Past dates for failed doomsday prophecies



Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.

There's always been good business predicting the end of the world. The "end" of the "world" is pretty badly defined by most supernatural predictions. The rapture, for instance, is really just the beginning of the end, and signals civilization being sent back to the for a bit. During all this The Chosen are whisked up to heaven. Meanwhile, predictions of the end of the world in 2012 were wide-ranging, from a comet just tearing Earth in half (the rest of the universe spinning on as usual) to the complete and total end of everything ever. The latter is less scary because it's not like anything will be around afterwards to care.

In the case of some of the science-based predictions for how the universe will go on according to our knowledge of physics, there's no "end" as such. Matter and energy still exist, but in their lowest energy and most uniform state: the rub being that this state precludes the interactions needed to produce emergent structures. This includes stars, planets, and intelligent entities capable of experiencing the universe.

Here are some examples, with the predicted date of the end of all things.

Unspecified date
I saw one, one time, that said, "The next week, the world is ending." And in the next week's paper, they said, "We were miraculously saved at the zero hour by a koala-fish mutant bird." Crazy shit.
 * Zoroastrianism claims that the end of the world will happen when a comet, called Gochihr, strikes the earth. It will cause all the world's metals to melt and will burn up the world. At the same time, sinners and the pious will pass through this river of molten metal. Sinners will have their sins burnt away and the pious will feel like they're "passing through warm milk."
 * Norse myths say that Ragnarök will be the battle between the gods, killing all but two of the humans, who will then repopulate the earth.
 * A number of scientific disasters have been suggested throughout the years. For example: epidemics, various asteroids/comets, super-volcano eruptions, and global warming. Note that these, like many other "end of world" predictions, would only be the end of humanity, or at most, of much/most/all life on Earth. The world itself would hardly notice the change.

1st century CE

 * Early Christianity: Second Coming. Any day now! In fact, within the lifetimes of Jesus's eyewitnesses.
 * Revelation: Armageddon. Indeed, the very word "Apocalypse" is the Greek word for revelation.

7th century

 * Muslims believed in the Qiyamah (Last Judgement) during which time Jesus will come to earth, end all wars, and kill ad-Dajjal &mdash; the Muslim anti-Christ. Then every person who ever lived will be bodily resurrected, before being judged by God. The faithful go to heaven, and the rest to hell. Apparently there's also room for some "People of the Book," i.e. Jews and Christians, though hopefully there won't be any wars between the lot in heaven. Presumably God will actually do something to stop fighting within his heavenly realm, unlike on Earth, so that celestial wars would seem unlikely.

16th century

 * Circa 1504: Painter Sandro Botticelli believed he was living during the End Times/, according to an inscription on his painting The Mystical Nativity.
 * 1533: Michael Stifel, Judgement Day. A common saying in German for PIDOOMA is to "calculate" or "talk a Stifel."

18th century

 * 1719: Jacob Bernoulli: a comet seen in 1680 would return and collide with the Earth. Said comet hasn't been seen since.

19th century

 * The "Great Disappointment": William Miller predicts the end would come in 1843... then 1844... oh. His many thousands of followers reacted in different ways to his utter failure: some wised up and gave up on his predictions, while others became Seventh Day Adventists. They're still waiting. Still others became the Jehovah's Witlesses, who badly retconned Miller's prediction so they could claim it actually did happen, just not the way he predicted.
 * 1865: predicted by Edward Bishop Elliott, a Victorian Biblical scholar; he later revised this to 1941.
 * 1881: according to an 1862 edition of the prophecies of Mother Shipton, who allegedly wrote "The world to an end shall come, In eighteen hundred and eighty one." (Seems she was no better at poetry than she was at prediction.)
 * Native Americans in Spring 1891: All the whites are gonna die really soon!

