Free Republic

When it comes to the end times, there isn't much that I agree with Hal Lindsey about. Hal Lindsey, author of the huge (and phenomenally misguided) "Late Great Planet Earth" and rapture promoter wrote a column last week comparing the reception received by Barack Obama on his world tour to the reception that the Antichrist will one day receive. After describing some of the detail of Obama's trip, Lindsey says this: And the Bible says that such a leader will soon make his appearance on the scene. It won't be Barack Obama, but Obama's world tour provided a foretaste of...

While millions of American families struggle with falling house prices, soaring gasoline costs and tightening credit, some environmentalists, urban planners and urban real estate speculators are welcoming the bad news as signaling what they have long dreamed of -- the demise of suburbia. In a March Atlantic article, Christopher B. Leinberger, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and a professor of urban planning, contended that yesterday's new suburbs will become "the slums" of tomorrow because high gas prices and the housing meltdown will force Americans back to the urban core. Leinberger is not alone. Other pundits, among them author...

Nuclear war will begin next Thursday, June 12, or sooner, according to the latest prediction of self-proclaimed prophet Yisrayl "Buffalo Bill" Hawkins, the founder of a religious sect in Abilene, Texas. "It could be turned loose before then," Hawkins told 20/20 for a report to be broadcast tonight. "You're going to see this very soon, really soon," he said.

The last members of a Russian doomsday cult yesterday left the underground cave where they had spent the past six months after the stench of two dead colleagues became too much to stand. Nine disciples of Pyotr Kuznetzov, a self-styled prophet who predicted the world would come to an end this month, emerged from their manmade cavern in the Penza region, bringing an end to a protracted standoff between the cult and the police. According to regional officials, one female adherent of the cult died from “severe Lenten fasting” last month, while the other succumbed to cancer. As the corpses...

Global warming is causing significant changes to the Earth's natural systems and it is highly unlikely that any force but man-made climate change can be blamed . Researchers who analysed 30,000 academic studies dating back to 1970 said man was responsible for changes that ranged from the loss of ice sheets to the collapse in numbers of many species of wildlife. "Humans are influencing climate through increasing greenhouse gas emissions, and the warming world is causing impacts on physical and biological systems," said Cynthia Rosenzweig, at the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies. The effects on living things include the...

Increased volcanic activity is linked to ice melted by the effects of global warming, a study has found. So much ice in Iceland has melted in the past century that the pressure on the land beneath has lessened, which allows more of the rock deep in the ground to turn to magma. Until the ice melted, the pressure was so intense that the rock remained solid. Carolina Pagli, of the University of Leeds, led research which calculated that over the past century the production of magma had increased by 10 per cent.

Doomsday cult calls credit cards satanic By Chris Baldwin Mar 31, 2008 NIKOLSKOE, Russia (Reuters) - A Russian doomsday cult sheltering in a bunker say credit cards and food packaging bar codes are satanic, the official negotiating the release of children from the group said on Monday. Around 30 followers, including four children, from across Russia and neighboring Belarus met last October and barricaded themselves into a hillside to escape an apocalypse their preacher says is looming in either April or May. "For us right now, what's most important is the children," said Alexander Yelatontsev, an official from Russia's Penza...

NIKOLSKOE, Russia (Reuters) - A Russian doomsday cult sheltering in a bunker say credit cards and food packaging bar codes are satanic, the official negotiating the release of children from the group said on Monday. Around 30 followers, including four children, from across Russia and neighboring Belarus met last October and barricaded themselves into a hillside to escape an apocalypse their preacher says is looming in either April or May. "For us right now, what's most important is the children," said Alexander Yelatontsev, an official from Russia's Penza Oblast region, who has been the chief point of contact for the...

World doesn't end, Doomsday cult gives up From correspondents in Moscow March 30, 2008 07:36am Article from: Reuters SEVEN female members of a Russian cult have come out of the cave where they have been awaiting the end of the world, but 28 people are still underground, Russian media reported today. The doomsday cult members have been barricaded in a cave dug out of a hillside in the Penza region of central Russia since October. They have been refusing to come out until the end of the world, which they predict will happen in May. A local official said the...

"The builders of the world's biggest particle collider are being sued in federal court over fears that the experiment might create globe-gobbling black holes or never-before-seen strains of matter that would destroy the planet."

