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The End of the World

The Legend: It's coming... the end of the world as we know it. Massive upheavels, death, destruction, and maybe a new world order. The only real question is... when? Luckily, many gifted prophets have left clues; properly examined, these can give us the date of the end... and possibly the means to prevent it.

It's the end of the world as we know it?
As the year 2000 approached, so also did a large number of predicted ends of the world. Rather than going into too much detail about them immediately, though -- I might have been on an awful tight deadline, after all -- instead I compiled a chronological list of end of the world predictions, in order by the predicted date of doom. Please note that I am ignoring vague dooms, such as worries of a super virus, unless a specific date has been predicted. I will be expanding on some of these at a later date, because the circumstances and people surrounding some of these predictions are worth knowing more about. It should be noticed that there are some definite repeating themes; namely, most predictions are likely to be attributed to Biblical interpretation first, Nostradamus second, Edgar Cayce third, and everyone or thing else coming in last.

Main types of end of the world predictions
Most of the predictions I have at the moment fall into definite groupings based on just how the end is expected to come. Not surprisingly, as most of the predictions I have are from America and Europe, Biblical themes are the most common, followed by newer worries about world-wide war and mass destruction weaponry.

->World War III -- Many predictions feature the idea that a major war/conflict will trigger the series of events leading to the end, though there is some difference in opinion as to how the actual end will play out.
->Antichrist -- Many people see the end as being predicted by the appearance of an Anti-Christ, the evil opposite of the Biblical figure, Jesus the Christ, as mentioned in the Book of Revelations in the New Testament. I find this interesting, mainly because I was under the impression from reading this text that the Anti-Christ wouldn't appear until after the end of the world had started.
->Judgement Day -- This refers to a day when the Biblical God will call up all the dead to stand side by side with the living; then God will judge each person, sending them either to hell or heaven, leaving no one behind on Earth. This is also mentioned in the Bible's Book of Revelations.
->The Second Coming -- This is a variation on the idea of the Judgement Day, as mentioned above. In this version, Jesus the Christ reappears on Earth to do the judging; in a popular verion refered to as "The Rapture", it's believed that Christ will then re-ascend to heaven with all worthy humans, leaving the remainder of humanity to suffer and die on Earth, presumably then to go to hell or simply cease to exist.
->Second Great Flood -- This is a far less common belief, but one I wanted to point out for one reason. The first great flood is an event told of in the Bible's Book of Genesis that alledgedly almost destroyed humanity; but the people predicting a second great flood probably forgot the part of the story where God distinctly promised never to destroy the world in that particular fashion again. Whoops.