Good news, everyone! We’re all going to die!
Wait, that isn’t good news.
If you’ve been following our Countdown to Backpedaling, you know that we’ve been watching the clock on the latest end of the world prediction. Family Radio, a fundamentalist Christian group based in California, has announced that Jesus will return to Earth — presumably to Hulk Hogan’s old entrance music — and bring about the sort of stuff we’ve read about in the book of Revelation on May 21st of this year.
To that end, Family Radio has been putting up bus ads and billboards and newspaper and radio advertisements with the message that the end is nigh. And the truly frightening thing is the sheer scale of this effort. These ads are all over the world.
While I would love to believe this sort of insanity is a small gang of kooks and assorted crazies like Fred Phelps and the zoo crew, these guys have the money and organization to build a multinational push to proclaim that not only is the end coming, it’s a super thing.
A gander at the trailer art above illustrates the chasm between their thought process and ours. Maybe I’ve seen too many movies, but isn’t the end of the world…a bad thing? How the hell is that awesome news?
One would imagine that the death of all of the children, puppies and flowers on the planet would be a bad thing. Let alone the destruction of everything the human race has ever built and accomplished. Wouldn’t that be kinda sucky? You’d think. Even the guarantee of no more Uwe Boll movies is no consolation for that sort of loss.
This is why adventure fiction is full of people like Superman, James Bond and Captain Kirk. Because destroying the planet and killing everything and everyone on it isn’t exactly something most sane people get up and cheer about. The people who try to stop this from happening are traditionally the heroes. Characters like Galactus, the Independence Day aliens and the Cylons are typically the villains. Thankfully, most of us aren’t like Slim Pickens, riding the atomic bomb into the ground and hooting for joy in Dr. Strangelove.
Most people like being alive and would like their friends and loved ones to stay alive as well. So seeing so many people drunk on the thrill of universal destruction is more than a little jarring to me. How can people actually be rooting for the end of the world?
I’ve never before been so frightened and relieved at the same time before. Frightened that these people reproduce and vote, and relieved that there isn’t a lick of evidence to back up their apocalyptic delusions.
This is where you come in!
With these hideous things spreading like a bad case of herpes and more and more of our listeners spotting them, we want your help! If you find one of these eye sores, let us know! Click the big red button the top of the page with a description of where and when you saw the bad news, along with a url link to an image of the sign, if possible. If the response is big enough, we may even start mapping the lunacy!
