Remembrance of Apocalypse Past: The Psychology of True Believers When Nothing Happens - CSI

So depending on which kind of nut you follow, the end of the world is once again upon us.  Like the numerous predictions of doom prior, I expect this one to fall by the wayside as well. 

As is fairly obvious by now, the much-heralded end of the world in 2012 didn’t happen. Quetzalcoatl didn’t return on his raft of snakes. The earth was not torn asunder. Alien overlords did not materialize. It didn’t even rain very much that week.

We were privileged to publish an article in the Skeptical Inquirer last year (Sharps et al. 2013) concerning the psychological factors that made it possible for modern human beings, even with modern access to scientific information, to believe in this type of baseless nonsense. We found that disturbingly high numbers of university students either believed in or entertained the likelihood of the “Mayan end of the world.” We found curious incoherencies in their patterns of belief: for example, many believers in the Maya “prophecies” did not believe in what those prophecies predicted. The idea expressed is completely illogical, but this illogical incoherency was in the minds of a great many people who were attempting to think about the 2012 apocalypse before it didn’t happen. Whether the believers expected world peace and a new age, or world destruction and apocalyptic doom, logical inconsistency was very commonly observed.

This type of incoherency didn’t die with the nonexistent apocalypse; it’s still there, ready and waiting, in the minds of enormous numbers of True Believers.

Remembrance of Apocalypse Past: The Psychology of True Believers When Nothing Happens - CSI

Utah Parents Who Killed Children In Murder-Suicide Feared Apocalypse

Finlayson said interviews with people who knew the Stracks indicated the parents were worried about evil in the world and wanted to escape from "impending doom."

"There seemed to be a concern about a pending apocalypse that the parents bought into," Finlayson said. "While some friends though that suicide may have been, or could have been, included in their plans, others believed they were going to move somewhere and live off the grid."

During their investigation, police found years-old letters between Kristi Strack and Dan Lafferty, who is serving a life sentence after being convicted of committing a double-murder with his brother Ron.

"Under the Banner of Heaven" is about members of an offshoot of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, told through the true story of the Laffertys' crimes. The two killed their brother's wife and 15-month old daughter.

Ron Lafferty is on death row after his conviction in the July 1984 slayings of his sister-in-law, Brenda Lafferty, and her baby in American Fork. He claimed to have had a religious revelation sanctioning the slayings because of the victim's resistance to his beliefs in polygamy.

Investigators said Kristi Strack was deeply interested in the case and struck up a friendship with Dan Lafferty.

Utah Parents Who Killed Children In Murder-Suicide Feared Apocalypse

Fallen Televangelist Jim Bakker Now Hawking Apocalyptic Survivalist Gear On The Web

What kind of gift can you get for the budding survivalist in your life? How about a great big Jim Bakker food bucket.

The disgraced televangelist is now hawking survivalist gear and books about the apocalypse on his website almost 20 years after he was released from prison on a conviction of bilking followers out of millions of dollars.

Back from the evangelical wilderness, Bakker now tapes a daily TV show from the rolling Ozarks of Missouri and uses his website to pitch what he calls "love gifts," essentially a variety of odd products including "Tiffany style" jewelery, fuel-less generators and buckets of dried food.

For just $500, you can get "Jim's All American 4 Star Vegetable" buckets. A cool two grand will get you the "Jerry Jones Special," which promises "over 3,300 servings of food and enough fuel to cook 480 meals."

Fallen Televangelist Jim Bakker Now Hawking Apocalyptic Survivalist Gear On The Web