Arctic 'Doomsday' Seed Vault Opens Doors For 100 Million SeedsThe Svalbard Global Seed Vault opened February 26 on a remote island in the Arctic Circle, receiving inaugural shipments of 100 million seeds that originated in over 100 countries. (Credit: Mari Tefre/Global Crop Diversity Trust) ScienceDaily (Feb. 27, 2008) — The Svalbard Global Seed Vault opened February 26 on a remote island in the Arctic Circle, receiving inaugural shipments of 100 million seeds that originated in over 100 countries. With the deposits ranging from unique varieties of major African and Asian food staples such as maize, rice, wheat, cowpea, and sorghum...

On a windswept Arctic island 1000 kms from the North Pole, a group of Norwegian engineers and scientists have been constructing a gigantic seed bank inside a frozen mountain. To be managed by the Global Crop Diversity Trust, a group dedicated to the ongoing diversity of plants through a variety of genetic strains, the International Seed Bank will open this week. Known as the Doomsday vault, the seed bank has the capacity to hold 4.5 million batches of seeds from all known varieties of the planet's main food crops -- more than "...twice as many varieties of agricultural crops as...

Saving ancient Angkor from modern doomsdayScientists warning on pumping water for tourist hotels Ker Munthit, Associated Press Sunday, February 17, 2008 (02-17) 04:00 PST Siem Reap, Cambodia -- By destroying vast tracts of forest to enlarge their farm land, inhabitants of the wondrous city of Angkor lit the fuse to an ecological time bomb that spelled doom for what was once the world's largest urban area. So believe archaeologists engaged in groundbreaking research into the ancient civilization of Angkor. And they are warning that history could repeat itself through reckless, headlong pursuit of dollars from tourists flocking to see Angkor's...

McLean, VA - Senator Fred Thompson today issued the following statement about his campaign for President: "Today I have withdrawn my candidacy for President of the United States. I hope that my country and my party have benefited from our having made this effort. Jeri and I will always be grateful for the encouragement and friendship of so many wonderful people."

What would happen to planet earth if the human race were to suddenly disappear forever? Would ecosystems thrive? What remnants of our industrialized world would survive? What would crumble fastest? From the ruins of ancient civilizations to present day cities devastated by natural disasters, history gives us clues to these questions and many more in the visually stunning and thought-provoking new special

The quasar OJ287 contains two black holes (this slightly dated illustration lists the larger black hole's mass as 17 billion Suns, though researchers now estimate it is 18 billion Suns). The smaller black hole crashes through a disc of material around the larger one twice every orbit, creating bright outbursts (Illustration: VISPA) The most massive known black hole in the universe has been discovered, weighing in with the mass of 18 billion Suns. Observing the orbit of a smaller black hole around this monster has allowed astronomers to test Einstein's theory of general relativity with stronger gravitational fields than ever...

Forget about the threat that mankind poses to the Earth: our activities may be shortening the life of the universe too. The startling claim is made by a pair of American cosmologists investigating the consequences for the cosmos of quantum theory, the most successful theory we have. Over the past few years, cosmologists have taken this powerful theory of what happens at the level of subatomic particles and tried to extend it to understand the universe, since it began in the subatomic realm during the Big Bang. The Boomerang Nebula, mankind ‘shortening the universe’s life’ Cosmologists claim by observing dark...

<p>Cheers to Small Business: I Refuse to Be a 'Doomsday Diva'</p> <p>Last week in New York City, I participated in an important summit of business leaders where we explored the “Outlook for 2008.” We identified the key priorities and needs to keep the U.S. entrepreneurial sector strong and competitive.</p>

Russia sect holes up in cave to await end of world Thu Nov 15, 2007 10:53am GMT     [] []   By Tatyana UstinovaMOSCOW (Reuters) - At least 30 members of a Russian doomsday cult have barricaded themselves in a remote cave to await the end of the world and are threatening to commit suicide if police intervene, officials and media said on Thursday."They have covered the entrance and refuse to come out and are threatening to blow themselves up," an official in the local prosecutor's office told Reuters by telephone. "They threaten to detonate a gas tank...

WASHINGTON — Whenever the world's tropical seas rose several degrees, Earth experienced mass extinctions over millions of years, according to a first-of-its-kind statistical study of fossil records. And scientists fear it may be about to happen again — but in a matter of several decades, not tens of millions of years. Four of the five major extinctions over 520 million years of Earth history have been linked to warmer tropical seas, something that indicates a warmer world overall, according to the new study published today. "We found that over the fossil record as a whole, the higher the temperatures have...