20th century

 * 1910: Halley's Comet's tail crosses the Earth and people think that the world will be gassed to death by cyanogen gas.
 * 1914: Jehovah's Witnesses: Armageddon.
 * 1915: Jehovah's Witnesses: Armageddon.
 * 1918: Jehovah's Witnesses: Armageddon.
 * 1920: Jehovah's Witnesses: Armageddon.
 * 1923: Wilbur Glenn Voliva: Flat Earth to end
 * 1925: Jehovah's Witnesses: Armageddon.
 * 1927: Wilbur Glenn Voliva
 * 1930: Wilbur Glenn Voliva
 * 1934: Wilbur Glenn Voliva
 * 1935: Wilbur Glenn Voliva
 * 1941: Jehovah's Witnesses: Armageddon.
 * 1941: Victorian scholar Edward Bishop Elliott, based on his interpretation of the Book of Revelation, came up with this date after his earlier predictions in the 1860s proved untrue.
 * 1975: Jehovah's Witnesses: Armageddon.
 * Mid-1970s: David Wilkerson: Worldwide economic depression.
 * 1977: William Branham: Destruction of the U.S., termination of all governments into a world government, Second Coming.
 * 1977: Pyramidologist Adam Rutherford: Beginning of the Millennium.
 * 1978: Jim Jones took his cult with him.
 * 1979-1980: John Todd: Installation of a world government ruled by the Illuminati, with Jimmy Carter as the anti-Christ. Because...peanuts?
 * 1980: Pat Robertson: "A year of sorrow and bloodshed that will have no end soon, for the world is being torn apart, and my kingdom shall rise from the ruins of it."
 * 1981: Hal Lindsey: Pre-tribulational rapture.
 * 1982: Pat Robertson: Great Tribulation.
 * 1982: R.E. McMaster: World War III and/or economic depression, based on cyclical theory.
 * 1985: Pat Robertson: Worldwide economic collapse.
 * 1988: Hal Lindsey: Second Coming.
 * September 11-13, 1988: Edgar Whisenant: Second Coming.
 * 1988: Colin Deal: Second Coming.
 * 1989: Edgar Whisenant: Second Second Coming.
 * 1990: Elizabeth Clare Prophet: Global thermonuclear war.
 * 1991: Louis Farrakhan: The looming Gulf War would be the "War of Armageddon which is the final war."
 * 1992 (September 28): Rollen Stewart: Second Coming.
 * 1992: Mission for the Coming Days: Second Coming.
 * 1992: First end of the world prediction from collision with the Pleiades star cluster (a.k.a., "photon belt")
 * 1994: Harold Camping: Second Coming.
 * 1994: Some Jehovah's Witnesses: Armageddon.
 * 1997: Heaven's Gate: Earth changes and a UFO abduction coinciding with the Hale-Bopp comet. Mass suicide in the hopes of hitching a ride on said UFOs.
 * 1997: Jehovah's Witnesses: Armageddon.
 * 1998: The Church of the SubGenius: the Rupture. Every year on July 5th, they meet and party in reverence, certain that it will happen this year. (Recent writings have inverted the year to "8661.")
 * 1999: according to some interpretations of Nostradamus
 * 1999:A now little-known collision with Planet X
 * 1999-2000: David Wilkerson: Worldwide economic depression.
 * May 5, 2000: Cataclysmic crust displacement predicted by Richard W. Noone
 * 2000: Y2K: Collapse of civilisation. Christian preachers in Papua New Guinea predicted the end. Hal Lindsey failed on this one again.

