appears out of the clouds with a two-edged sword...

Throughout human history and especially in recent centuries, cults of all kinds have predicted the end of the world. You’ve probably noticed that they’ve all been seriously wrong. The latest such silliness has come from 89-year-old Harold Camping’s Family Radio network of 66 stations. Based on his study of the Bible, Camping calculates that doomsday will be on Saturday, May 21, 2011. Christianity is particularly prone to such nonsense. After all, the Book of Revelation is all about doomsday, though with details from a clearly delusional mind. The “son of man” appears out of the clouds with a two-edged sword...

An Irish American man has spent almost $150,000 in preparation for what he believes is the beginning of the end. Robert Fitzpatrick, 60, spent what he called his "life savings" on bus and subway advertisements throughout New York City in preparation for May 21, 2011 – or Judgement Day as Fitzpatrick has referred to it. Fitzpatrick, a recently retired MTA engineer, is so convinced that the fast approaching date is the end of the world, that he published a book titled "The Doomsday Code." In an interview with the New York Post Fitzpatrick reasoned that his book provided "proof that...

May 21, "starting in the Pacific Rim at around the 6 p.m. local time hour, in each time zone, there will be a great earthquake,". The true Christian believers will be "raptured": They'll fly upward to heaven. "and on top of all that, there's no more salvation at that point. 153 days later that the entire universe and planet Earth will be destroyed." "I no longer think about 401(k)s and retirement," he says. "I'm just a lot less stressed, and in a way I'm more carefree." Brown is married with several young children, and none of them shares his beliefs....