Just my luck. As I mentioned a couple of days ago, my new Ipad finally arrived after a several week wait. Today I find out that I won’t be enjoying it for long, because the whole world is going to end on May 21st.
[Harold] Camping, an engineer by training, says he came up with the very precise date of May 21 through a mathematical calculation that would probably crash Google’s computers. It involves, among other things, the dates of floods, the signals of numbers in the Bible, multiplication, addition and subtraction thereof. Camping describes his equations with absolute conviction.
“He seems to be the only one who understands the equation,” said Paul Boyer, a University of Wisconsin historian who studies apocalyptic beliefs.
Camping is an engineer by training, but his day job is as a fundamentalist radio preacher. Apparently he’s been through this before, having just missed on his previous prediction that the world was going to end in 1994. This time, of course, he must be right, because his calculations have yielded not just the precise year, but the precise date and time:
The end will come sometime around 6 p.m. on May 21 — not 6 p.m. California time or New York time or Hong Kong time. The world will end at 6 p.m. only when it is 6 p.m. locally, Camping said, citing his calculations. “People will see this coming to them from around the world,” he said. “It will follow the sun around.”
Okay, so my new Ipad may come in handy after all. I think I’m right in thinking that the world will end at the international dateline first, and then the end will make its way west, around the world until it gets here. That’s seventeen hours, more or less. That means I can use my Ipad to follow the end on twitter, or to get live team coverage from Fox.
Now, if you think Camping and his followers are slightly crazy, rest assured they are not, at least if you consider insanity as a deviance from the norm. Here in America, according to the article, fully 41% of the people believe the world will end before 2050. Camping and his flock are merely pegging the date slightly earlier.
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