New Delhi: Doomsayers are having a field day, selling T-shirts, carrying sign boards and wagging their fingers at skeptics as they predict the beginning of the end of the world. May 21, 6 pm, to be precise.
And if you are the type that waits until the last day to pay bills, it is too early to say if you can wriggle out of paying this month, as naysayers rubbish claims of a US preacher popularizing the Biblical tale of the Second Coming of the Lord.
Harold Camping, a preacher from Oakland, California, has been predicting that at about 6 pm on May 21, two per cent of the world's population will be "raptured" to Heaven while those who have been naughty will get sent to the 'Other Place'.
Camping's dire warning has been plastered across billboards and walls and reproduced as street graffiti across America making it impossible to ignore the message.
The 89-year-old former civil engineer speaks to his followers via the Family Radio Network, a religious broadcasting organisation funded entirely by donations from listeners, the Independent newspaper reported.
The message went viral on the Internet with a thriving stream of jokes and one-liners hailing the various advantages of the world ending.
'CreditLoan''s tweet "Zombie Apocalypse is coming? Does that mean I don't have to pay back my student loans?" was retweeted 940 times.
Billboards read "It's getting real close. It's really getting pretty awesome, when you think about it," a message directly from one of Camping's interviews to the The Independent.
After 70 years of studying the Bible, he claims to have developed a system that uses mathematics to interpret prophesies hidden in it. He says the world will end on 21 May, because that will be 722,500 days from 1 April AD33, which he believes was the day of the Crucifixion. The figure of 722,500 is important because you get it by multiplying three holy numbers (five, 10 and 17) together twice.
"When I found this out, I tell you, it blew my mind," he said. Recent events, such as earthquakes in Japan, New Zealand and Haiti, are harbingers of impending doom, he says, as are changing social values.
Pet care agencies have put out advertisements "We will take care of your pets when you are gone," assuming of course they are around after the world ends while a top US health official posted instructions on how to prepare for Apocalypse.
Assistant surgeon general, Ali Khan, posted advice on the website of the government's health and safety agency, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, on how to prepare for Night of the Living Dead popping up in the backyard, The Guardian newspaper reported.
"There are all kinds of emergencies out there that we can prepare for," Khan writes under the heading Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse. "Take a zombie apocalypse for example. That's right, I said z-o-m-b-i-e a-p-o-c-a-l-y-p-s-e. You may laugh now, but when it happens you'll be happy you read this."
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