the vast majority of proponents are nothing more than desparate attention seekers

And in reality, they are socially inept people who return from their job flipping burgers to their mum's basement where they go online and suddenly they're some sort of prophet, with people of even less intelligence hanging on their every word.

It makes my head want to go Scanners.

Now there's an obscure referenece! :-)

On the subject of your post, however, it's my personal belief that the vast majority of proponents are nothing more than desparate attention seekers: "I have knowledge that you don't have, therefore I'm smarter and more valuable than you, and oh, look, my video has gone viral, and therefore I'm an expert and you're not, so people are looking for me, and not for you."

However, most of the other people I know who believe these things belong to the spiritual community. I find it interesting that those who are among the true believers where the conspiracy stuff is concerned are the O.T.O. and Golden Dawn crowd and the New Age Ascended Masters/I Am crowd. I find it to be an interesting mix.

But, in answer to your last paragraph, I have quite a few theories. And expressing those theories out loud is why I no longer have any friends that believe in this doomsday crap because I 'offended' them, or I 'hurt their feelings.'

Without getting too esoteric and verbose, the shortest answer that I can give you is, that each and every one of them is a pathetic L-O-S-E-R! Now, I realize that I made sweeping general statement right there that I know is going to demand some clarification. And, I just want to rant a little too. :)

The simple truth about life in general is, that it does not matter what socioeconomic bracket you happen to fall in to, shit happens, as adversity is an unfortunate part of life. No one is immune from it, I do not care who you are.

And when it does, we are all confronted with a very real choice that none of us really like making; Be a victim, or be a survivor. Our popular culture, by-and-large, doesn't understand that. Being a loser does not mean that one tried and failed. On the contrary, the most successful people were once tremendous failures, but they never gave up. Instead they learned lessons from each failure, and kept trying until they eventually succeeded. The bottom line here, is that truly successful people are only successful because they endure which makes them survivors.

The real losers on the other hand, are those confronted with any level of adversity, and decide to becomes victims because of it. The operative word here being "victim." What is a victim? What does that mean. Usually when we think of that word, we think of someone that had a violent crime committed against them, which is not too far off on the respect that a victim is only a victim because they are powerless. And what comes with that sense of powerlessness? Bitterness, resentment, etc.

That is where the sense of 'entitlement' comes from, and why losers tend to be very narcissistic, self-loathing, and emotionally needy.

These are the people that tend to blame everyone, and everything else for all of their problems. So, they constantly obsess over things, real or simply perceived, or even contrived for that matter, that they have no control over to justify their own victim mentality in order to avoid taking any responsibility for anything. And what justifies that better than some cosmic event that causes a violent end of all life as we know it?

What they are really mad at, is that the facts that their blarney is just BS leaves them with the cold hard reality that sooner or later, they are going to have to man up and take responsibility for their own decisions and actions. And that is what really pisses them off.

And saying just that, is why the people that I once knew that believe in all this doomsday crap, are no longer a part of my life. I no longer have contact with them, which is good. Because like all losers, the doomsdayers are like a bunch of crabs in a barrel. The only way they know how to climb up, is to pull everyone else around them down beneath them.

As far as the coffin liner videos, it's utter bunk. There is one video on YouTube showing a cemetery being built in the Phoenix, AZ area. The conspiracy theorists even threw in a blurb from the nightly news to verify that FEMA was in town and going to kill everyone. In Phoenix.

The person who sent me that video insisted it was real. I did my homework and found on YouTube the original nightly newscast video. It was a story about a veteran's cemetery being built. At the time, the nut-jobs were on about how we were all going to die from H1N1 and that's what the graves were for. Some people still believe that. So where are all the people questioning what happened to their neighbors?

The plastic grave liners are becoming more popular, because concrete vault liners crack and the chemicals from embalming and just the nasties from decomposing are leeching into the ground and in turn, the ground water. Formaldehyde and artesian wells are not a good mix.

The one name that pops up repeatedly when doing a search on these things is Alex Jones. So I don't even bother to argue with people anymore. My landlady and her husband are true believers of some of this nonsense, especially chem trails. I have learned to just nod my head politely and try not to let my brain explode or have a stroke. I'm trying to figure out how to interject some logic into conversations. Gently. But until then, I will just nod my head politely and think about hitting Home Depot for some resin and metal shavings and seeing if I can't make a mint off of the true believers around here, making orgone generators. Because, like, they break up chemtrails as the form. According to Alex Jones.

FEMA are SUPPOSED to be the department of the US government that helps citizens in the event of a natural or man made disaster, such as Hurricane Katrina or the BP Oil Disaster. I have a friend in the USA who told me FEMA did a pretty poor job during Katrina, and failed to help a lot of people. If they had had the power or the want to cart American citizens off to concentration camps, Katrina would have been a damn good place to start right? did it happen, no. They did give some people trailers, and did try their best to help, but they are only humans, working with limited budgets & manpower.

