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Iran has begun installing advanced centrifuges at its main uranium enrichment plant, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Thursday, a defiant step that will worry Western powers ahead of a resumption of talks with Tehran next week. In a confidential report, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said 180 so-called IR-2m centrifuges and empty centrifuge casings had been put in place at the facility near the central town of Natanz. They were not yet operating. If launched successfully, such machines could enable Iran to speed up significantly its accumulation of material that the West fears could be used to devise...

Resigning Pope Brings Doomsday Prophecy Is the world only a Pope away from the End? Yes, if you believe a chilling 12th-century prophecy. Attributed to St. Malachy, an Irish archbishop canonized in 1190, the Prophecy of the Popes would date to 1139. The document predicted that there would be only 112 more popes before the Last Judgment — and Benedict XVI is 111. The list of popes originated from a vision Malachy said he received from God when he was in Rome, reporting on his diocese to Pope Innocent II. The story goes that St. Malachy gave the apocalyptic list...

Superstitious Russians Spent 30 Billion On Preparing For Apocalypse Politics / RussiaDec 27, 2012 - 11:52 AM By: Pravda The Russians, who shared the horror of impending apocalypse with the rest of the world, spent 30 billion rubles on the eve of December 21st. The calculations were made by FBK analysts, who examined the data on the structure of trade turnover and services purchased in December. The end of the world did not come, but many people have to deal with its consequences now - the shortage of money. The hype around the "end of the world" still goes on....

THE problem - as Mayan apocalypse expert Robert Bast puts it - is that if you build it, they will come. And that's why the man who wrote the book on the impending end of the world - due either tomorrow or Saturday Australia time, depending on which time zone you believe it will strike in first - won't show you his doomsday bunker. Asked to take us to the safe house he and his wife and three children will be fleeing to on Friday, he was adamant that its location had to remain secret. ''I've turned down every request...

Ahead of December 21, which marks the conclusion of the 5,125-year "Long Count" Mayan calendar, panic buying of candles and essentials has been reported in China and Russia, along with an explosion in sales of survival shelters in America. In France believers were preparing to converge on a mountain where they believe aliens will rescue them. The precise manner of Armageddon remains vague, ranging from a catastrophic celestial collision between Earth and the mythical planet Nibiru, also known as Planet X, a disastrous crash with a comet, or the annihilation of civilisation by a giant solar storm. In America Ron...

A few days ago, I posted this blog: Doomsday Preppers are Socially Selfish. The role of a blogger is to foment discussion an it certainly appears that’s what I did. I very much appreciated most of the 150+ comments – except perhaps the ones that called me ‘stupid’, ‘nuts, ‘arrogant’, ‘ignorant’ – and a few personal emails that were much more graphic. I wrote this for the emergency management community, who pretty much misunderstood what I was saying. Social media is certainly powerful and I had no idea this would be so controversial. FIRST .. let me offer a heartfelt...

As December 21, 2012 grows near, the hysteria concerning the end of the Maya calendar is coming to a head. Gullible people all over the world are stocking up on non-perishable items and preparing for an apocalyptic disaster. For scientists, though, these latest doomsday prophecies are the same thing as any prophecy – a claim without enough evidence to even be worthy of the label ‘hypothesis.’ Not everyone knows bunk when they hear it, though, so NASA recently devoted the precious time of some of its scientists to debunking the spurious claims. NASA researchers from all over the U.S. gathered...

In case you haven’t heard, the world is supposed to end at midnight on December 21—this year.At least, that’s according to some popularized interpretations of what the Mayans said. But predictions of the end times are hardly a new or unusual thing. For Christians, prophecies of an imminent apocalypse are just about as old as the Church itself. Those predicting the end were an eclectic lot, with wild ideas and strange teachings. They include an antipope, a saint who rode the devil like a donkey, and cultish charismatics who dressed like harlots. Some were inspired by their false interpretations...

STORY When out-of-work techie Duke Evans and his family try to rebuild their lives in a remote mountain town, their own version of the American Dream is cut short as planes begin falling from the sky and all power, communications and transportation suddenly stops working. Caught in an unprecedented cyberattack that signifies the end of the U.S. as we know it, Duke and his family must use all their wits and the unlikely help of an illegal immigrant, to survive this frighteningly realistic scenario where water, food and time are running out.Dragon Day Dragon Day is an independent film that...

