Countdown to Armageddon

July 13, 2000 5:06 AM

Countdown to Armageddon - "In the last few years the world has gone from one Earth-shaking crisis to another. While some say that we are on the threshold of a Brave New World Order, others warn that humanity now totters on the brink of unprecedented disaster & chaos!"
posted by pehtes (8 comments total)

"from the creators of the Art Bell website, and the solar flares site comes...."
posted by tiaka at 6:42 AM on July 13, 2000

"In the last few years the world has gone from one media-created Earth-shaking crisis to another..."
posted by Freakho at 8:13 AM on July 13, 2000

" I hope we see armageddon soon, I could sure use a vacation..."
posted by john at 8:28 AM on July 13, 2000

Whoah! Looks like Jesus has been hitting the gym pretty hard since we last saw him.
posted by Nyarlathotep at 8:48 AM on July 13, 2000

Blah blah blah, I'm a stupid Christian, blah blah blah.
posted by solistrato at 9:15 AM on July 13, 2000

"In the last few years"? Shyeah, right. We haven't had a decent "crisis" since the Gulf War. Hell, we haven't even had a halfway-interesting longterm news event since Flight 800. Remember the 80s? Commies, imminent nuclear war, Challenger, on and on? Those were the days.
posted by aaron at 2:05 PM on July 13, 2000

My first instinct was to respond by saying the Christians (and I am one by the way, though I'm a far cry from Pat Robertson) have been saying this for 2000 years. Any minute now BOOM! The end of everything is JUST AROUND THE CORNER! JUST YOU WAIT! This has been going on since Johnny wrote Revelations. In fact, John thought the world as he knew it was going to end in his lifetime: and it did by the way. Rome fell. The world as he knew it changed dramatically after that.

The thing is though, for the first time in recorded history, back at the end of World War Two, the human race had mastered enough technology to be able to cause its own extinction. For the first time in history we actually can blow ourselves up and cause armaggeddon. Prophecy fulfilling itself maybe?

I mean it's funny... and yet it's not. Why's democrat Clinton pushing for a scaled down version of Star Wars? An idea originally pushed by republican Ronald Reagan? It's not a system that can wholeheartedly protect the US from Russia or China, who each have just enough nukes to destroy the entire world at least once. Even if it works, Star Wars will at best be able to take out one or two warheads as they head this way.

Clinton is trying to get his version of Star Wars off the ground to protect us from a single-minded terrorist lunatic with just one nuke, and it only takes one single-minded terrorist lunatic with just one nuke to start Global Thermonuclear War.

"Shall. we. play. a. game?"
posted by ZachsMind at 11:11 PM on July 13, 2000

While Zach has a point, I personally think the human genius for muddling through will keep our insect-like species around a bit longer. Let's face it, we're cockroaches with gentrification and dentistry, that's all.

And Zach, uh...Rome didn't fall in John of Patmos' lifetime, and that wasn't what he was talking about. Jerusalem fell, and that was what he meant. But otherwise, agree totally with you. :)
posted by Ezrael at 9:30 PM on July 16, 2000