A Russian cult emerged from the cave they were hiding in while waiting for the end of the world.
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/04/01/doomsday-cult.html?ref=rss
Allow me to give you some advice: If you ever decide to join a cult, the first thing you should ask about is the quality of their doomsday cave. A poorly constructed cave could kill you, and that would take most of the fun out of doomsday.
You should also look for a cult leader who has some specificity about the exact doomsday date. Otherwise you’re just sitting in a cave for an extra month for no good reason. I’d want the comet to strike earth a minute after I wiped my feet on the cave’s welcome mat. That way the people who got all of my worldly possessions wouldn’t have time to enjoy them. I wouldn’t feel so sad for someone who, just prior to being annihilated, was saying something like “HA HA HA!!! THAT IDIOT SCOTT GAVE ME HIS Wii!!!” That guy has it coming.
I think it will be hard for the cult members to explain the gaps on their resumes when they try to reenter the job market. “Well, I spent much of 2008 in a cave waiting for doomsday. It turns out that my infallible leader was more of a drooling nutbag than a prophet. Anyway, my point is that you should hire me because I have excellent judgment.”
The big problem with picking a doomsday date is that it so obvious when you are wrong. For most other decisions, you can generally make a case for why your wrongness was really right. For example, you still hear people say Saddam had WMD but he did a good job of hiding them. There’s no way to disprove that sort of assertion. But when the world doesn’t explode on Tuesday, it’s hard to make a case that it did. You have to go with something like “The comet was heading this way, but we prayed it off course. You’re welcome. Give me back my stuff.”
Reportedly, there are a number of other doomsday cults in Russia. I wonder if they have some sort of convention. I can imagine rows of vendor booths for white robes, hair clippers, and canned food. I suppose there would also be a cave realtor or two.
I wonder if the other doomsday cults were sitting in their own caves, listening to the news on their radios and thinking “Those idiots! They totally got the wrong date!” I imagine the various doomsday cults are highly competitive, always trying to recruit the nuts away from the other cults. “Our cave has a flat screen TV, and every Friday is casual.”
Cults are funny.
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Posted by: mandy | April 14, 2008 at 08:38 PM
Best part of the whole sotry? He was charged with setting up a religion associated with violence...
Posted by: Courtney | April 12, 2008 at 02:53 PM
"So use D/M/Y." --Mark
I prefer Y/M/D, myself. If you think about it, I'm sure you'll realize how much more logical that is than anything else.
Posted by: Robby | April 12, 2008 at 01:40 PM
I personally will find kind of troubling if the cult leader of my favorite "Doomsday organization" decides not to join me once we go into the cave. That will be for me a red flag, even if detained.
Second, it is important to bring a calendar and a intrument to measure time. It seems Doomsday will be in May. As far as I'm concerned, it will be next month. So, they spend about 4 months inside a cave without power, water and limited food, just to leave the cave 1 month BEFORE Doomsday? Second red flag.
Third. They left because the cave collapsed. Didn't they even think on what was going on outside the cave? This would have been my point of view, if I was a Doomsday fan: If the cave was collapsing, chances are the Doomsday started a little bit earlier. The cave was not as solid to keep Doomsday outside. It was not true, but it makes a hole in the solidity of their certainty of the Doomsday events (and the cave). Red flag.
Posted by: pmrjulio | April 08, 2008 at 06:54 AM
I find Doomsday cults a little odd myself, but that one seems to take the biscuit. From my perspective, it seems that those cultists got their eschatology mixed up; they seem to have no clue who are supposed to tell the hills "hide us" and the rocks "fall on us."
Better, in my mind, that when my doomsday comes (if, at no other time, then the hour of my death), I'd be found doing my duties of the moment. Far jollier than hiding in a cave anyway.
Posted by: Steven Cornett | April 06, 2008 at 09:47 AM
The end of the article said that the leader "blessed the cult members, many of whom were women." That makes me wonder what "blessed" is a euphemism for.
Posted by: Smokefoot | April 04, 2008 at 09:09 AM
I think a big clue should be the fact that their leader didn't go with them in the cave . . . hmmm . . .
I do like the quote "Kuznetsov was said to have blessed his followers, many of whom were women, before sending them into the cave," What kind of blessing did he give them?
"All the guys can take a break, I'm going to bless all the women together in my bedroom."
Posted by: smee | April 04, 2008 at 08:55 AM
I like that cop's endquote to that video: "Once you think you've seen it all, something else comes around!"
Posted by: quantum_flux | April 03, 2008 at 12:57 PM
[Saddam did have WMD.
Or do you believe that all those Kurds gassed themselves?
Posted by: Dave]
a) if they've been used, you don't get to use them again
b) why was this not brought up at his trial?
c) (actually asnwering b) where did he get these WMDs from?
Posted by: Mark | April 03, 2008 at 08:27 AM
I like the Jewish God's rule. In essence, if what the prophet said does not come true, the prophet is killed.
Posted by: AC | April 03, 2008 at 06:59 AM
Never underestimate the power of loneliness.
Posted by: AC | April 03, 2008 at 06:55 AM
I am reading your post from our cave...
They provide WiFi here.
Posted by: leonardtambunan | April 03, 2008 at 05:58 AM
If you are a doomsday cult, why go hide in a cave. Surely the point of Doomsday is that the world will end....
