While here at the Institute for PostApocology we are chiefly concerned with what happens AFTER this messiah arrives, it is nevertheless fascinating to consider the various build-ups to the Cataclysm -- people like a good build-up after all, especially when it's the biggest build up to the biggest climax in human history. Old and ancient texts foretell the end time (the Tanakh, the Talmud, the Holy Bible, the Quran, the Puranas, etc.), and it's endless and juicy great sport to compare these descriptions to current counterparts.

Here in the Midwest, where we were raised, the Book of Revelation in the Holy Bible is the go-to text. It gave us shivers as kids with its depictions of apocalyptic craziness -- in fact it was the canonical work that first placed the word "apocalypse" on our tender, jejune lips. We've never been the same, besieged by nightmares of locusts and horses with heads like lions and the sun going "black as sackcloth."

This black as sackcloth remark reminds us of the Zorastrians who predicted that "a dark cloud" would make the "whole sky night," not to mention the raining of "noxious creatures."

Sunni Islam believes that dark cloud sackcloth of a sun will disappear for three days before rising -- in the west.

No wonder we like horror movies so much.

Describing what the aftermath of the apocalypse (will) look like(s) is as difficult as it is varied.

For some religions, such as Hinduism and Buddhism, end times come and end times go. Once a "final" cataclysm is reached, the whole thing starts over again.

For the Mayans, they have a pretty darn precise idea of When This All Ends: 12/21/2012, or see other 2012 predictions.

The Lakota are waiting for the White Buffalo Calf Woman -- which means that every time a white bison is born it's front page news.

Swedish scientist, philosopher and Christian mystic Emanuel Swedenborg believed that The Last Judgment began and ended in the year 1757. Yeats and Blake, among many others, were influenced by Swedenborg who strikes us as a very Philip K. Dick-ian sort of dude.

We wouldn't be worth our salt if we didn't highlight the continuing conflicts in the Middle East, considered by many religions to be the very seat of the soul of the trouble. One main sign of the end time will be the ganging up by the nations of the world against Jerusalem. (Zech. 14:2)

In Christian eschatology, The Day of Judgment occurs after the resurrection of the dead and the Second Coming. On that Day, Jesus Christ will judge every human who ever existed.

Speaking of eschatology, it's from the Greek, meaning "last" and "the study of." We have always found it a fine connection that an almost exact word, scatology, is the study of feces -- meaning, to us, that it's the study of the "last" of what comes out of us.

Coincidence? We think not.