21st century

 * ≤2001: Cataclysmic crust displacement predicted by William Hutton.
 * 2002 (December 8th): Survivalist Bruce Beach (of Ark Two fame) predicted it on a Penn & Teller: Bullshit! episode that was not aired until 2003.
 * 2003: Mary 2003 was supposed to have Earth cataclysmically smash into Nibiru/Planet X, according to ZetaTalk.
 * 2005-2026: William Strauss and Neil Howe &mdash; a crisis period in the U.S. comparable in effect to the American Revolution, Civil War, and Great Depression/WWII.
 * 2007: Hal Lindsey &mdash; the Second Second Coming.
 * 2007: Pat Robertson &mdash; the Great Tribulation.
 * 2008 (whenever she dies): Sarah Palin believes she is of the "Final Generation" and will see the End Times during her lifetime.
 * 2008 (whenever it shuts down): The Large Hadron Collider will destroy the world with black holes, strangelets, or something similarly scary and science-y. (You can keep up to date with whether this has happened yet here. )
 * 2009: David Wilkerson &mdash; Earth-shattering calamity engulfing the whole megaplex, including areas of New Jersey and Connecticut. Major cities all across America experiencing riots and blazing fires.
 * 2011: Harold Camping tries again &mdash; Third Second coming/rapture. May 21st, to be precise. He put up billboards! Later postponed to October 21st, but again nothing came of it. Camping might hold on to the money people sent him if he weren't dead now, though he evidently blew a bundle on billboard advertisements. though followers were encouraged to drain their savings for Camping's campaign funds and many are deeply disappointed.
 * 2011: Ronald Weinland: Second Coming on the 29th of September. Strike one!
 * 2012: But of course! Un-naturally failed apocalypse, NASA pushed away space rock expected to hit in series of attempts to bombard asteroids in previous years. (They even did this to the moon!) The following trail fell to/passed Earth in early 2013. ;)
 * 2012: Ronald Weinland &mdash; Second Coming on the 27th of May. Strike two!
 * 2012: Last known end of the world prediction from collision with the Pleiades star cluster
 * 2012 (December 21st): Eastern Lightning cult predicted the end of the world.
 * 2013: 2012 was just a warm up, the real bad stuff starts 2013 or something and it seems Isaac Newton predicted it.
 * 2013: Ronald Weinland &mdash; Second Coming on the 9th of May. Strike three, you're out! (see 2019 for strike 4)
 * 2014 (February 22nd): Ragnarok &mdash; the end of the present world according to Norse mythology.
 * 2014 (March 21st): Asteroid?
 * 2014: World War III, resurrected Nostradamus prophecy of a fire in the North for the reference of the end of the age of the fifth sun, believed to be a specific Northern region of a country, current speculation is North Korea, as relative to the resolution of a Pope prediction. Oh, and the Rapture. And a giant asteroid hitting the Caribbean.
 * between April 2014 and October 2015: A tetrad of lunar eclipses (or blood moons) will signal the start of the end times, according to megachurch pastor John Hagee.
 * Unspecified time during the reign of Pope Francis, the pope succeeding Benedict XVI. Mediaeval Saint Malachy supposedly predicted Peter the Roman (Petrus Romanus) would be the last pope, Rome would be destroyed and a terrible judge would judge his people, The end. Doomsayers have already started shoehorning the new pope into the prediction.
 * 2015: Solar flare.
 * 2015 (September 23rd): (some references give a margin of September 18th to September 25th) Asteroid.
 * 2015 (October 7th): eBible Fellowship, an organization vaguely related to the late-Harold Camping, is confident they've got the date right this time.
 * 2016: Tom Wattkins: He had a vision of the Great tribulation claiming to have met the beast of revelation, etc. Turns out the same day is a solar eclipse., though of course he'll mention that.
 * 2016 (April 6th): Warren Jeffs, in no way due to a contemporaneous arrangement.
 * 2016 (May 16th): Pastor Richardo Salazar was allegedly told by God that an asteroid fully made of ice, with a 9km diameter, traveling at 30,000km per hour would strike earth killing 1,200 million people. As you probably can tell, that definitely happened and those totally dead 1,200 million people will be forever missed.
 * 2016 (June 3-4): Modern scholars got the Mayan date wrong. It was never 2012, rather it was June 2016 and there are plenty of numbers involved.
 * 2016 (June 14th-August 19th): According to this super reliable, super honest, super definitely-NOT-bullshiting "NASA scientist", there was meant to be a magnetic reversal between June and August which would cause the Van Allen belt to fall killing 80% of life on Earth. He got this information from aliens via HAARP. Yup, aliens told our good 'ol uncle Dr. Sal that the sky is falling.
 * 2016 (October 31st): Walid Shoebat alleges that the world is "100% certain" to end on this exact arbitrary nutjob date. As the basis for this claim, he refers to his own science of "Futurology 101".
 * 2016 (Fall): Bible student and computer scientist Nora Roth on MarkBeast.com claims as much through a lot of numerology surrounding seventy "sevens".
 * 2016 (December): Bible student and computer scientist Nora Roth subsequently revised her claim to December.
 * September 23, 2017: Nibiru/Planet X will again collide with Earth, the second prediction by David Meade. . Plus a rare constellation alignment will start the Rapture
 * October 2017: Initial forecast made by David Meade
 * October 15, 2017: The third time's a charm by David Meade.
 * November 19, 2017: The fourth time is not so charming, David Meade.
 * 2017: Various Christians say we'll be chipped, and the Great Tribulation will begin.
 * 2017 to 2113: Asteroids.
 * 2018: 23th of April, David Meade strikes back... and fails again
 * 2018: The Bible guarantees May 20, 2018 Pentecost, or your money back.
 * 2018: 24th of June, obscure crank Mathieu Jean-Marc Joseph Rodrigue ensures that doom is upon us, based on some middle school math.
 * 2018: Hal Lindsey &mdash; the Third Second Coming.
 * 2019: Ronald Weinland, a serial doomsday crackpot who incorrectly predicted the world would end in 2011, 2012, and then 2013, now says it will definitely happen on June 9, 2019.
 * 2020: self-acclaimed psychic and astrologer Jeane Dixon has predicted the world will end in 2020. She previously said it would end in 1962. No doubt the 2020 date seemed distant enough back then that no one would notice it was bollocks.
 * 2026: More asteroids.
 * 2028: Fred Clark &mdash; a tongue-in-cheek offer guaranteeing 15 years of Bible-prophecy hucksterism for four easy payments of $39.99.
 * 2030: Approximate date of a mass extinction event predicted by Bob Geldof. Myles Allen of Oxford University claims "Competing hyperbole" are unhelpful in understanding real climate change.
 * 2031:World's end by way of irreversible climate change if there is insufficient mitigation, according to a United Nations report by climate scientists.
 * 2035: Even more asteroids.
 * 2036: Yet more asteroids.
 * 2037: Hal Lindsey &mdash; First Third Coming.
 * 2038: Deterioration of the fundamental older technology that still underlies the most crucial systems today.
 * 2039: End of life, the universe and everything. Also known as the Ascension.
 * 2040: Still more asteroids. This seems to be a fan favourite.
 * 2041: March 35th (sic) Not another asteroid.
 * 2048: Salt-Water Fish Extinction.
 * 2085: The original prediction for Nibiru's collision with Earth, later deprecated to 2012 for more profits prophets.