Why are you not out partying your life away????
cult member: "woo hoo the world ends in 15 days, let's get wasted and have lots of non-commital s£x"
non-cult member: "I don't know, I have to get to work and file my time sheets"
cult member: "I bought some choco sauce and after we are going to go and thump Bush on the nose"
non-cult member: "well, why didn't you say, woo hoo"
Posted by: Stewart | April 03, 2008 at 05:49 AM
Cults being funny is, of course, why Red Dwarf is considered a cult comedy.
Posted by: RavenBlack | April 03, 2008 at 05:29 AM
Forgot to post this. Not sure when he updated last, but it's pretty funny to read through. A list of Doomsday Cults:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Oracle/9941/
Posted by: Ric | April 03, 2008 at 05:12 AM
It also makes you wonder if they sometimes decide to merge like businesses. On the serious side...it is sad how many of these there are. I have personal experience with the Jehovah's Witnesses through family that is now out of there. They continue to spout out dates for the end of the world. They don't do it as much as they used to because it's bad for marketing. Everytime they miss it, there is a big drop in membership. Then, after a while, they throw out another one to help drive membership and scare the crap out of everyone. They've also been good at dismissing the dates they missed by saying..."well...you read more into it than what we meant"
Posted by: Ric | April 03, 2008 at 05:10 AM
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Posted by: Tomas Liubinas | April 03, 2008 at 05:08 AM
I;ll go for the cult that chooses the Doomsweek that wipes out the male population through deadly virus. Of Course my cave is virus free, and I can offer to female believer a chance to get a better "piece of me" if they register during the "Trial session" (that is: every week end before Doomsweek).
On top of that I can create a cool Newspaper ("Doomsweek") that brings back lots of terrified females looking for guys that will "stay around". I need to find a trick to keep the males far away though.. Maybe put flowers, or shoes, or dresses on the cover of my Doomsweek magazine..?
P-A
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** blog Not in english **
Posted by: P-A | April 03, 2008 at 04:22 AM
“The comet was heading this way, but we prayed it off course."
Gee, sound like the Y2K hoax. Scott, are you ready to admit yet that the disaster scenarios (none of which happened in countries that did no Y2K work) weren't real?
Posted by: Geoffrey James, Sales Machine | April 03, 2008 at 04:13 AM
[Then you will be surprised to learn that the U.S. National Ground Intelligence Center (NGIC) said that 500 chemical weapons were indeed found in Iraq. The story is here
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,200499,00.html
A summary of the NGIC report is here
http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/Iraq_WMD_Declassified.pdf
Cheers,
Everett
Posted by: Everett]
Two words for you and Faux News:
Spent Rounds.
Shoot a cannon and you WILL get duds. These duds are still heavy, propelled miles and when it hits the sand it is still going at speed.
Now guess what happens?
The shell buries itself.
Hidden WMD's?
And is there ANY Intercontinental Ballistic Cannon available? No? So how the feck were they supposed to hit the UK or US with them as per our 45-minute dossier that got us into the whole stupid situation? Row the cannon to a couple of miles offshore and fire from there?
Posted by: Mark | April 03, 2008 at 03:11 AM
[12/23/2012
Posted by: T.I.M.]
OK. Can SOMEONE here tell me WHY?
Why do you go
Month
Day
Year
?
Month/Day, I can understand.
Day/Month, I can understand.
Day/Month/Year, I can understand.
Month/Day/Year, I don't get. Except that you spent a long time not USING the year and got used to Month/Day and you were afraid your brain would implode (or, more likely other people's brains, 'cos it's always SOMEONE ELSE who's the thicky and you're the one going to have to wipe brain goop off your face when the bang happens to someone near you) if you used M/D and D/M/Y.
Most of britain get the idea of May 4th. They use it. They still get the idea of 4/5. And 4/5/2007 comes out naturally, whereas you can say May 4th, 2007 and there's no confusion possible about what each bit means. Heck, we use 4th May, 2007 too.
And still the lack of goop to clear.
So use D/M/Y. Sept 11th is going to remain 11/9 except by the media who like the simple mnemonic of 911. But that's the media for you.
Posted by: Mark | April 03, 2008 at 03:07 AM
you're wrong in making a joke of them, Scott.
Actually they WERE right.
The world WAS MEANT to end in that date.
Buth then, the Hawaiian court injunction delayed the CERN project...
Posted by: inutile2 | April 03, 2008 at 12:15 AM
Actually, Saddam did have WMDs - the intelligence failure was in a massive overestimation of the size of the programs, not in saying that they existed. There were no nukes or biological weapons, but they've found multiple stockpiles of chemical weapons of various types - mustard gas, even a bit of nerve gas IIRC. They also found some efforts to squirrel away capability to re-start development in case the sanctions were ever lifted, but nothing all that big. So while there was a pretty big screwup on the part of the US et al., saying that there were none at all isn't true either.
Posted by: Alsadius | April 03, 2008 at 12:08 AM
The Jehovah's Witnesses did the doomsday thing a few times and they are still going.
Posted by: workerant | April 03, 2008 at 12:03 AM
Cults are funny.
Except when they stick around for a few hundred years, call themselves a church or mosque or whatever and then get in the way of normal people trying to live.
Or did you mean funny peculiar?
Posted by: Michael | April 03, 2008 at 12:01 AM