Just as Strange in the 70s - Doomsday Cults

For those who are starting already to stockpile their canned foods and water bottles, duct tape, white paint and Armalites for the Rapture/2012/Big Terror Attack, you are not alone. Nor have you ever been. There are records in history of a Millennium cult that thought Jesus was going to save us in 1000AD, and ever since then (and, I'm sure before even that) people have truly believed that for some reason The End Of The World Is Nigh.

30 years ago, in 1978, things were no different. Along with the Jonestown Mass Suicides of Guyana in November, there was another group a little closer to home (well, at least closer to where I live now, anyway) who, in December of 1978, were also preparing themselves for the end of the world - in 1984.

This little look back at December 1978 from the Vineland Times Journal of south New Jersey found, amongst other odd stories of the day:

... members of a religious sect were picketing in support of their leader, who was being sought by the FBI on charges of federal income tax invasion.

According to the story, which ran as a two-part front-page series, the man claimed to be the prophet Jeremiah reincarnated and had publicly admitted that he hadn’t paid his income taxes since 1948.

Many of his followers, numbering 150 to 200 in South Jersey, also refused to pay federal taxes because they wanted “no part of a system bent on destruction of the human race.”

Even as their leader hid from the feds, they met on Tuesday nights in McKee City, studying the Bible and preparing to follow him into the mountains to wait out the effects of a nuclear war that was going to destroy two-thirds of the world’s population in 1984.

If there's a lesson to learned from late 1978 for all you conspiracy theorists, cultists and dominionists out there... It's that you may possibly be right, but more likely than not, you are very, very wrong.

If you are living in 1978, here's a handy 3-step guide on how to spot a cultist, versus your typical stuck in 1972 hippy.

1. If your brother lives in a commune - he's a hippy. If he lives on a compound - he's a cultist.
2. If your sister smokes a ton of weed then passes out on your couch - she's a hippy. If she drinks Kool-Aid, writes a cryptic pseudo-socialistic suicide note on the back of matchbook, then keels over dead - cultist.
3. If your best friend joins a new group of yogic flyers held by a guru in Mike's house every Tuesday night - hippy. If your best friend joins a new group by taking a psych test after being lured into a shop window on Charing Cross Road - scary, scary, scary cultist. Rescue your friend immediately, lest he end up as Tom Cruise's 40 year old manservant.

So, before the aliens ask you to take them to your leader and all you can point to is a large man called Bubba, probably a good idea to keep paying your taxes, and try not to poison all your followers in a Revolutionary Suicide pact. Not too much to ask, is it?