It's the end of the world as we know it... again

For those of you who have been following this blog for a while, you may remember a post I did way back on May 21, 2011. That was supposed to be Judgement Day (the start of the end of the world in Christian belief) according to an obscure group of believers following the preaching of Harold Camping.

Obviously, that didn't happen.

In the spirit of this Friday's (potential) Doomsday, I thought I would re-post my post from that (non)fateful day in 2011.

But don't worry, NASA and archeologists everywhere highly doubt it will happen.

Happy reading! It will be nice to curl up with a book around the smoldering fires left after the asteroid hits ;)

A colleague of mine has posted another list (with more fiction) here.

I also found this post in one of the blogs I follow full of interesting stuff.

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Original Post from May 21, 2011

In case you haven't heard, today is Judgement Day according to an obscure but very vocal group of believers following the preaching of Harold Camping.

Camping estimates that about 3-4% of the world's population - those that are truly faithful - will rise into heaven, followed by five months of earthquakes and other plagues and disasters until the world officially ends on October 21, 2011.

Are you quaking in your boots yet? I wouldn't be too worried, Mr. Camping has been wrong before. He first predicted the apocalypse would happen back in 1994...

In fact, there has been a number of doomsday predictions over the years.

Here is some great reading on eschatology, the study of the end of the world:

 

 

 

The Apocalypse : A Brief History by Martha Himmelfarb 

 

 

Boston University has a great web page with an Apocalyptic Glossary

 

 

 

A History of the End of the World by Jonathan Kirsch reveals how the most controversial book in the Bible changed the course of Western civilization.

 

 

 

 

Time magazine's online article published yesterday also gives a great summary of apocalypse predictions and end-of-the-world dates that have come (and gone) over the last couple hundred years.