BusinessWeek on the Rapture Market
July 31, 2011 8:50 AM   Subscribe

Times are tough, but one market is doing well: The Rapture. You've got your usual seeds and survival packs and first aid kits, but do you have your Rapture erotica for those long, lonely nights in the bunker? What about an iPhone app so you know when the Rapture occurs? How about informational and inspiring movies? And for those looking to break into the market, BusinessWeek gathers some helpful tips, such as "never give a date for your endtime prophecy."
posted by Ghostride The Whip (35 comments total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
 
A letter writer like myself depends on the Post Rapture Post. (Previously)
posted by cjorgensen at 8:59 AM on July 31, 2011


What's the deal with rapture bunkers, anyway?

What do you need a bunker for if you're going to be whisked away to heaven?

If I were a fundie, and my fundie spouse built a rapture bunker, I'd start wondering which commandment(s) he'd broken.
posted by Sys Rq at 8:59 AM on July 31, 2011 [2 favorites]


There's a week-long end times discussion happening at the community college near my parents' house. Improbably titled "Amazing Facts" seems to traffic in the idea that they're not like other end times profiteers, but would you be so kind as to donate please?
posted by codacorolla at 9:05 AM on July 31, 2011


What's the deal with rapture bunkers, anyway?


Well everyone KNOWS you get raptured in alphabetical order! So while you're waiting for your turn you'll need a safe place to hide from the damned.
posted by Max Power at 9:06 AM on July 31, 2011 [4 favorites]


Obviously these people are idiots, they should be predicting that the economy will collapse tomorrow, or that oil will run out next week or Earth's ecology will go belly up by September like all rational, sensible people instead.
posted by joannemullen at 9:07 AM on July 31, 2011 [4 favorites]


The world's not going to end any time soon. I'm not that lucky.
posted by dortmunder at 9:13 AM on July 31, 2011 [3 favorites]


But of that day and hour knows no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only? There's an app for that.
posted by PlusDistance at 9:13 AM on July 31, 2011 [12 favorites]


Man, Rexella Van Impe is just the best name in the history of names, isn't it?
posted by Horace Rumpole at 9:17 AM on July 31, 2011 [2 favorites]


You know, it takes a bit of marketing genius to sell survival seeds and first aid kits to the very same people who believe that they shall be physically transported by God himself to heaven at precisely the moment everything on Earth goes to hell.
posted by three blind mice at 9:18 AM on July 31, 2011 [7 favorites]


I forgot it but there was a word for people fetishing their end of the world kits? Retweeking them and adding and subtracting forever? I guess it's one way to scratch the OH GOD ONE DAY I WILL DIE itch.
posted by The Whelk at 9:19 AM on July 31, 2011


Sys Rq: What do you need a bunker for if you're going to be whisked away to heaven?

The timing of the rapture depends on doctrinal interpretations. There are three main schools of thought: Pretribulation, Midtribulation, and Posttribulation. Here's a handy graphic.

So if you're of the latter two beliefs, a bunker would be useful. Though I don't see the point in scrambling up the bow like a rat on a sinking ship. If I were a Christian, I'd want to get to paradise as soon as possible.
posted by troll at 9:22 AM on July 31, 2011 [2 favorites]


A lot of the fundies I talked to during my blessedly brief tenure in rural Alabama were actually stocking up and building bunkers for their relatives. Just because I'm going to go to heaven doesn't mean my gay son or atheist daughter (etc.) will, and not only will I be taking care of them once I've shuffled off this mortal coil, they'll know that I was right when I pleaded with them to take Jesus into their heart. The ultimate parental guilt trip.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 9:25 AM on July 31, 2011 [5 favorites]


What do you need a bunker for if you're going to be whisked away to heaven?

My wife was taught growing up that only a select portion of the church would be raptured. God would take the holiest and most faithful Christians up to heaven, but the rest of the church would have to sit out the Tribulation with the damned.
posted by EarBucket at 9:41 AM on July 31, 2011


God would take the holiest and most faithful Christians up to heaven, but the rest of the church would have to sit out the Tribulation with the damned.

Christ: what an asshole.
posted by joe lisboa at 9:44 AM on July 31, 2011 [34 favorites]


I know a woman who's advertising a pet-care business for those taken by SkyGod in The Rapture who have to leave Fido and Fluffy behind.
posted by Ideefixe at 10:00 AM on July 31, 2011


My preparation consists of not lifting heavy things, or my hernia could get worse.

Oh, wait, sorry, that's rupture.
posted by Artful Codger at 10:09 AM on July 31, 2011 [3 favorites]


What's the deal with rapture bunkers, anyway?

19,995$ and up.

*10% discount on holy water this week only*

tax and tithes extra
posted by clavdivs at 10:39 AM on July 31, 2011 [2 favorites]


Man, Rexella Van Impe is just the best name in the history of names, isn't it?

