News24 Desk
Paris: So many people in France believe that the world is about to end that a government agency alerted the country to the risk of mass suicides by converts to prophesies of imminent Armageddon.
Natural disasters, the internet and French fears of economic doom are lending credence to predictions that the planet will self-destruct on December 21, 2012, said Miviludes, the government body that monitors cults and suspicious spiritual activities.
There have been 183 false predictions of the end of the world since the Roman Empire collapsed and these are multiplying with new technology and a global climate of fear, it added.
In the US, doomsday radio preacher Harold Camping received global publicity by predicting that the Rapture would occur May 21. When the day passed uneventfully, Camping offered a new date, October 21, for the end of the world.
The 2012 prediction, based on the end of the 5000-year Mayan calendar, has taken root around the world but nowhere does it seem to have been as widely embraced as France, The (London) Times reported.