Tony and Susan Alamo were photographed with scores of their followers in 1974, at the height of their power. Today, Tony Alamo is back. Photo by Gilbert B. Weingourt/Zuma Press LOS ANGELES, Calif. — Clad in matching T-shirts with bejeweled cross logos, members of Tony Alamo Christian Ministries are once again saving souls on Hollywood Boulevard. Since the late 1960s, followers of notorious cult leader Tony Alamo have recruited and distributed literature on this star-studded sidewalk. On this sunny summer afternoon, they're handing out heavily footnoted, paranoid screeds proclaiming the end of the world is nigh and branding the U.S....

Most anybody in the mortgage business will tell you that August was a month that will live in infamy: The market was in turmoil, as doubts about the stability of subprime loans spread to other sectors of the mortgage world. How bad was it? A survey of mortgage brokers suggests that one in three consumers who recently signed purchase contracts canceled in August -- up from just 4 percent three years ago, according to the research firm that conducted the survey for Inside Mortgage Finance, a trade journal. The cancellation rate undoubtedly was fed by two scenarios playing out: Many...

Survivology would be a science and accompanying support technologies aimed at (1) studying doomsday catastrophic events and their immediate and posterior consequences, as well as the prevention of such events when of manmade nature, and (2) formulating ways and means necessary for planning and preparing for national or global effective survival and recovery in the aftermath of as many kinds of doomsday catastrophic events as possible. To that effect, Survivology would cover the following five concentrically layered levels of survival: 1) Individual, aimed at the survival of individuals and the family nucleus 2) Community, partially banking as much as possible...

Hillary Doomsday Machine

Just announced by MSNBC

Experts assessing the dangers posed to civilisation have added climate change to the prospect of nuclear annihilation as the greatest threats to humankind. As a result, the group has moved the minute hand on its famous "Doomsday Clock" two minutes closer to midnight.

Clock Moves Forward Two Minutes 15 January 2007 | 10:27 PM The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) is moving the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock on January 17, 2007, from 7 to 5 minutes to midnight. BAS announced the Clock change at an unprecedented joint news conference at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, DC, and the Royal Society in London. In a statement supporting the decision to move the hand of the Doomsday Clock, the BAS Board focused on two major sources of catastrophe: the perils of 27,000 nuclear weapons, 2000 of them...

WASHINGTON: The keepers of the "Doomsday Clock" plan to move its hands forward next Wednesday to reflect what they call worsening nuclear and climate threats to the world. The symbolic clock, maintained by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, currently is set at seven minutes to midnight, with midnight marking global catastrophe. The group did not say in which direction the hands would move. But in a news release previewing an event next Wednesday, they said the change was based on "worsening nuclear, climate threats" to the world. "The major new step reflects growing concerns about a 'Second Nuclear Age' marked...

Scientists prepare to move Doomsday Clock forward Fri Jan 12, 2007 3:22 PM ET WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The keepers of the "Doomsday Clock" plan to move its hands forward next Wednesday to reflect what they call worsening nuclear and climate threats to the world. The symbolic clock, maintained by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, currently is set at seven minutes to midnight, with midnight marking global catastrophe. The group did not say in which direction the hands would move. But in a news release previewing an event next Wednesday, they said the change was based on "worsening nuclear, climate threats"...

Orange County's coastal plains could experience patches of frost tonight and Saturday night as a blast of Alaskan air moves through the region, the National Weather Service says. Overnight temperatures the next two days will be in the mid-to-low 30s across much of the county and could drop to 29 degrees in canyon areas protected from the winds. Cold air is heavy and tends to sink to the surface of the Earth. Forecasters said there's a slim chance that the county will get brief showers today. But the storm clouds will disappear by early Saturday and a mild Santa Ana...

Suppose for a moment that the birth in Bethlehem that Christians celebrate this week never happened --that it is, as the secularists would have it, mere mumbo jumbo, superstition, a myth. In other words, consider it not as an event but as a narrative. You want to launch a big new global movement from scratch. So what do you use? The birth of a child. If Christianity is just a myth, then it is, so to speak, an immaculately conceived one. On the one hand, what could be more powerless than a newborn babe? On the other, without a newborn...

