Top Doomsday Prophecies
Check out these “doomsday” theories that got people talking.
1 / 10
May 21, 2011 - Harold Camping, a Christian radio broadcaster who heads the Family Radio Worldwide ministry, predicts that the Rapture (when Jesus Christ will return to earth and take true believers to heaven) will take place May 21, 2011. Furthermore, the end of the world will take place Oct. 21 when all non-believers will die, he says. His predictions have garnered worldwide attention with billboards and broadcasts being used to publicize the idea. Camping’s prediction follows a long tradition of so-called “doomsday” theories. Take a look at just a few more here.(Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS, AP)
2 / 10
Dec. 21, 2012 - For several years now, several theorists have predicted that on Dec. 21, 2012, the end date on the Mayan calendar, the world will face a series of apocalyptic disasters that will bring drastic changes to the future. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
3 / 10
2006-08 - Ronald Weinland, a minister at Ohio-based God’s Church, predicted that millions would pass away in 2006 and also said the next two years we would be “plunged into the worst time of all human history.” (Photo: www.the-end.com/RonaldWeinland.asp)
4 / 10
Y2K - The new millennium brought many doomsday prophecies by theorists. Many also predicted a technology meltdown due to many systems operating using two-digit years (meaning 00 could be mistakenly seen at 1900 not 2000). Many computer systems were fixed prior to this date.
5 / 10
Summer 1999 - Famous 16th-century French seer Nostradamus, who allegedly predicted such events as the death of Princess Diana and the attacks on 9/11, also predicted that in “1999 and seven months … from the sky will come the great king of terror.”(Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
ADVERTISEMENT
6 / 10
Heaven's Gate, 1997 - In 1997, members of Heaven’s Gate, a California-based UFO religious group committed mass suicide (by ingesting a poisonous mix and inducing asphyxiation by putting plastic bags over their heads) in order to reach an alien spaceship they thought was following the Comet Hale-Bopp. They believed that a UFO would take their souls to another existence. Police found the bodies all dressed alike—in black shirts and sweat pants and black and white Nikes—lying in their bunk beds, their bodies covered in a purple cloth.(Photo: REUTERS /Landov)
7 / 10
1982 - In 1976, televangelist Pat Robertson predicted that the end of the world would come in the fall of 1982. “I guarantee you by the end of 1982 there is going to be a judgment on the world,” he said during a 1980 broadcast of The 700 Club. While this didn’t come to fruition, it didn’t stop him from making a series of predictions for years to come, which include predictions of a 2006 Pacific tsunami and a terror attack in 2007 among others.(Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images)
8 / 10
1988 - Former NASA engineer and Bible student Edgar C. Whisenant predicted the Rapture would take place between Sept. 11 and Sept. 13 in 1988. His book on the matter, 88 Reason Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988, sold 4.5 million copies and many Christian evangelicals took the claims seriously. When it did not occur, Whisenant wrote follow-up books predicting Rapture dates in 1989, 1993 and 1994. They did not sell as well.(Photo: Whisenant/World Bible Society)
9 / 10
Halley's Comet in 1910 - In 1910, French astronomer Camille Flammarion believed that deadly gas from Halley’s Comet, a short-period comet seen from earth every 75-76 years, could kill many on earth as it passed. That year, many bought gas masks and prayed to live through the comet’s passage.(Photo: NASA)