THE GOOFY SIDE OF ARMAGEDDON

Here are a few warm, fuzzy Doomsday tales.

KANSAS CITY STAR

A Kansas man who was preparing for the end of the world by making and storing grenades was sentenced this week to 21 months in federal prison.

Alfred C. Dutton, 65, of Eureka, Kan., pleaded guilty to one count of unlawful possession of unregistered destructive devices.

Government exhibits included grenade bodies, powder and fuses. Prosecutors said five incendiary bombs were found in a storage locker leased to Dutton in Eureka in southeastern Kansas.

Dutton’s defense said he was preparing for the collapse of the economy and collecting medical supplies, non-perishable foods and other items. The defense submitted to the court an excerpt from a National Geographic documentary on “Doomsday Preppers” to illustrate his state of mind.

PATCH.com

Novi, Michigan – What started off as a night drinking and talking with friends turned into a 22-year-old man being arrested on charges of stealing a car from a Novi dealership to survive the 'zombie apocalypse,' according to a police report.

In his statement, the man said he and his friends had begun drinking at a home at 10 p.m., then went to a bar to drink more. He said he and his friends talked all night about the TV show The Walking Dead and other zombie-type movies, the report said. The man was dropped off at home, the report said.

“My best guess is that I closed my eyes, woke up, and freaked out about the zombie apocalypse,” he said in his statement to police.

The man said he isn’t clear on how the rest of the night went. He told police that it is plausible that he broke into the dealership via the single service bay door and walked into showroom. He found a car in the showroom and drove it forward and through the double glass doors on the west side of building, the report said.

HUFFINGTON POST

After launching into a bizarre rant in which she claimed to be married to God, pregnant with his child, and predicted the pending apocalypse, a teacher at Veterans Memorial Academy in San Benito, Texas, has been removed, the Houston Press reports.

According to the paper's blog, the teacher claimed God's army would destroy the world on December 21, 2012, but that Jesus had another planet ready for them where everyone "was always 25 years old," and money doesn't exist.

“I am married to God, and I don’t know what’s going to happen to my husband that’s here (on earth),” she said, according to the San Benito News. “One of my eyes is mine and the other one belongs to God, so God is watching what you all are doing.”

According to the Monitor, district officials said the incident may have been the result of the teacher having an adverse reaction to medication.

Or…

Or perhaps, she was off her medication! Just sayin’!

AND WE HAVE A FUMBLE!

Here’s a headline from The Local, an English-language newspaper covering German news that appeared last week:

German Drops Mayan Skull, Endangers Mankind

“The volcanic rock skull, named Quauthemoc, was dropped - or, more eerily, may have fallen of its own accord - during a photo-shoot at a laboratory in the small town of Glauchau, Saxony,” The Local reported with all the reliability of Entertainment Tonight or Extra.

Apparently, the ancient Mayan skull was swiped from a Tibetan monastery by Nazis between 1937 and ’39. They were seeking its “magical powers” that will “enable humanity to survive the December 2012 apocalypse.”

At the end of World War II, the skull was found among the possessions of Nazi Interior Minister, Gestapo chief and black magic connoisseur Heinrich Himmler.

During a photo shoot of the skull, a clumsy East German lab assistant fumbled it and the chin of the skull was chipped.

"It was probably put down somewhere a bit wobbly," an eye-witness reported. "Suddenly it crashed to the floor. A big piece broke off the chin. It's really tragic."

The owner of the skull, one Thomas Ritter, who was not present when the accident occurred, said that the incident was not “a bad omen.”

He went on to explain that his Mayan skull is one of 13 “magic skulls” that will aid humankind after the 12-21-12 apocalypse. Seemingly Ritter and the other skull owners will gather at an ancient Maya site in Mexico on December 21 to begin the healing process.

"The prophecy says that the skulls will reveal a secret knowledge to humanity on that day," Ritter pronounced. "But I can't say more than that. The skulls might start speaking or something, but I have no idea."

“I have no idea.” That’s the most telling bit of this asinine story. Ritter wants to take off for Mexico in December to head off an Armageddon that was NEVER predicted!

This is a lot of cheap publicity coat-tailing on a ludicrous and silly non-event!

MORE DOOMSDAYS FROM OUR PAST

Time to take another walk down memory lane to Armageddons-that-never-were.

One of the several dates wrongly picked by the Jehovah’s Witnesses following their bungled prognostication of 1874 was 1914. As it happened, 1914 came and went and the world did not cease to exist.

In 1936, some enterprising Doomsters measured the Great Pyramid as Giza, calculated their results and decided this particular year was the End of Days! Well, guess what? That’s right, it wasn’t.

