Keep On Dancing Til The World Ends

I can’t help but love a good moron predicting the end of the world. It’s just too fun.

For the believers out there, you’ve only got about 8 days left on earth according to Harold Camping, who recently supplanted Donald Trump as the craziest public person currently in the media. Camping claims the Rapture will occur around 6pm on May 22 and us sinners left behind will suffer the painful consequences of our disbelief.

What’s especially irritating is that this guy has predicted the end before...in 1994! Apparently he’s spent the last 17 years rechecking his math (his prediction is based on a mathematical calculation he concocted and only he understands). Incredibly, this past oversight hasn't dissuaded his followers who are quitting their jobs and blowing through savings in droves as the end draws near. (Help a starving actor with that extra cash?)

What the hell is wrong with people?!

Not surprisingly, the proselytizers aren’t always good at putting their money where their mouths are. Apparently, a group of believers were out preaching their apocalypse and so irritated a man, he decided to put them to the test. He brought over a homeless woman and asked if they would donate any of the money they would no longer need after the rapture. Not one of them gave her a dime. Classic.

I would love to see a White House Correspondents’ Dinner roast of Harold Camping! It would make the roast of The Donald look like child’s play (click here to see Obama's comments on Trump).

Now, I’m all for letting the crazies feed on each other’s insanity, but when I hear interviews of parents with small children who have quit their jobs and squandered their life savings, I can feel nothing but sadness for the kid who has to grow up without because his parents went a little crazy when she was a baby. The problem with true believers is their madness is never contained among themselves. They always seem to take others down with them.

NPR interviewed a married couple grappling with the End Times – the husband was a believer, the wife was not. I can't imagine what meals are like in their house! I mean for the husband, he fervently believes in 8 days his wife will be tortured and killed as a sinner while he rises to heaven. The wife has to face her friends and relatives in the face of his craziness and stand by her man. Mega kudos to her for sticking this out. Millions have divorced over much much less.

I guess on May 23 she'll run the house either way.

Assuming Camping is wrong and the world keeps right on spinning past May 22, we will all revisit this End Times discussion on a much grander scale next year. December 21, 2012 has been predicted as the end of the world by multiple sources, some of which actually have a smidgen of credibility.

God help us if there's a slow news cycle next December.

I, for one, am going to keep plugging along as I have been regardless of these predictions of doom. Nevertheless, I won’t be able to help myself from loosely following the next predictions of Doomsday and the wacky “science” that such prophecies are based on. They’re like 20/20 specials or E True Hollywood Stories on people who get caught up in sordid and deadly affairs – I just can't look away from the train wreck.

Y2K anyone?

How are you prepping for Doomsday? What’s your favorite prediction? Have you talked to any of the true believers? Are you one?

(photos courtesy of me and Getty Images)

-- Gabriel Voss

 

Comments

[Rachel D.]

I don't understand why the believers would bother the quit their jobs if they believe they're going to go to Heaven in two days. I mean, will it matter either way, since they won't be around? I feel like, as a Christian, I'm "supposed" to believe that it's going to happen, but I can't accept the *prediction* of someone who has no credibility. Even the Bible says that no one will know when Judgement Day is.

[Gabriel Voss]

Rachel - I guess like the rest of us, the believers as a whole don't like their jobs either :) Most Christians point to exactly what you said that no one knows the date of the rapture. It's the same kind of misguided use of the religion as the people who protest military funerals in God's name - they unfairly give all Christians a bad name.