The sagging dollar fell Thursday to its lowest level against the pound in 14 years amid a rise in U.K. house prices and a seasonal rally in the British currency. The dollar also declined against the euro and yen. In morning trading in London, the pound hit $1.9562, up from $1.9462 late Wednesday in New York -- its strongest showing against the dollar since September 1992, before Britain was forced out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. The pound last reached the $2 level on Sept. 8, 1992

At 0753 at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, the attack that had triggered America's entry into World War II, sixty-seven years before, was ceremoniously commemorated, an honor guard, taps, a 21-gun salute, the bugle's notes and the rifles' crack drifting across the bay to the USS Arizona memorial, where Admiral Arthur Peterson, USN Ret., laid a wreath in memory of the sailors sleeping below, one of whom was his own grandfather. On the West coast it was 1053, and in Washington D.C. it was one fifty-three in the afternoon, 1353 military time. In 2006 America, tired of War in Iraq, had...

Why Is the End of the World Inevitable? Viktor Krivorotov Translation from Russian: Annalex For there shall be a time, when they will not endure sound doctrine (2 Tim 4:3) This question becomes a pressing one for a man who is interested in his spiritual makeup. The modern mentality in all its problems turns to science. Life today calls the man to resolve spiritual problems, but science does not deal with them, because such a task would require cleansing the soul of passions. Science, however, studies only those problems that are not connected to the condition of the scientist’s soul....

MAUCHE, Kenya (Reuters) - Kenyan followers of a U.S.-based religious sect which predicted the world would end after a September 12 outbreak of nuclear war moved into bunkers on Wednesday despite the failure of their prediction. Dozens of members of the House of Yahweh -- dressed in gas masks, gloves and long overcoats -- have built a network of underground hideouts in the small highland village of Mauche. They have stocked the bunkers with dried fermented flour meant to feed them for a year, by which time sinners would have been wiped off the Earth, according to their beliefs. "Those...

A couple days after September 11, 2001, in the fury and fear that followed that terrible event, someone in these pages penned a piece that caused great anger and outrage even by the elevated standards of those angry and outraged days. "Time to Face Mecca" proposed that the United States should make it clear to its enemies in the Muslim world that the next time a terrorist should contemplate carrying out an attack on an American city or national symbol, he should know with a certainty that the result of his act will be the utter destruction of Islam's most...

Well, Aug 22nd is here. Isn't today supposed to be the day the 12th Imam comes from a pit inside the world , greets Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and then destroys Israel and other infidel nations? Beck has been talking about this for weeks. According to this excerpt from World Net Daily: ___________________________________________________________________________________________ Bernard Lewis of Princeton has had opinion pieces circulating for two weeks now about how that night, the anniversary of one of Islam's holiest events, could be a time Iran would pick to spark a battle Muslims believe forever will resolve the battle between "good" and "evil." He said...

Better cancel those holidays. We now have a date for Armageddon, and it's a week on Tuesday - August 22. This information comes from no lesser source than the Wall Street Journal, where Bernard Lewis, President Bush's favourite historian, provides the details. "In Islam, as in Judaism and Christianity," the professor writes, "there are certain beliefs concerning the cosmic struggle at the end of time - Gog and Magog, anti-Christ, Armageddon, and for Shiite Muslims, the long-awaited return of the Hidden Imam, ending in the final victory of the forces of good over evil, however these may be defined. "Mr...

Apocalyptic visions of climate change used by newspapers, environmental groups and the UK government amount to "climate porn", a think-tank says. The report from the Labour-leaning Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) says over-use of alarming images is a "counsel of despair". It says they make people feel helpless and says the use of cataclysmic imagery is partly commercially motivated. However, newspapers have defended their coverage of a "crucial issue". 'Nobody knows' The IPPR report also criticises the reporting of individual climate-friendly acts as "mundane, domestic and uncompelling". The style of climate change discourse is that we maximise the problem...

Today, a rather old book from the late 11th century England (1086 to be precise) will be brought online to be searched. The Domesday Book, is the earliest surviving survey and valuation of the King, his senior supporters, the land they owned and their resources. If you'd wanted to look through it previously, you had to drag yourself over to the National Archive in a rather calm building in Kew West London, or cough up a couple of thousand pounds to get them on CD. By going to the Domesday Web site, you can search and get an idea if...