If you believe in that sort of thing, humanity can expect a mere two months left of existence before the Mayan apocalypse hits Dec. 21. Sunday starts the two-month countdown toward doomsday, according to an interpretation of the Mayan calendar that has taken hold in some New Age and spiritualist communities online. Two ancient texts confirm the end date of the Mayan Long Count calendar on the winter solstice of this year, which is Dec. 21, 2012. That day is the last day of the 13th bak'tun, or 144,000-day cycle, of the calendar. Ancient Maya would have seen the end...

For those of you who’ve been living under a mainstream media rock the past ten years, then the following sentences are simply the chorus to a song by the famous rock band R.E.M. It’s the end of the world as we know it. It’s the end of the world as we know it. It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine. But to those of us with an apocalyptic bent, the chorus to that song takes the form of an acronym. TEOTWAWKI. And we refer to the acronym on a daily basis, because we...

On Prayer in the 2nd Part of the Book of Revelation [Apocalypse] "There are no superfluous, useless prayers; not one of them is lost" VATICAN CITY, SEPT. 12, 2012 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the address Benedict XVI gave today in Paul VI Hall at the general audience. The Holy Father today continued his reflection on prayer in the book of Revelation [Apocalypse]. * * * Dear brothers and sisters, Last Wednesday I spoke about prayer in the first part of Revelation[Apocalypse]. Today we move on to the second part of the book; and whereas in the first part,...

Pope Benedict XVI says the final book of the Bible, which he referred to as the Book of the Apocalypse, provides Christians with a vision of a Church fully in communion with Jesus Christ in prayer. “The Apocalypse presents us with a community gathered in prayer, because it is in prayer that we gain an increasing awareness of Jesus’s presence with us and within us,” the Pope said during his Sept. 5 general audience at the Vatican. “The more and the better we pray with constancy and intensity, the more we are assimilated to him, and the more he enters...

On Prayer in Part 1 of Revelation [Apocalypse] "The Church at prayer, in welcoming the Lord's Word, is transformed" VATICAN CITY, SEPT. 5, 2012 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the Italian-language catechesis Benedict XVI gave today during the general audience held in Paul VI Hall. The Holy Father reflected on prayer in the first part of the Book of Revelation [Apocalypse]. * * * Dear brothers and sisters, Today, after a summer holiday break, we resume the audiences at the Vatican, and I would like to continue in that "school of prayer" that I am living together with you...

Recipes for the Post-Apocalypse: How and Why to Eat Rat Meat Rat is a readily available street food in some Southeast Asian countries, and earlier editions of The Joy of Cooking contained instructions on the proper butchering of squirrels. But rodents have fallen out of favor in most Western cuisines, relegated to mere vermin. So how would you go about cooking a rat if you'd never tried it before? Laura Ginn did just that recently, breaking her lengthy vegetarianism to how to butcher and prepare rodent meat. Ginn is an artist whose work largely incorporates survival skills such as skinning...

For Only $23,999.00 ... the Ultimate Zombie Apocalypse Survival Kit Your last hope: The $24,000 zombie survival kit Don't expect big firepower from this gear collection, but it does have a few tools that could keep you alive among the undead. My preparations for the coming zombie apocalypse came down to one thing: a baseball bat. But this kit from OpticsPlanet makes me think I'm being terribly naive. The Z.E.R.O. (Zombie Extermination, Research, and Operations) Zombie Kit is the mother of all undead survival kits. For a whopping $24,000 you get oodles of tools, protective gear, cases, and weapons accessories....

Would you want to survive the end of civilization? Let's say the end of the world as we know it is coming — but someone offers you a priceless spot in their guaranteed-to-be-safe bunker, so you can be one of the chosen few who rebuilds the Earth. Would you want to survive, and emerge into the post-apocalyptic wasteland? Would the positives of playing a role in a new society outweigh the loss of creature comforts? Or would you rather just go out with the majority of the human race? I wouldn't last long in a Mad Max-style world — the...

Double-barrel pistol reinvents the meaning of double tapping Don't cry to us when the Mayan Apocalypse comes with a horde of brain-dead zombies because we'll just shake our heads at you for not stocking up on Arsenal Firearms' double barrel handgun that fires two bullets with every trigger pull. More commonly referred to as the AF2011-AF Double Barrel Pistol or "Twenty Eleven" or "Second Century," the gun is special because it's the first semi-automatic pistol that fires two bullets at once. Its body is intrinsically that of a Colt 1911-A1 with twin .45 caliber barrels that can carry eight bullets...