My Doomsday Cult Cave will have a Welcome/Goodbye mat.

Because of the earthquake in Japan I’m surprised there have not been an influx of dooms day theories and, my personal favorite, “Doom Mongers” and Doomsday Cults.
I recall a Russian cult that gave up and emerged from the cave they were hiding in the day after they said the world would end. That was just pretty funny to me.

Doomsday Cult Leader: Today is the day. Do we still exist?
Doomsday Cult Dude: Yes.
Doomsday Cult Leader: Fu*k it. Let’s go home.

Allow me to give you some advice: If you ever decide to join a doomsday cult, the first thing you should ask about is the quality of their doomsday cave. A poorly constructed cave could kill you, and that would take all most all of the fun out of doomsday.
You should also look for a cult leader who is specific about the exact doomsday date. Otherwise you’re just sitting in a cave for an extra month for no good reason.

I’d want the comet/event to strike earth a minute after I wiped my feet on the cave’s welcome/goodbye mat. That way the people who got all of my worldly possessions wouldn’t have time to enjoy them. I wouldn’t feel so sad for someone who, just prior to being annihilated, was saying something like “HA HA HA!!! THAT IDIOT BRIAN GAVE ME HIS CD’s!!!” That guy has it coming.

I think it will be hard for the cult members to explain the gaps on their resumes when they try to reenter the job market.
Unemployed Doomsday Dude: “Well, I spent much of 2010 in a cave waiting for doomsday. It turns out that my infallible leader was more of a drooling nutbag than a prophet. Anyway, my point is that, you should hire me because I have excellent judgment.”
Interviewer: "Leave this place. Fu*king ass hat."

The big problem with picking a doomsday date is that it so obvious when you are wrong. For most other decisions, you can generally make a case for why your wrongness was really right. For example, you still hear people say Saddam had WMD but he did a good job of hiding them. There’s no way to disprove that sort of assertion. But when the world doesn’t explode on Tuesday, it’s hard to make a case that it did. You have to go with something like “The comet was heading this way, but we…like, uhhh…prayed it off course. Yeah, that’s it. You’re welcome. Give me back my stuff.”

I’m sure there are a lot of doomsday cults. I wonder if they have some sort of convention. I can imagine rows of vendor booths for white robes, hair clippers, and canned food. I suppose there would also be a cave realtor or two.

When a doomsday cult blows yet another “end of the world date” I wonder if the other doomsday cults are sitting in their own caves, listening to the news on their radios and thinking “Those idiots! They totally got the wrong date!”

I imagine the various doomsday cults are highly competitive, always trying to recruit the nuts away from the other cults. “Our cave has a flat screen TV, and every Friday is casual. Except the Friday after next, ‘cause you know…that’s the one.”

Cults are funny. I think I’ll start one.