Christian leaders in Kenya are expressing concern about a cult that claims the modern world will end on September 12, with a nuclear war beginning in the Middle East. About 200 members of a cult known as the House of Yahweh, which has its roots in Texas, have formed a community in central Kenya to prepare for the disaster which they consider imminent. The cult began to establish a presence in Kenya in the 1980s, and now is said to have as many as 10,000 members there. Members of the House of Yahweh are reportedly selling property, stocking dry food...

SCI FI Channel is about to give the world a wake-up call. It's about the next mass extinction, a coming disaster that will wipe out life on Earth and destroy the human race. Counting down to doomsday, SCI FI reveals the top 10 ways the world can end tomorrow — and the solutions to avert them. Using CGI and cutting-edge special effects, we'll bring each terrifying scenario to life. Massive volcanic eruptions, global pandemics, asteroid impacts … viewers will witness vivid simulations of these and other nightmarish catastrophes, brought to life by the knowledge and imagination of the world's leading...

OSLO, Norway (AP) -- It sounds like something from a science fiction film -- a doomsday vault carved into a frozen mountainside on a secluded Arctic island ready to serve as a Noah's Ark for seeds in case of a global catastrophe....

Evil Texan wants to kill most humans Austin, Texas - Perhaps Homeland Security agents might want to take a break from cruising the net for young teen poon and take a look at Eric R. Pianka. The University of Texas Professor has grand schemes for wholesale liquidation of human populations that would dwarf the grandest ambitions of Stalin, Hilter and Mao combined, by using the Ebola virus. "Every one of you who gets to survive has to bury nine," Eric Pianka cautioned students and guests at St. Edward's University on Friday. Pianka's words are part of what he calls his...

The focus on the ports fiasco obviously would pale in comparison to a terror nuke actually detonating in one of our ports. But what about the flipside of that terrible event? What would happen to Islam as a result of a massive nuclear retaliatory counterstrike against Islamic targets? Perhaps this week's most ominous headline was "Islamic websites carry al-Qaida's Last Warning." The story in WorldNetDaily detailed how Osama bin Laden's terror group plans to bring destruction upon the United States and force it into surrender. Apparently this is more of the same threat that has been circulating for some time...

Following is the final result of the survey of what Freepers believe is the end of all that there is: Eschatology is the study of the end of history according to Christian theology. Teleology is the study of final causes, the end results. OED definition (offered by XeniaSt) 1 Philosophy - the doctrine that the existence of phenomena may be explained with reference to the purpose they serve. 2 Theology - the doctrine that there is evidence of design and purpose in the natural world. As expected, Freepers' answers were strongly related to personal religious beliefs. The order is the...

'Doomsday' seed bank to be built Rice is one of the world's most important crops Norway is planning to build a "doomsday vault" inside a mountain on an Arctic island to hold a seed bank of all known varieties of the world's crops. The Norwegian government will hollow out a cave on the ice-bound island of Spitsbergen to hold the seed bank. It will be designed to withstand global catastrophes like nuclear war or natural disasters that would destroy the planet's sources of food. Seed collection is being organised by the Global Crop Diversity Trust. "What will go into the...

Tehran, Iran, Jan. 03 – Iran’s hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad renewed his call for the “removal” of Israel from the Middle East on Tuesday and said his string of attacks on the Jewish state and denial of the Holocaust were part of a “deliberate strategy” aimed at winning the hearts and minds of young Muslims. “Some in Iran and abroad thought that we were making these speeches without a specific plan and policy, but we have been pursuing a deliberate strategy in this regards”, the Iranian president told a group of Islamist student activists, according to the Persian-language website Khedmat,...

In all kinds of circles, not just among mystics, is a sense of looming events and in some cases, a year is even attached. Of course, this is always the height of the precarious. We warned before the year 2000 not to place too much importance on that specific year (we all recall Y2K). We warn again of the same thing now. Rarely does prophecy pinpoint matters according to a human timeline, for events are conditional and God is infinite, which means He is timeless. Moreover, there is not

In Egyptian myth, Apophis was the ancient spirit of evil and destruction, a demon that was determined to plunge the world into eternal darkness. A fitting name, astronomers reasoned, for a menace now hurtling towards Earth from outerspace. Scientists are monitoring the progress of a 390-metre wide asteroid discovered last year that is potentially on a collision course with the planet, and are imploring governments to decide on a strategy for dealing with it.