Back in 1889, John Ballou Newbrough, billed as “America’s Greatest Prophet,” pronounced that:

all the present governments, religions and all monied monopolies are to be overthrown and go out of existence. . . . Our present form of so-called Christian religion will overrun America, tear down the American flag, and trample it underfoot. In Europe the disaster will be even more terrible. . . . Hundreds of thousands of people will be killed. . . . All nations will be demolished and the earth be thrown open to all people to go and come as they please.

The foregoing was Newbrough’s prediction for 1947. Given the magnitude of such a prediction, you’d think you’d have heard about it. You didn’t, of course. 1947 was not an exceptional year as years go, but it certainly was not that horrendous.

In 1953, out came the tape measures and slide rules again and more measurements were taken of the Great Pyramid. This was the year of our doom….not!

All was relatively quite on the Doomsday front until the inauspicious year 1974 when a pair of well-educated and seemingly sane astronomers published a book entitled The Jupiter Effect. In 1524 there had been an alignment of planets and it would occur again in 1982 on March 10. The astronomers predicted a dreadful effect on our planet when this alignment occurred. Other astronomers, no doubt distancing themselves from the pair of silly boys, pointed out that nothing would happen. March 10 came and went and earth continued to revolve undisturbed. One of the two astronomers proclaimed, in a face-saving effort, that the earthquakes of 1980 had been a “premature result of The Jupiter Effect.” The world was underwhelmed.

Again, in 1975, the world would end according to the Jehovah’s Witnesses. It did not. Go figure.

RUSSIAN CON MAN PLOTTING ECONOMIC ARMAGEDDON

A lot of Doomsters foresee an economic apocalypse bringing down the world’s financial system. Economic Armageddon always seems to be part of the litany of the end times.

Well, by golly, former Russian financier Sergei Mavrodi, “the man behind the infamous MMM financial pyramid that cheated millions of Russians out of their savings in the 1990s, is broke and in prison for nonpayment of a 1,000-ruble ($33) fine.” Yet, his descent from billionaire to penniless prisoner has not stopped him from plotting.

"My goal is a financial apocalypse, a destruction of the global financial system," he explained scant hours before he was arrested March 14. "I consider the current financial system unfair; it's not fair that some people own billions while others have nothing. The system must be destroyed and something else must be built in its place. That's precisely what I'm working on."

Funny, isn’t it? I’ll bet he was preaching “unfair system” when he was bilking his countrymen and amassing an ill-gotten fortune. His redistribution of the wealth also smacks of something his country tried, unsuccessfully, from 1917 to about 1989.

His plan to bring about the financial apocalypse was simply another Ponzi scheme.

“The principle behind (the new scheme) is the same as in any Ponzi scheme -- earlier investors receive their profits from subsequent investors,” pointed out a news article. “Mavrodi promises fantastic returns of 20 percent to 75 percent a month, as well as lotteries and bonuses for investors.

“What sets this new scheme apart is that unlike the original…which was presented as a financial institution with offices selling vouchers bearing Mavrodi's picture, the new version is entirely Internet-based. Investors have their money converted into a virtual currency called the "mavro dollar" that is supposed to increase in value.”

Marvo dollars? Really?

Essentially, Mavrodi is setting up a financial social network in which participants give one another money.

Although in prison, he is claiming that this new Ponzi apparatus has 20 million members, a number impossible for anyone to verify. It is known that is charisma attracts the gullible, including one former Russian legislator who tossed his political career to spend his time promoting Mavrodi’s new scheme.

"He isn't doing it for money,” the politician proclaims. “I believe that his intentions are noble. Will he succeed? Considering the speed with which (the scheme) is growing, I think I will see this new life. I think it will happen soon. Even if I go bust, I will have invested my money in his project, I will have supported him as a strong personality."

Well, fear not. European and Western laws will stop any Ponzi operation from spreading too far or too fast.

CONFIRMATION: THE MAYA DID NOT PREDICT DOOMSDAY!

Last week, it was widely reported that “on the wall of a tiny structure buried under forest debris in Guatemala, archaeologists have discovered a scribe's notes about the Maya lunar calendar, which they say could be the first known records by an official chronicler of this ancient civilization.”

First, for the Maya archaeologists that’s one enormous discovery. For the rest of us, it confirms what we already know: the Maya calendar DOES NOT PREDICT THE END OF THE WORLD IN DECEMBER!

The notes that were found pertain to the same calendar that people have been peeing their pants about lately.

“The researchers who helped uncover and decipher the wall's inscriptions said the Maya calendar foresaw a vast progression of time, with the December 2012 date the beginning of a new calendar cycle called a baktun,” according to Reuters.

