Don’t rain on my armageddon

Update 3: One of the people who escaped from the underground bunker now claims 2 group members have died since November. One from cancer (no doubt, and more correctly, from being denied treatment for cancer), and the other from fasting. 11 people remain in the bunker.

Update 2: More sodden group members have emerged. Also looks like all the children are out now. 

Update: It seems that at least some members of the group hunkered in the bunker have come to their senses (barely – they’re still praying, so all is not won yet). Two of the children reported in previous articles have emerged, two remain underground while their parents pray for their god to tell them what to do next.

A group of Orthodox Christians in Russia has been hiding in an underground shelter to wait for the end of the world (coming to a planet near you this April), and now Russian authorities are trying to get them to vacate because their shelter is danger of being consumed by mudslides from heavy rain.

I would normally say, well, perhaps leaving them alone is the best policy, since the mudslides and the subsequent endings of their personal worlds might just allow them to feel the thrill of being right. But then I read this:

Four children remain inside the bunker.

If that isn’t chilling enough, these people are willing to sacrifice their children on the whim of an obvious con-man. I know there are many factors which influence a person’s religiosity, but you would think simple logic, even simple emotion, might be able to plant the seed of doubt, especially when your life and the life of your children depend on it.

Pyotr Kuznetsov, the self-declared ‘prophet’ of the group, is not actually in the bunker with his followers:

Mr Kuznetsov did not join them, saying God had called him to other tasks.

Kuznetsov was arrested and charged in 2007 for setting up a religious group which condoned violence, but he was declared unfit to stand trial by psychiatrists. Exactly the kind of guy you want to trust with your life.

Not that his followers would know all this, of course, as they are not allowed to watch television or listen to the radio. It seems the only modern technology they are allowed is gasoline, with which (it is reported) they have threatened to blow themselves up, if they are not left alone by the media. Others claim the cult would have emerged from their bunker sooner if it had not been for the journalists hanging around.

Either way, it seems it is the fault of reporters that these people are about to suffocate under a mudslide. Just keep praying.

I just hope that instinct kicks in at some stage, and that panic forces these people out of their rabbit-hole, so they live long enough to realise they’ve been conned. Hopefully, then, they’ll do something about it – and not just keep praying.