Japan: July, 1999 the world ends

Obviously it didn’t, but evidently a large portion of the Japanese people believed that it would.

Inspired by Bosda’s posting in this thread, I started to look a little more into Japanese cults. It seems the Pana Wave Laboratory has moved on for now. They are a remnant of a late-90’s movement towards doomsday predictions and cults.

Time Asia had an article about this. Including a lot of Nostradamus-based nonsense.

My question is this: What happened in August, 1999? Did everyone wake up on August 1 and say, “What a crock!”?

I have never known anyone who was really into a doomsday prediction. The only real parallel might be the Y2K hype. On Jan. 1, 2000 most people I knew were saying things like, “I never really believed in that anyway.” But again, I don’t know anyone with a 6-week supply of water in their basement.

So I guess my real GQ is what happens to doomsday believers when the day after dawns much the same as the day before?

Well, in the case of supporters of William Miller (1782-1849), they go off and start up the Seventh-Day Adventist church.