The End Is Nigh! (Again) — A Comprehensive Guide to Humanity’s Worst Track Record

Published: September 18th — a bright, sunny day on which, against all forecasts, the world continues to exist.

Something is missing today. There’s a strange emptiness in the air — the kind you feel when you realize the grocery store is out of your favorite cereal, or when a beloved television show gets cancelled. But it’s not cereal. And it’s not television.

It’s the weekly doomsday prediction. That reliable, comforting drumbeat of lunacy that reminds us that no matter how bad things get, at least someone out there is confidently wrong about something far worse.

We used to laugh at the sandwich-board crowd shouting that the end is nigh. Adorable eccentrics, we said. Harmless street theatre. Then we gave them reality shows, cable news segments, and front-page coverage, and now the sandwich-board crowd has a media budget.

But they’ve gone quiet for a few days, and frankly the silence is unsettling. So let us review the current scheduling options for Earth’s imminent destruction, all of which are apparently happening in September 2015:

• September 21, 2015 — A carefully calculated asteroid strike. The math is airtight. The math is also made up.
• September 23, 2015 — A secret Bible code and the Pope’s visit to the United States. Presumably the Almighty was waiting for a good photo opportunity.
• September 24, 2015 — A different secret Bible code. They found another one. Of course they did.
• September 27, 2015 — The Blood Moon prophecy, as reported by the Daily Express, a newspaper that has predicted roughly 4,000 asteroid strikes in the past decade and counting.
• September 28, 2015 — A massive earthquake triggered by a meteor strike, predicted by Reverend Efraín Rodríguez of Puerto Rico, who claims to have received a letter from God. (God, for his part, has not confirmed this correspondence.)
• Before October 2015 — Televangelist John Hagee, who has built a substantial ministry on the concept of imminent apocalypse, keeping things professionally vague so as not to overcommit.
• Sometime in September 2015 — Mormon author Julie Rowe, whose 10,000 followers were reportedly preparing survival supplies. Rowe had also recently published a book about the End Times, which — in a development she presumably did not see coming — she was still actively selling.
• October 7, 2015 — Chris McCann of the eBible Fellowship predicted not merely the end of Earth, but the destruction of the entire universe. Why go small? Notably, eBible Fellowship was founded by disciples of Harold Camping, the previous world record holder for apocalypse predictions, which raises the question: at what point does a track record matter?

For the full bouquet of September 2015 hysteria, the team at Skeptoid catalogued it thoroughly, noting that a search for “September 23 2015 apocalypse” returned 11 million results. Eleven. Million. Isaac Newton was even drafted into the madness — his private theological writings were reinterpreted to suggest he’d predicted this very date, which would certainly have surprised him, given that he spent most of his career on mathematics, physics, and a quietly spectacular nervous breakdown.

Meanwhile, earlier that same week, a rainbow-colored iridescent cloud appeared over Costa Rica, sending people rushing to the beaches to raise their hands skyward in anticipation of the Rapture. Scientists explained that the phenomenon was a circumhorizontal arc caused by ice crystals refracting sunlight — a perfectly understood optical effect. This explanation was received with all the enthusiasm you’d expect.

A Brief History of Being Catastrophically Wrong

If this all feels new, it isn’t. Humanity has been scheduling the apocalypse since we first had calendars to schedule things on, and we have been wrong with a consistency that is, in its own way, almost impressive. The Wikipedia list of predicted apocalyptic events runs to hundreds of entries. A sampler of the finest failures:

• ~30 CE — Jesus of Nazareth declared in multiple Gospel passages (Matthew 16:28, Matthew 24:34, Mark 13:30, among others) that “this generation” would not pass before witnessing the Son of Man coming in glory. The generation in question passed away approximately two thousand years ago. Theologians have been explaining this away ever since, which has kept them productively employed.
• 500 CE — Hippolytus of Rome, Sextus Julius Africanus, and Irenaeus independently concluded that the Second Coming would occur around 500 CE based on calculations derived from the dimensions of Noah’s Ark. This methodology sounds insane, because it is insane. No second coming was observed.
• 992–995 CE — Various European Christians became convinced that the world would end within three years when Good Friday coincided with the Feast of the Annunciation. This was considered an unmistakable omen. It was, in fact, a coincidence of calendar dates, which is a thing that happens.
• January 1, 1000 CE — Pope Sylvester II and much of Christian Europe braced for the end on the millennial anniversary of Christ’s birth. The Pope is, officially, infallible on matters of faith and morals. The apocalypse declined to cooperate, suggesting either that eschatology falls outside the infallibility clause, or that the clause needs revision.
• 1033 CE — Various Christians concluded that the Y1K crisis of 1000 CE had simply been a rounding error, and the real millennium should be counted from the date of the Crucifixion rather than the Nativity. This “correction” was accepted with great confidence and produced the same result as the original.
• 1260 CE — Joachim of Fiore, the Italian mystic, calculated that the Third Age of the Holy Spirit would dawn between 1200 and 1260. His followers, the Joachimites (which sounds like a minor skin condition), later revised this to 1290, then to 1335. Joachim himself was safely dead by this point and unavailable for comment.
• 1346–1353 CE — The Black Death killed somewhere between 30 and 60 percent of Europe’s population, which understandably prompted widespread apocalyptic interpretation. In fairness to the medieval Christians who believed this was divine judgment, something was clearly ending. It turned out to be approximately one-third of the continent’s population, caused by Yersinia pestis bacteria transmitted by fleas on rats — considerably less theologically significant than advertised, though no less catastrophic.
• May 27, 1528 — Hans Hut, an Anabaptist leader, predicted the end with admirable specificity — pinned to the exact date. Hut died in prison before the date arrived, so we will never know whether he would have issued a correction. Given the genre, probably yes.
• October 19, 1533, at 8:00 AM — Michael Stifel, a mathematician and Lutheran pastor, got it down to the hour, which is genuinely impressive commitment to a wrong answer. The residents of Lochau assembled at dawn. By 9:00 AM, most were heading home. Stifel was briefly imprisoned for the disruption, possibly the first recorded case of apocalypse-related criminal liability.
• 1600 — Martin Luther, the man who split Western Christianity in half over a theological dispute, also believed the end was imminent within roughly a century of his own time. The Reformation endured. The apocalypse did not arrive.
• 1656 — Christopher Columbus predicted the end in his *Book of Prophecies*, calculating 155 years remaining from the date of writing. Columbus, who spent much of his career being confidently wrong about where he was geographically, extended that tradition admirably into the temporal dimension.
• 1697, 1716, and 1736 — Cotton Mather, the Puritan minister, predicted the apocalypse three times across a 39-year span — a personal record that stood until Harold Camping came along. Mather’s predictions grew from the Salem witch trials and the conviction that New England was locked in cosmic spiritual warfare. He died in 1728, between his second and third predictions, which means the third one was, technically, posthumous.
• May 19, 1780 — The Dark Day — a genuine and bizarre event in which the skies over New England turned dark at noon due to massive wildfires in Canada, combined with fog and cloud cover. The Connecticut General Assembly, several members apparently forgetting that wildfires are a natural phenomenon, briefly entertained the possibility that this was the end. The Assembly was adjourned so members could go home and make peace with God. It was reconsidered when the sky cleared.
• 1836 — John Wesley, founder of Methodism, wrote in his journal that 1836 struck him as a plausible date for the millennium. Wesley was by all accounts an intelligent and disciplined man. This did not help.
• 1843 and 1844 — The Millerites, followers of Baptist preacher William Miller, represent perhaps the most instructive cautionary tale in apocalyptic history. Miller predicted the end for April 28, 1843. When nothing happened, he revised to December 31, 1843. Nothing happened. He revised again to October 22, 1844. When *that* date passed — an event now known in Adventist history as “The Great Disappointment,” which is easily the most understated piece of theological nomenclature ever coined — most followers drifted away. A stubborn remnant reinterpreted the prophecy as describing a heavenly rather than earthly event and eventually became the Seventh-day Adventist Church and the Jehovah’s Witnesses. So the Millerites were wrong about the end of the world, but right that something catastrophic was coming: organized religion with quarterly newsletters.
• 1901 — The Catholic Apostolic Church had always maintained that the Second Coming would occur within the lifetimes of its founding members. When the last surviving founding apostle died in 1901, the Church faced an awkward institutional reckoning. It has not accepted new members since, giving it the distinction of being a religion that is technically still ongoing but, practically speaking, winding down.
• 1892–1911 — Charles Piazzi Smyth, the Astronomer Royal of Scotland and an otherwise accomplished scientist, became convinced that the dimensions of the Great Pyramid of Giza encoded a prophetic timeline pointing to the end of history. This was pyramidology, a pseudoscience with the structural integrity of wet tissue paper. His dates passed. His reputation for pyramid mysticism lingered, which is probably not what he wanted on his legacy.
• 1936 — Herbert W. Armstrong, founder of the Worldwide Church of God, predicted the Tribulation would begin in 1936. When it didn’t, he moved the date to 1943, then 1972, then 1975. Armstrong’s church eventually fragmented into dozens of splinter groups after his death, each claiming to have correctly understood the original teachings, which is a fitting legacy for a man whose primary talent was confident misdirection.
• 1941 — The Jehovah’s Witnesses had previously predicted the end in 1914, 1918, 1920, 1925, and 1941. The 1941 edition was particularly pointed: the Second Coming would occur within the lifetimes of those who had witnessed the events of 1914. As the years have passed and that generation has died off, the Witnesses have periodically redefined “generation” in ways that would make a biblical linguist weep. The current theology holds that “generation” means something like “overlapping groups of anointed ones,” which is doing a heroic amount of theological heavy lifting.
• February 4, 1962 — Jean Dixon, the American astrologer famous for her prediction of Kennedy’s assassination (a prediction she made less specifically than legend holds, and which was surrounded by many failed predictions she is less often credited for), and various Indian astrologers predicted a global catastrophe. Mass prayer meetings were held in India. No catastrophe arrived, though the prayer meetings presumably provided some fresh air and community bonding.
• 1982 — Pat Robertson predicted the world would end in 1982 after confidently stating this on national television. The world declined. Robertson continued broadcasting for another four decades. If the apocalypse is coming for anyone specifically, the queue appears to be long.

