According to John of Toledo, it should have been 23 September 1186, but nothing happened. Judgment day failed to materialise again on 5 April 1761, as foretold by William Bell of London. Nothing apocalyptic happened on 28 April 1843, and again on 21 September 1945. Those anxious that the world will end on 21 December this year – such as the residents of Chelyabinsk in Russia, who have built a Mayan-style archway out of ice – may be comforted to know that over the past 2,000 years there have been at least 200 confident, date-specific prophecies, and they have all been wrong.
Some forecasts have attracted a mere handful of believers; others have alarmed people in their thousands. Today, apocalyptic rumours spread rapidly and globally. Probably the most widely disseminated date in the history of end-time prophecy is 21 December 2012, outstripping the last great scare instigated by American radio evangelist Harold Camping. His ambassadors travelled the world with the message that all the Bible's end-time prophecies would be fulfilled on 21 May 2011. The date was seen on the sides of buses in America, billboards in the Middle East, leaflets handed out in dozens of countries from Mexico to Cambodia, on T-shirts in London's west end and universally online via Twitter and Facebook. His YouTube site, on which he explained how he had arrived at the date from researching Noah's flood, received more than 1.75m hits.
How the world will end is open to as much speculation as when. Broadly there are two schools of thought: religious and secular. The religious scenario suggests the end is the day when God chooses to judge the world. Those destined to escape eternal punishment will, say some Christians, be taken to heaven in the "twinkling of an eye" at the time of "the rapture". The rapture index, an American-based Dow Jones of end-time activity, has recently been running at record high. Secularists fear a chance cosmic or natural disaster; being struck by a giant chunk of space debris, perhaps, or being zapped by freak solar waves. Some even fear the earth will be colonised by superior beings from another world.
This year, the end of the ancient Mayan long count calendar is said to be The Date. On 21 December either the earth will be wiped out by cosmic disaster, or there will be a profound shift in global consciousness leading to an unprecedented epoch of universal peace. Some of the most dedicated believers in the Mayan prophecy fear for the worst and say that the only hope lies in being whisked away to safety in a giant spaceship currently awaiting its cue under a mountain near Bugarach in France.
Deciding where to wait is crucial to end-timers. Some
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