That's just what she and her fellow alien insectoids want you to think.
posted by Sys Rq at 10:43 AM on July 31, 2011


It's the God-as-hurricane model! Unpredictable, powerful, uncaring (about your pets, the unsaved, or you if you are left behind) and something you need to buy protection against.

Yeah, I'll pass.
posted by emjaybee at 10:53 AM on July 31, 2011


Christ: what an asshole.

There's an awful lot of loneliness, desperation and fear in the world right now, and you don't need to be a Christian to show a little sympathy or understanding.

Flip the channels on your TV for half an hour and virtually everything you'll see looks like the hidden messages in They Live; you are powerless and blameless. Consume and fear. When virtually all of us are getting relentlessly hammered with that message every single day, putting the blame for evangelical rapturism at the feet of religion is glib, facile, baseless and ultimately does nothing except make you feel better about yourself. That is to say, what your derision does for you is no different than what the beliefs you're deriding do for their adherents.
posted by mhoye at 10:58 AM on July 31, 2011 [3 favorites]


Now I have a rational urge to sell Rapture insurance to Christians.
posted by happyroach at 11:11 AM on July 31, 2011 [1 favorite]


How do they expect me to get a business up and running by Tuesday?
posted by Mister Fabulous at 11:14 AM on July 31, 2011


God would take the holiest and most faithful Christians up to heaven, but the rest of the church would have to sit out the Tribulation with the damned.

IIRC, the Book of Revelation actually specifies 144,000 exactly. I think that most sects either skate around that or assume that they'll be one of the lucky lottery winners.

(One of my favorite Rapture apocrypha came from Robert Kirkman, of Walking Dead fame, in his earliest (and IMO best) comics series, Battle Pope. The Rapture happens, and God finds exactly two people worthy of Rapturing; he calls off the Apocalypse, and humans and demons end up co-existing on Earth more or less peacefully. (In a later spin-off, we find out that the two people who got Raptured are Ned Flanders (yes, that one) and a guy who was in a coma for ten years (and therefore couldn't sin) whose first words on reaching heaven are, "So, there are whores up here, right?"))
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:59 AM on July 31, 2011 [2 favorites]




That is to say, what your derision does for you is no different than what the beliefs you're deriding do for their adherents.

Get off your high horse, drop the thesaurus, and study up on false equivalences. And do not fucking lecture me about the amount of loneliness, fear and desperation in the world.
posted by joe lisboa at 12:27 PM on July 31, 2011 [3 favorites]


So the "quiverfull" idiots...do they realize by adding more and more people to the world, statistically, they're reducing their own chances of being raptured?
posted by maxwelton at 12:36 PM on July 31, 2011 [2 favorites]


Man, Rexella Van Impe is just the best name in the history of names, isn't it?

No, that would be Gunnar Deatherage, who (tragically) was auf'ed the first episode of Project Runway 9 last Thursday night. And that right there is the first sign of the apocalypse. Oh Gunnar, we hardly knew ya.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 12:39 PM on July 31, 2011 [2 favorites]


I don't understand the logic. Why do you need a doomsday shelter and kit of supplies if you are going to Heaven when it happens? Maybe the faith in the coming apocalypse for these people doesn't derive from religion. But then where does the faith of this doom derive from? Should we call these people buying these supplies Athiest Doomsdayers?

Here in earthquake country it's actually a good idea to have a stock of food and water at hand. Like the supposed Rapture, we all know a big earthquake is coming, we just don't know when.
posted by eye of newt at 12:51 PM on July 31, 2011


Now I have a rational urge to sell Rapture insurance to Christians.--happyroach
What about for the pets that would be left behind?

Would you believe....

(This is why you should be nice to atheists).
posted by eye of newt at 12:56 PM on July 31, 2011


Eternal Earthbound Pets gets mentioned in the article. The guy has something like 300 subscribers at a few hundred bucks a year.
posted by codacorolla at 1:24 PM on July 31, 2011


rapturers are gonna rapt
posted by liza at 2:08 PM on July 31, 2011


Perhaps the rapture believers who are building rapture bunkers are doing it because they know God knows they've been reading some of that rapture erotica on the sly.
posted by BlueJae at 7:10 PM on July 31, 2011


Of course The Rapture is doing well. LCD Soundsystem disbanding leaves a gap in the touring market for New York dance-punk.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 12:43 AM on August 1, 2011


Flip the channels on your TV for half an hour and virtually everything you'll see looks like the hidden messages in They Live; you are powerless and blameless. Consume and fear.

Not just on TV. This is why I hate the ad posts that pop up on MeFi so much.
posted by DU at 6:47 AM on August 1, 2011


Athiest Doomsdayers?

Meh. I've seen athier.

I will never get tired of that joke.
posted by Sys Rq at 7:46 AM on August 1, 2011


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