Crackpot End Of The World Theories

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11	Harold Camping

One of the most famous recent apocalypse embarrassments came with the case of California pastor Harold Camping. The Family Radio host used the power of numerology to predict that the Rapture would hit in 1994. When Jesus failed to show up, Camping revised his date to May 21, 2011, and he was so confident in his hoodoo math that he took out billboards all over town telling people that they were going to die. And then they didn't, so he said that the apocalypse was actually going to hit on October 21. That didn't happen either, so the aged prophet has basically stopped letting his mouth write checks that his God can't cash.

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10	The True Way

Sure, Americans have a pretty solid lock on the apocalypse, but that doesn't stop our brothers overseas from engaging in a little end-times shenanigans. The "True Way" cult was established in Taiwan as a mixture of Buddhism, Taoism and UFO conspiracy theories. Leader Hon-Ming Chen had a vision that God would appear to America on cable television (even if you didn't have cable) on the morning of March 31, 1998. The group relocated to Garland, Texas (because the name sounded like "God Land" to them) and waited for the Rapture to begin. When nothing happened, Chen offered to let his disciples stone him or crucify him, but nobody took him up on it.

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9	Richard Noone

There has always been a big market for nutjobs to predict the last days of Planet Earth, but author Richard Noone had to eat something fierce when the predictions made in his 5/5/2000: Ice: The Ultimate Disaster book failed to happen in spectacular fashion. Noone believed that the planet was in for another Ice Age and stated that the polar ice caps would get larger over the course of the 20th Century, culminating in a worldwide ecological disaster. Oh, and it also had something to do with the pyramids. Needless to say, global warming kind of shot a hole through his crackpot theory.

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8	Elizabeth Clare Prophet

As the founder and figurehead of the Church Universal and Triumphant, Elizabeth Clare Prophet was one of the biggest names of the 80s New Age movement. The self-proclaimed reincarnation of Marie Antoinette, Prophet received a vision that the world would end as a result of global thermonuclear war in 1990 (not an uncommon fear back then), so she relocated all of her followers to a bunker outside of Yellowstone National Park to survive the end times. Needless to say, when the bombs didn't start flying she felt pretty stupid.

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7	Yisrayl Hawkins

Another hilarious nuclear war End Times prediction came from Yisrayl Hawkins, the Texan leader of the House Of Yahweh (Abilene). Born Buffalo Bill Hawkins (yes, "Buffalo" was his first name), Hawkins changed his name and founded his church with his brother. In the 90s, he hit the headlines predicting that nuclear war would break out on September 16, 2006. When it didn't happen, he revised his prediction to say that the lead-up to the war started on that date, with the real bombs flying nine months later - a "nuclear baby," in his own words. Needless to say, that baby never had a shower. He was charged with bigamy in 2008 though, so maybe he was trying to make a different kind.