“The Maya calendar is going to keep going and keep going for billions, trillions, octillions of years into the future, a huge number that we can't even wrap our heads around," William Saturno of Boston University told Reuters.

He explained that the “numerical inscriptions on the wall in Guatemala measure out time in approximate six-month increments, based on six lunar cycles, with small stylized pictures of Maya gods to indicate which deity was the patron of a specific slice of time.”

Thus, to sum up, the Maya calendar that does not predict the end of time, actually rolls on and on and on ad infinitum.

December 25, 2012 is Doomsday Not!

DOOMSDAY DU JOUR, WITH A TWIST

Once again, an American religious leader has proclaimed a date for the End of Days/Armageddon/the Apocalypse/Doomsday: June 30!

Jose De Jesus Miranda made the proclamation a couple of weeks ago, declaring on a ministry broadcast that “an earthquake is coming.” 

Yeah, duh!

Earthquakes are a dime a dozen.

"It is getting closer and we will see the catastrophes,” Miranda announced. “What you have seen is nothing. What is coming is cities falling."

Ah ha, that’s not all he promised. According to his prophesy, there will not just be the “complete destruction of the bad seed,” but a superhero will arise and he will have the power of flight and be able to walk through walls

Hey, I’m not making this up. Jose De Jesus Miranda says a flying superhero is going to appear and do stuff. What kind of stuff? Well, you know, fly and walk through walls, kinda like Superman’s ghost.

You might wonder if he was actually christened Jose De Jesus Miranda. The short answer is no. He was born in Puerto Rico in 1946 and, by his own account, was visited by Jesus in 1973. Actually “visited” is not accurate. If I understand correctly, he was possessed. Jesus “walked up to him and entered his body.”

With Jesus onboard, Miranda waited until 1988 to “disclosed that he was actually the Apostle Paul. Not long after that, Miranda took it to the next level, calling himself both Jesus Christ and the Anti-Christ – as one writer put it, “a one-stop shop for all your Reckoning needs.”

And, now, according to his latest proclamation, the time of reckoning in fast coming upon us. He points to a pending reversal of the earth’s poles that will cause the “tectonic plates to heat up. For 2012, we are expecting a change on the face of the earth and the destruction of the world will come."

Miranda sweetens the plot with some economic doom and gloom that will cause governments to crumble, etc. etc. etc.

He has followers in 130 countries. How man followers is not known.

“He's in their heads, he's inside the heads of those people,” U.S. religion expert Prof. Daniel Alvarez said in a 2007 interview with CNN. “De Jesus speaks with a kind of conviction that makes me consider him more like David Koresh or Jim Jones.”

And while his followers sing his praises, others are not so keen to line up behind him:

“To put it bluntly,” GotQuestions.org, a Christian website posted, “Luis De Jesus Miranda is a heretic. He is a false messiah who claims to be the second coming of Jesus Christ."

So remember: Mark your calendar. June 30. End of Days. Or not.

INTERNET DOOMSDAY JUST AROUND THE CORNER

For those of us who using PCs and Macs  -- like everybody --  July 9 is looming large if our computer happens to be infected with a strain of malware called DNS Changer.

According to PC World, “DNS Charger is a Trojan that surfaced in 2007 and infected millions of machines. The malware would redirect computers to hacker-created Websites, where cyber-criminals sold at least $14 million in advertisements. DNS Changer also prevented computers from updating or using anti-virus software, leaving them vulnerable to even more malicious software.”

The FBI has been warning users about it for quite some time. On July 9, the feds plan to “throw a switch that prevents infected computers from accessing the Internet.” That action, in turn, could make a “personal Internet doomsday” for infected users.

The so-called “clickjackers” were busted last November by the feds when they “arrested six Estonian nationals that allegedly ran the clickjacking fraud, and seized the rogue DNS servers where infected users were being redirected. The FBI has put up surrogate servers in place of the malicious ones, but only temporarily.”

So now the FBI is looking to shutdown the temporary servers, which means infected machines won’t be able to reach the Web since they won’t be able to redirect through the servers that no longer exist. Originally, they were going to turn off the malicious servers in March, but a federal judge blocked that action until July to allow users in the government and business more time to eliminate DNS Charger. Half of the Fortune 500 were impacted and even now, it is believed “350,000 devices are still infected.”

“To find out if you're infected,” PC World explained, “visit the DNS Charger Check-Up site (just a simple Google search) which checks the DNS resolution of your PC without installing any additional software.” If you are infected – End of days! End of Days! – the site lists anti-virus software to resolve the problem.