22nd century

 * 2106: Asteroids never seem to stop.

26th century

 * 2525

29th century

 * 2880: This Asteroid thing is outta hand!

87th century

 * 8661: Updated end of the world date for the Church of the SubGenius (from the original 1998).

112th century

 * 11103: The Doomsday argument, first stated in 1983, predicts that there is a 95% chance that the human species will go extinct within 9120 years. N.B., the nature means that every year that passes without a doomsday advances the estimated doom ahead by 2 years. The world itself will still be here, of course — just not us.

400th century

 * 40,000: In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war.

8,000,000th century

 * According to current models, the Sun is expected to increase in luminosity by 10% in the next 800 million years. This will cause several changes to the climate that will make the continued existence of life on Earth impossible, starting with photosynthetic organisms and eventually killing off all life.

40 millionth century

 * The galaxy Andromeda (currently 2.5 million light years away) is expected to collide and merge with our galaxy, the Milky Way. This is unlikely to have much of an effect on whatever life is around, as galaxies are mostly empty space, although for any given planet, there is a tiny chance that its orbit could be disrupted due to gravitational tugs from passing stars.

50 millionth century

 * 5 billion years from now: According to accepted models of stellar evolution, the Sun will run out of hydrogen in its core to fuse into helium and will transition to a red giant as a result, expanding massively. The Sun will swallow Mercury and Venus, and may get large enough to swallow Earth as well. Even if it doesn't, Earth will be roasted to a cinder crisp. One school of thought predicts that the drag from the Sun's outer gas envelope will cause the Earth to spiral into the Sun, but as with all things scientific, there is another school of thought that says this won't happen. If it isn't swallowed, Earth will likely get flung out into interstellar space due to tidal interactions with the Sun and the Sun's gradual loss of mass once it enters the red giant stage.

200 millionth century

 * 20 billion years from now: If the current rate of expansion of the universe grows, in 20 billion years, the universe could be expanding so rapidly that atoms will no longer be able to hold on to their electrons. This predicted event is known as the "Big Rip."  Blame dark energy.

3×1041 st century

 * 3×1043 years from now: estimated maximum time for all nucleons in the observable universe to decay, if protons are unstable. Whether they are is currently an unresolved question in physics. and  have a pile of similarly apocalyptic events that actually have some scientific basis. This is the Total Existence Failure of the entire universe; anything complex enough to be considered life that would care about it would likely have evaporated to nothing long before this. Out of all the above, this is the most likely.

∞th century

 * The is a scientific prediction that eventually the universe will expand so much it will no longer contain any thermodynamic free energy with which to do work. At this point the universe will be cold, dark, and essentially empty forever. That is, unless quantum fluctuations or some other phenomena eventually cause something to occur, like a new Big Bang. Forever is a long time, and this kind of physics is poorly understood at present.