Doomsday: A Lifestyle for Some, a Joke to Others

Written by Elizabeth Hall

19/10/2025

Content Warning: Contains mentions of Suicide and Self-Harm

Since 1927, there have been at least 1306 movies which involved Earth being thrown into a vast and possibly world-ending crisis. From aliens to zombies to natural disasters, whether it’s called the apocalypse, a collapse, a meltdown or a blood bath, they all mean the same thing: the end of life on Earth. It’s not just in pop culture—doomsday has been at the minds of paranoid preppers, curious children, and religious and cult leaders who tell their followers to wait for their eternal salvation and explain how they can guarantee it.

The Rapture is an Evangelical belief developed by John Nelson Darby in the 1830s. Darby believed that the only thing Christians had to wait for was the return of Christ, and for Jesus to return his Church and believers to Heaven. The Rapture is characterised by trumpets blaring, followed by the sudden disappearance of Christians. Then comes the Great Tribulation, a time of great hardship and the trigger for the rise of the Anti-Christ. Then the Second Coming, which is the final judgement on all people, where Jesus will determine whether they are worthy of salvation. This will be followed by a Millennial Kingdom, where Jesus rules over the Earth for 1000 years and after his rule, Jesus finally defeats Satan.

The Rapture would then be spread into the public consciousness through books written by Cyrus Schoefield and Hal Lindsey with the former’s Schoefield Reference Bible (1909), which added commentary to the verses, painting a picture of the rapture around scripture, and the latter’s The Late Great Planet Earth (1970), which inspired other theologians to write about the Rapture. The most recent Rapture prophecy comes from South African Joshua Mhlakela. On the 17^th of June this year he went on the CENTTWINZ podcast as a messenger of Christ to “tell South Africa and the world” that “there will be no World Cup 2026 … because life on Earth will not be business as usual for those who are left behind. … On 23 and 24 September 2025, I will come to take my church.”

This led to hundreds of posts about the Rapture on the internet. One example is a service for $10USD where after the Rapture, non-Christian volunteers would break into the client’s house and re-home the animals. Another example is TikToker @b.r.i.a.n.aa, claiming that God was speaking through her children, who were saying “Rosh Chodesh,” the name of a Jewish holiday which celebrates the new moon. She made the claim that this proved the Rapture was going to happen. This caused people worry that she would end up harming herself and her children in preparation for the Rapture, which fortunately doesn’t seem to be the case. Another TikToker, @tilahun.desalegn, sold his car, believing he wouldn’t need it anymore as he thought Christ wouldn’t want him to have a car. @sonj779 was another TikToker who gave out Rapture advice—for example,

“Rapture trip trick no. 5. When you finally start moving up the air, I recommend that you don’t hold onto anything. I definitely don’t recommend looking down. I think we learned that lesson from Lot’s wife. Okay, just keep calm, take a deep breath. Slowly release it and keep your face looking upwards. And pray you’re not on the toilet.”

Many people who saw the Rapture as a joke took advantage of believers by buying personal property from them, such as cars and houses, for significantly less than their value. @kimlieghslife bought a car off a believer and a lady was reported to have sold her house for $10,000USD in preparation of the Rapture. Luckily, as of now there are no reports of any Rapture-related deaths, but that doesn’t mean it has never happened.

One example is Harold Camping’s Rapture prediction for 21 May 2011. His church received $80 million USD over the course of two years, and he instilled in his followers much paranoia over not being picked during the Rapture. One Californian, Lyn Benedetto, worried for her daughters—ages 11 and 14—in the coming Rapture, slit their throats with a box cutter. Fortunately, they did survive and Benedetto was arrested. But an elderly Taiwanese man was not so lucky, as on 5 May 2011, he committed suicide by jumping off a building.

Heaven’s Gate was an American new age spiritual cult founded by Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles around 1975. Applewhite and Nettles pushed the idea that UFOs were real and could transport peoples’ souls to a higher level of immortal existence. They told followers to abstain from sex and that their bodies were only vessels that their souls would leave when they were dead. In 1997, the comet Hale-Bopp was approaching Earth, which was, as it was to the rest of the world, of great interest to Heaven’s Gate. On 22 March 1997, their website displayed a message, reading:

“By the time you receive this, we’ll be gone—several dozen of us. We came from the Level Above Human in distant space and we have now exited the bodies that we were wearing for our earthly task, to return to the world from whence we came—task completed. … During a brief window of time, some may wish to follow us. If they do, it will not be easy. The requirement is to not only believe who the Representatives are, but, to do as they and we did. You must leave everything of your humanness behind. This includes the ultimate sacrifice and demonstration of faith—that is, the shedding of your human body … We know what we’re saying—we know it requires a “leap of faith.” But it’s deliberate —designed for those who would rather take that leap than stay in this world.”

This resulted in the death of 39 people, which included Applewhite in Surburban Calif, San Diego on 26 March 1997. Their deaths determined to be caused by a lethal cocktail mixture of Phenobarbital and vodka, they were found lying on bunkbeds arranged in rows of 16, 15 and 8, in matching tracksuits and trainers. They had done this in the sole belief that the comet Hale-Bopp was hiding a spacecraft behind it which would take them through Heaven’s Gate to a higher and better plane of existence.

No matter how outlandish any doomsday prophecy may seem, there will always be people that believe they are living in the last days, that they will never again see their loved ones who don’t prepare or carry out certain actions to be saved. On 7 June 2025, TruePrepper estimated that in the United States there are 23.4 million “preppers”—people who prepare for survival situations—or 9.1% of the population, in Canada there are 2.4 million preppers and in the United Kingdom there are 1.3 million preppers. The internet can provide information on the warning signs of cults and misinformed, dangerous conspiracy theories, but it also can—and often does—reinforce dangerous and misinformed beliefs. Dr Alania Burns says that,

“As technological capabilities have changed rapidly over the past several years, it has become harder to draw the line between a reality-based belief and a delusional one. … Additionally, because it is so easy to connect with others online, those with unusual or false beliefs are more likely to have a shared community with others who have similar beliefs.”

Some people wait their whole life for the end times; they give up their dreams, relationships, opportunities, and make great sacrifices. It’s impossible to ignore how these ideologies prey on people who just want a place to fit in, who want answers to questions about the universe and why life is the way it is. They strip people of autonomy and enjoyment of life, with victims putting their whole lives on hold only for ‘doomsday’ to come and go. Many will say these people should have known better and will make a silly joke about the situation. But doomsday ideologies do harm people; they tear families apart; they crush hopes and dreams. Or are they just a silly joke? Do we, as a society, need to put each other down when something someone believed and lived for doesn’t come true? Should we help them rebuild their lives, or just ignore them and let them spiral until they take their own life to try and ‘secure’ a place in their doomsday fantasy?

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