Will the world end today? A California cuckoo thinks so

[caption id=“attachment_13302” align=“alignright” width=“300” caption=“A volunteer for Doomsday Prophet Harold Camping’s radio station. Shannon Stapleton/Reuters “]  [/caption] A Christian radio evangelist in California has set off a buzz heard around the world with a Doomsday prophecy that the world will end - eeks! - today! Using Bible-based numerology, Harold Camping, 89, claims that today – 21 May 2011 – is the Day of Judgement and that God will destroy the Earth today, or within five months at the latest. He’s gone public with his Judgement Day calls before: he predicted one such in September 1994. Yet, his prediction about today has received enormous media attention. What’s the maths behind Camping’s predictions? MSNBC reports, citing Life’s Little Mysteries blog: “Camping believes Christ was crucified on April 1, 33 A.D., exactly 722,500 days before May 21, 2011. That number, 722,500, is the square of 5 x 10 x 17. In Camping’s numerological system, 5 represents atonement, 10 means completeness, and seventeen means heaven. “Five times 10 times 17 is telling you a story,” Camping said on his talk show  last year. “It’s the story from the time Christ made payment for your sins until you’re completely saved. Do people really believe it? Apparently, a large number of people do. Camping’s radio station has put up 2,000 billboards around the world and his foot soldiers are standing around in streetcorners holding signboards asking people to repent. But why? Why do people readily believe end-of-the-world prophesies? ABC News offers a likely explanation: “Psychologists and religious scholars say it derives from a number of very human urges: from the fear of death to the desire for justice to the fatalistic despair that this world is too broken ever to be fixed.”“Anxiety spurred by the recent natural and economic disasters makes apocalyptic thinking more appealing, says  Christopher Lane, author of The Age of Doubt: Tracing the Roots of Our Religious Uncertainty. “It becomes easier to convince people that things are getting worse and that the answer will come through divine dispensation, rather than have them face the fact that humanity must fix its own problems.” There’s money in Doomsday scenarios The whole idea of Doomsday may sound laughable to many, of course, but some businesses are also laughing all the way to the bank by cashing in on the Doomsday Business. Here are five.