Doomsday Cult

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.

Comments

[MaxDZ8]

I see a another sell spike coming for the Jap. Again. :)

[Joe]

I conclude from these posts that a lot of Dilbert Blog readers have strange sexual fantasies involving cults.

[priya]

rofl. . .loved the post. . .I guess after the world gets destroyed an alternate universe would be created. . .However, i think the world will be destroyed on a Monday .I really hate monday's!

[patti]

Patti wonders:
Maybe it is a bigger deal than we first thought. Maybe we will find that the holiest of the holys.. really died and then... came back. Will they undergo hypnosis to see if they left their bodies for a while?

MAYBE THEY WERE ALREADY HYPNOTIZED. Were they found with any stolen goods?

OR, perhaps they signed over all earthly belongings to ..their leader? HMMmmmmm '
"REMEMBER, You must stay hidden until hell freezes over!"
I wonder if they gave him the deeds to their homes and now they will all be forced to live in caves for the rest of their lives. "Oh yeah, it'll be a cold day in hell... before I do this again!

I wonder if their leader prayed.. earth's fate away. I wonder if he turned the tide of death with his heavy prayers and THEN, like-a-miracle, they and ...we ... were all saved.

Actually, with some publicity, the place could now become a commune of sorts. Or perhaps a vacation spa or maybe ... even a tourist attraction...or survivalist resort!
"Welcome to the Doomsday Caverns. Your place to stay when you want to..get away!"
OR?
"This way to The Doomsday Caverns, your escape from hell"

I KNOW. It will become the setting for a BOOK. Or even BETTER for a "reality show" called "Hybernation-Salvation"

On another note:
How many children will be born to "them that procreated" in the next 6-9 months?
And will they be forever called? "BABY-DOOMERS"

__________________

[kelli]

"The big problem with picking a doomsday date is that it so obvious when you are wrong."

True dat. Christianity would never have gotten off the ground if Jesus had actually specified a date.

[D. Mented]

RPK - the Mayans predicted the downfall of their own civillization for about the time that it actually happenned. Also interesting, December 21, 2012 is the one day in 26,000 years that the light of our sun shines straight through a stellar gap into the center of our galaxy. They saw that date as the end of the longest of their time cycles - it is the end of one galactic rotation of our solar system...Makes ya' go HMmmmmmm...
Bloodboiler - they call it Scientology.
Scott - as others have mentioned, most cults use sex instead of television. Makes sense, as television lets you see what's going on in the world, but even really great sex doesn't really give you the power to know if there's a comet on its way...or not.
Don't get too much national pride going, though - we've had whole communities that didn't plant any crops at the end of one century because they were sure the world would end that year so they wouldn't need any.
Myself, I'm badly allergic to anybody who tells me he- or she- knows the answer to everything, can predict when the world will end, or anything like that. Really violent reaction.
D. Mented

[Alex K]

Holy shit! You have a Wii? Can I buy it off you? Not even autographed or anything...

[burt]

hahaha i wonder if these people knew about the colider thing.
i know no one reading this will ever admit it, but i know I will breath a breath of relief when the collider goes off and im still living.

[Drone74B]

I don't think cult leaders are not jobs. I think they're visionary capitalists who don't have the means to start a tobacco company.

[Rick H]

Um, we didn't need to "find" Saddam's WMDs in Iraq, he proved he had them by using them. The question was whether he got rid of them and whether he was expanding his production capacity.

[Oli]

Even better, some cults believe hte world has ended we just havn't realised it yet. Of course it doesn't stop them eating but hey, takes all sorts.

The best cults are like religions, they prohibit the most
unlikely things, but ones people dont care about, so if you see somebody turning their nose up at butternut squash you know why.

Then you have the ones that prohibit the major things so you feel like you belong to something important, they ban stuff like killing people, having sex and greed. These nut jobs call themselves Christians. I feel safe in calling them nutjobs because

1) Most of them ignore their own rules, and even start saying things like 'god doesnt exist, the bible is all, you know, a metafore'.
2) They tend to be pretty old, I think I could outdistance most of them, apart from possibly in teh deep south of the US, or in england, Barnsley, where the slightly against the religion third legs and six toes give them an advantage.

http://www.imapundit.com
http://www.medicalaviceguru.com

[Dave]

Saddam did have WMD.

Or do you believe that all those Kurds gassed themselves?

[Tobias Ekman]

One post and 56 comments and not one has mentioned Al Gore's doomsday cult!
Striking how difficult pattern recognition can be...

[John Reedy]

I assume they probably thought the world was actually over. Perhaps they still do.

http://awritersblock.com

[LA Clay]

WAIT! They left on April 1st?!? FOOLS GET BACK IN! IT WAS A JOKE!

[Dan]

This is hilarious! I love the irony that they were killed by natural selection.. har har har

[rita mae]

T.I.M. and RPK both mentioned 12/23/2012. Now that is TWO people saying the same thing. Hence, it must have some merit. Just great! Now the planning for my Christmas Eve that year is ruined. Thanks a lot!

Rita (if I'm here in 2012 -- that IS 4 years you know) Mae

[Sam Davis]

Did anyone think to check and see if this was an April Fool's Day joke? The Canadians and Brits are a lot bigger on such things than Americans and it may well be.

[Adam Reynolds]

I've no experience of the American workplace but, according to your comic, wouldn't willingness to follow a nut-job into a cave be a valuable skill for a prospective employee? More consistency Adams!

[DF]

If any one of those nut jobs actually gets a date right, he should change his name to Hay-Soos Mohammed Budda. I can see some poor schmuck now, manages to convince 50 people to hide in a cave because the end is coming. Next thing you know, a meteor hits and wipes out Kansas or something. All of the sudden, buddy has 1 billion people asking "So, what's gonna happen next?" The only cult I might consider joining is the Raelians, lots of hot girls there. I just hope the aliens don't have to probe me first.

[Canadian Cousin]

What are they doing out! It's not May yet. Lets find them another cave and force them to go back in.

[Mark]

Scott,

Given the "Boltzmann brain problem", how do you know "that the world didn't explode on Tuesday?"

[helton]

thinking about this story... let's say you believe on the concept of doomsday, and there are 2 cults:

Cult A says the dooms day is in may;
Cult B says the dooms day is in august;

witch one would be the 'wiser' choice?

it's tricky because if you join B and A is correct, you'll be unprepared. But if you join A and B is correct... the A's folks will mock you forever ( meaning 2 months ).

[Kolbrún Mist Pálsdóttir]

Am i the only person that seems to think that this is an april fool's joke...

Kolbrún

[rick]

"The big problem with picking a doomsday date is that it so obvious when you are wrong" - a slight failure of imagination, that. When the world didn't end during the 'great convergence' in the eighties, one cult leader was quoted as saying that it actually did; but most people are too spiritually obtuse to notice.