Since the time of St. John, the end of the age was imminent. The apostle even said it could have happened in the 1st century - 1 John 2:18 And since the 1st century, there have been many predictions of the end of the world. The year anno Domini 1000 (the first millennium in the year of our Lord - the big Y1K) was one of them - History’s Biggest Doomsday Prediction Fails

Another failed prediction? ... You betcha ... one of many

Even Jesus said of the end of the age -

"But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."

(For context of passage on the end times, reference: Matthew 24)

Are we smarter than Jesus? Don't think so ... many of us aren't even smarter than a 5th grader. :) But that doesn't stop the predictions from coming and people from thinking about doomsday. And a thousand years ago,we had

The Doomsday Book ...

Benjamin Franklin has been quoted to say -

In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes. (reference: Benjamin Franklin Quotes)

And shortly after the failed Doomsday prediction of 1000 AD, anno Domini 1085 in fact, William the Conqueror commissioned this Domesday Book - (Domesday, another spelling of Doomsday) for the purpose of assessing taxes on the English. Because of it's extent of complying information of the subjects' assets, the records were compared to the records in the Books that were opened at the Final Judgment before the Great White Throne, as written in the Apocalypse. (reference: Revelation 20:11-15)

Wikipedia/Domesday Book

But as seen in some examples in the article referenced above - History’s Biggest Doomsday Prediction Fails - anxious times beget anxious feelings beget anxious predictions ... such as Armageddon is just around the corner. And among those ...

Cold War Angst ...

Baby boomers may remember the Cold War, living under the perceived threat of nuclear war and mutually assured destruction. The big October surprise of 1962 came to the American people in the form of the Cuban Missile Crisis when John F. Kennedy was President. And World War III nearly happened with a nuclear showdown with the Russians. Seriously.

As fallout - no pun intended - with my classmates, I had to memorize my civil defense number. (I still remember it: 1-37) Our teachers made us write it under our name on all our homework assignments. It was suppose to come in useful when the Russians fired their nukes at us over the North Pole. When the alarms we sounded (I don't even know what they were supposed to sound like for a nuclear attack), we were to head for the coal mines in the hills for shelter (we had 20 minutes they said) and wait for the fallout to abate enough before we came out to this brave new mutant world.

Ridiculous? The clip below punctuates the fears of the times with the false security of how to overcome a nuclear blast:

More Doomsday scares ...

And since then we had even more warnings of the end of the world. Here are only a few more -

* First written in 1970, Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth. (It's about the end of the age and Christ's Second Coming, but the author took his cue from Jesus and did not give any dates.)

* 2000 AD - the Y2K scare as the Y1K scare in 1000 AD did not come to pass

* December, 21, 2012 - the Mayan calender ends ... and so will the world. Whew! Dodged that bullet.

Now we have ....

Doomsday Preppers, the series

And since the pilot 2011, this show on the National Geographic channel highlights preparing for a time when the sh** hits the fan or even surviving Armageddon. (reference: Doomsday Preppers | National Geographic Channel )

Below is a clip to a promo for the season starting in February of 2012:

Some prepare for surviving Armageddon; some for disasters that are all so common. And a new season is starting soon, August 13, 2013 - Doomsday Preppers : Air Dates Guide

Without letting fear consume us, preparing and planning for emergency situations does make sense and is prudent, especially for those areas of country in which disasters are known to happen: earthquakes in California, tornadoes in the mid-West, hurricanes off the coasts, fires around acres of dry forests ...)

During emergencies, people can be cut off from civilization; the thin blue line of civil infrastructure - fire and police protection as well as emergency medical care and other vital services - power, water, sewage, food supplies - gone.

One example in recent memory ...

Hurricane Sandy hit in October of 2012. (reference : A Timeline of Hurricane Sandy’s Path of Destruction – News Watch )

Below is a clips of the aftermath of Sandy - a very unpleasant October surprise.

There are lots of websites on preparedness - just google and tons will pop up. But here is one for starters - Are you prepared?

In these uncertain times, Doomsday Preppers are one of the

Signs of the Times ....

Photo from Wikipedia: St. Gertrud, Domesday book