10 Failed Doomsday Predictions

[snopes]

With the upcoming disaster film "2012" and the current hype about Mayan calendars and doomsday predictions, it seems like a good time to put such notions in context.

Most prophets of doom come from a religious perspective, though the secular crowd has caused its share of scares as well. One thing the doomsday scenarios tend to share in common: They don't come to pass.

Here are 10 that didn't pan out, so far:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/...daypredictions

[Floater]

They forgot to mention the Korpela movement.

[Cyrano]

Here's a long list of the many, many times Doomsday has been predicted throughout History:

http://www.abhota.info/end1.htm

It's quite entertaining to read and think of all those prophets who made fools of themselves... some being sent to insane asylums (something that hardly ever happens to modern-days apocalyptic prophets, alas) .

[Troberg]

Hasn't every single doomsday prediction ever made failed (with the possible exception of the one made by the dinosaur Nostratriceratops)? With that background, it's a fair assumption and a safe enough assumption that every future doomsday prediction will fail. Sure, you'd eventually be wrong once, but one mistake is easily forgiven, especially when there is no one around to remind you of it.

[snapdragonfly]

"By the fall of 2008, the United States will have collapsed as a world power, and no longer exist as an independent nation."

According to some people, this did come true on November 4 of 2008! Along with sudden and complete capitulation to Communism, Facism, and Islamist heathen terrorism, simultaneously.

[Troberg]

Originally Posted by Floater

They forgot to mention the Korpela movement.

Dang, why do I miss all the good movements!

[Brad from Georgia]

This site has a compendium of bizarre and goofy end-times fiascos. Unfortunately, it hasn't been updated in the last six years or so.

[Mr. Billion]

Originally Posted by Troberg

Hasn't every single doomsday prediction ever made failed (with the possible exception of the one made by the dinosaur Nostratriceratops)? With that background, it's a fair assumption and a safe enough assumption that every future doomsday prediction will fail. Sure, you'd eventually be wrong once, but one mistake is easily forgiven, especially when there is no one around to remind you of it.

There have been five great extinction events over the past 500 million years, so there could have been at least five prophets of doom.

[Troberg]

Originally Posted by Mr. Billion

There have been five great extinction events over the past 500 million years, so there could have been at least five prophets of doom.

Yep, but only one of them had anything that could even be remotely intelligent enough to predict anything at all.

[Cyrano]

Originally Posted by Mr. Billion

There have been five great extinction events over the past 500 million years, so there could have been at least five prophets of doom.

If there are still humans (or even sentient beings) on this planet when the next extinction event comes, at least ONE doomsday prophet will be right.

[diddy]

Originally Posted by Cyrano

If there are still humans (or even sentient beings) on this planet when the next extinction event comes, at least ONE doomsday prophet will be right.

That's one reason that the crazies are always saying "the end is nigh" so that they don;t have to focus on those niggling details like time and all.

[Broken Sword]

Originally Posted by Troberg

Hasn't every single doomsday prediction ever made failed (with the possible exception of the one made by the dinosaur Nostratriceratops)? With that background, it's a fair assumption and a safe enough assumption that every future doomsday prediction will fail. Sure, you'd eventually be wrong once, but one mistake is easily forgiven, especially when there is no one around to remind you of it.

There's been a number of civilizations and isolated communities that have completely collapsed to the degree where a doomsday prophesy might have looked pretty accurate in the end to them.

[diddy]

Originally Posted by Broken Sword

There's been a number of civilizations and isolated communities that have completely collapsed to the degree where a doomsday prophesy might have looked pretty accurate in the end to them.

The problem is that strikes to me as a form of shifting goalposts. I mean on some scale, just one person dying is a form of doomsday - after all the world to them would be gone. What your looking at would be more civilization extinction rather than a doomsday scenario. Too me it's just cheating to think of local disasters as doomsday.

Noah's Ark story depected a worldwide flood - that is a doomsday scenario since it was global. Of course, since it never happened that way and was probably derived from any number of local flooding that were really bad, but in the grand sceme of things, a local flood is not a doomsday event. It's a local flood.

From my point of view, doomsday can't just be re-defined based on scale. Its gotta be total destruction, no humans (or so few that they would be unable to ensure future survival) left event. Otherwise we should be looking at things as just regular disasters that can be scaled. If people survived doomsday, it really can't be doomed. If we are to be doomed, than we have to be doomed - totally.

[barbrainey]

I first heard about the 5/05/2000 doomsday message four years earlier in 1993. Only the version I heard was that on 5/05/2005 the Earth would topple over on its side, causing Hawaii to become the new South Pole and Western Europe the new North Pole. This would make the presend poles warmer and livable. However, this topple would end civilization as we know it. The cause of this topple would be a planetary alignment.

I don't recall the freezing over version. But somehow the year was changed. Either that, or the doomsday messenger changed his date when he realized that the planetary line-up would occur five years earlier than he had thought.

Barb Rainey

[Singing in the Drizzle]

I sure some day someone will get it right. I also sure that I will not be around afterward list to them tell me "I told you so". Until then there is more important things to worry about, like living.

[Steve Eisenberg]

Where are the Malthusians:

The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.

-- Paul Ehrlich, 1968

[Troberg]

Originally Posted by diddy

The problem is that strikes to me as a form of shifting goalposts. I mean on some scale, just one person dying is a form of doomsday - after all the world to them would be gone. What your looking at would be more civilization extinction rather than a doomsday scenario. Too me it's just cheating to think of local disasters as doomsday.

Exactly. A proper doomsday is worldwide.