The famous 'FEMA Coffins' debunked:

These 'plastic coffins' people reckon FEMA are storing actually have little, if ANYTHING at all to do with FEMA! Most US states require by law, a plastic burial vault, or 'grave liner' to be used before a body can be buried. This is a hygene and disease control protocol. It probably has more to do with the CDC than FEMA. You can choose one of these plastic vaults, or a more sturdy stone vault when you inter a body to it's grave. A lot of Americans choose to bury their loved ones in structual vaults (buildings) in the cemetary as some own a family vault, no liner is required for this.

FEMA may buy some of these grave liners if there has been a large incedence of death, such as from a hurricane and the bodies can't be identified or a next of kin found, they will be buried by the state, but this does not change the liner's purpose!

When they do need FEMA, such as with the fires in Texas this past year, FEMA isn't doing enough and should spend their entire budget for the entire country on one state.

As for Jesse Ventura, I know a few people who believe him because they were fans of his when he was a wrestler and hey, a wrestler wouldn't lie to them… It makes my head want to go Scanners.

My favorite is, currency is about to have no value, so stock up on gold. Really? If society were to collapse tomorrow, would little trinkets of 14K gold be of any value? Those gold certificates would be worthless, as the government issues those. We would be bartering things of value. Such as rice, flour, sugar, cows, sheep, etc. A bolt of cloth would be worth more than a gold ring.

Oh, and the dreaded FEMA camps. Too bad the idiots who are pushing that rubbish weren't caught by Katrina. They might actually be bright enough to appreciate FEMA for coming in and giving them aid and mobile homes to live in until they could put their lives back together. Death camps, indeed! It makes me want to slap some sense into them.

Most of them do it for money or attention or even a mixture of both.

I agree. I would also add "rebellion against mainstream science". I find that a very large proportion of 2012 nutters also dabble in stuff like "free energy" and "electric universe theory". Not that they have any grasp of the mainstream science that these alternatives are supposed to replace.

But what is with the mentality of, isn't it great, we're all going to die

I'd be very surprised if the majority of people who say these things actually believe their own tripe. Most of them do it for money or attention or even a mixture of both. I've no evidence to back this, but I reckon most of them are no more than friendless nobodies in their everyday life, so they create this fantasy world where they are the people in the know, they are the ones people look up to.

Of course there will be a few cases of people who are mentally unstable, and dragging others down with them makes their fantasy world a little less lonely. The Internet has given a stage to that dude who used to stand wearing a sandwich board telling us to 'repent' because 'the end is nigh.' Unfortunately, for every whack job there are 10 other whack jobs ready to believe him.

The question I often find myself asking is, if these people are serious and they believe they need to take shelter from some cataclysmic event that only they are aware of, then what are they doing spending all their time making YouTube videos and trolling websites like this one? Why aren't they building a bunker and stocking up on supplies? Why do they charge people to buy their books or subscribe to their site? If some worldwide catastrophe did occur, money would be useless to them.

I don't understand the mentality of wishing themselves and everyone else dead.

Ah, but see, they don't. They think they can survive the EOTW by hiding in a bunker and stocking up on doritos and bottled water. 'Prepare' is the message, meaning buy a useless shelter and learn to hunt etc. Odd, as the events most of them predict would actually kill pretty much every living organism on the planet. For me, the fact they think they can survive a rapid pole shift or a rogue planet smashing into us just goes to prove how ignorant of reality these people are.

You can't change these people, as much as you might try. They indulge in fantasies of their own making, and no amount of factual evidence against their crap will stand in their way. All we can do is try and stop people taking part in their fantasies.

I came back for a visit to the site last night after directing a friend who was on about solar flares here. But something else bugged me and well, it's fast becoming part of the 2012 mythos.

Pick an event other than Nibiru or Planet X that is supposed to get us this year. Now add to that, it's going to happen because the government is going to use HAARP and chemtrails to bring it on, so they can throw us all into FEMA death camps.

Well, it was only a matter of time before those things made their way from the conspiracy webs into the 2012 consciousness, right?

I have been fighting with people for years on that stupid FEMA death camp thing. I first heard about it around the time of Katrina. But since then, it has grown by leaps and bounds and the websites and the videos… Everyone gets so upset when you debunk one of their videos. Show them where the edited together clips actually came from and you're suddenly, "one of them." Yes, I am one of them, I guess, if someone who doesn't accept stupidity blindly is being one of them.

I have noticed things got a lot worse after TruTV gave Jesse Ventura a show. Why anyone would believe a word out of his mouth… He used to be a governor, so he knows the truth about Pentagon secrets? Why are people who do not fall into the bumpkin category, but who are college graduates, some with graduate degrees, so willing to believe such utter tripe? It boggles my mind. Of course, I haven't had TV in the last six months, so he may have been cancelled by now. But I doubt it, as the weirdness just keeps coming from certain people I know.

But what is with the mentality of, isn't it great, we're all going to die, because FEMA is going to kill us, or an asteroid is going to kill us, or a rogue planet is going to kill us, or the Arcturians are coming back to claim those of us who belong the them and destroy Earth and everyone else? (No, really, people around here believe they're from a planet orbiting a rogue red giant.) I don't understand the mentality of wishing themselves and everyone else dead.