Harold Camping: A Special Commendation

• September 6, 1994 — Harold Camping. The civil engineer turned radio preacher published a book titled 1994? — the question mark being the most intellectually honest punctuation mark in the history of apocalyptic literature. When September 6 came and went without incident, Camping explained he had made an arithmetic error involving the Hebrew calendar.
• September 29 and October 2, 1994 — Harold Camping (again). Having recalculated immediately, he offered two revised dates in quick succession that same autumn. Both passed uneventfully.
• May 21, 2011 — Harold Camping spent an estimated $100 million on an international billboard campaign. Family Radio plastered “Judgment Day: May 21” across subway stations, on caravans of RVs, and on highways across multiple continents. Followers donated savings, quit jobs, and said goodbye to unsaved relatives in what must have been the most awkward series of farewell dinners in modern history. When May 21 passed, Camping announced that a “spiritual judgment” had in fact occurred, invisibly, right on schedule — making this arguably the most expensive invisible event ever funded.
• October 21, 2011 — Harold Camping presented his third revised date as the now-certain date of physical destruction. By this point his following had thinned considerably, consisting primarily of people whose definition of “fool me three times” had some elasticity. Nothing happened. In March 2012, Camping finally acknowledged that no one could know the date of the end — a conclusion available in the very Bible he had been using as a calculator for eighteen years, in the form of Matthew 24:36: “But about that day or hour no one knows.” Camping died in December 2013, at age 92, presumably surprised.
• August 23, 2013 — Rasputin (yes, *that* Rasputin) apparently predicted that this date would bring a storm of fire that would destroy most life on Earth, after which Jesus would return to comfort survivors. Rasputin made this prediction in approximately 1900. He was assassinated in 1916. The fire storm did not occur in 2013, though the year was difficult for other reasons.

The One Prediction Worth Taking Seriously

In approximately 5,000,000,000 years, our Sun will exhaust its hydrogen fuel and expand into a red giant, at which point it will either swallow the Earth outright or render its surface uninhabitable through extreme radiation. This is the scientific consensus. The math has been checked by people who do not rely on Bible codes or pyramid measurements. It will happen.

More pressingly, the gradual brightening of the Sun means Earth may become too hot to support complex life in as little as one billion years — a timeline that we should focus on, though perhaps not until after this weekend plans.

This is the one apocalypse I’m willing to endorse. It has peer review. It has a solid evidence base. However it lacks a charismatic televangelist selling merchandise in anticipation of it, which is frankly a gap in the market.

A Modest Proposal

If you genuinely believe any of the predictions listed above — the asteroids, the blood moons, the Bible codes, the pyramid measurements — then you clearly have no use for earthly possessions. Property, vehicles, bank accounts: these are the concerns of people who expect to be around next month.

I, for one, am happy to relieve you of these burdens. Simply sign everything over to me and spend your final days unencumbered by material anxiety. You’ll be at peace. I’ll be grateful. Everybody wins.

If, on the other hand, the world continues to exist next week — and all available evidence suggests it will — perhaps we can agree on a simple principle: the confidence of a prediction is inversely proportional to its reliability, and anyone who has already been wrong about the apocalypse once should be required, at minimum, to provide a non-refundable deposit before being granted further airtime.

The end is nigh. It always is. See you next week.

For further reading, the Wikipedia list of dates predicted for apocalyptic events is a document of staggering scope that is simultaneously the funniest and most sobering thing on the internet.