Possible Palin presidential poll a sign of impending apocalypse?

A new "political thriller" by one Sheldon Filger has been published, based on a scenario that former Alaskan governor and Tea Party darling Sarah Palin runs for - and wins - the 2012 American presidential election.

We've blogged about Mrs Palin's little girl before, but we're still searching for the fully expected linking of the Mayan end-of-the-world theories and the date of the next US election.

And, if you're in any doubt about the side of the debate that the author comes down on, he leaves a handy hint in the title: SARAH PALIN APOCALYPSE AMERICANA.

Apocalypse to be made worse by NIMBY survivalist nutters

If you're expecting the EOTWAWKI any time soon, surely you'd be more preoccupied with stockpiling tins of beans and rounds for your semi-automatic, rather than arguing over rights of way?
Well, not if you're a heavily-armed religious survivalist group from Craftsbury in Vermont, USA, which is currently embroiled in an escalating dispute over a 150-year-old road the town says is public - but the church says is theirs.
Several people - including a public official - claim they have been threatened and intimidated by the group
The religious group Mission New England reside in a 276-acre compound near the town and isn't keen on people using the public trail on Coburn Hill Road in Craftsbury. Maps indicate the trail is a public right-of-way through the group's compound, but members have erected 'no trespassing' signs and bared the way with a locked gate.
A group of cyclists claim that when they tried to use the trail, they were "surrounded by at least a dozen men who all came running out of what they had claimed to be a church".

Town Lister Willy Ryan says he has been threatened and intimidated several times over the years when he has gone to the compound to assess the property values. The most ominous came this year by a man packing a gun. "He said well you are now on private property and I would tread lightly if I were you, because your life might be in jeopardy," Ryan said.
Ryan says the man with the gun was John Maniatty, the reported leader of the church group. He has websites that detail how Mission New England is a born-again Christian group, explaining why its member are survivalists driven by the notion that the world is coming to an end. Maniatty owns a gun shop in Morrisville. On the websites he has instructional videos demonstrating how to fire high-powered firearms, including fully automatic weapons.
As for the town road issue, Mission New England has offered a land swap that would result in the disputed road being turned over to the survivalist group. It's unclear whether town officials are interested in that deal.

Keep going or start over?

Is there any point in fighting to stave off industrial apocalypse? Well, in a fascinating debate, Paul Kingsnorth and George Monbiot argue it out over the idea that we should actually allow civilisation to collapse ...

Braaains, braaains, our braaains hurt ...

Aaaaaand, we're back ... tanned (thanks to all the radiation from the old nukes crumbling to dust in the bunker) and skint (Armageddon-proof holidays don't come cheap, y'know) ... and so to work.

A double whammy of news for you today, and we're sure we're not the first to point you in the direction of this story - with scientists having another 'no shit, sherlock' brainwave. Actually, that's a bit unfair as it's actually quite useful to study an outbreak of revanantism in the context of it being a 'contagious disease'.

Their conclusion? ...

If zombies actually existed, an attack by them would lead to the collapse of civilisation unless dealt with quickly and aggressively.

In their scientific paper, the authors conclude that humanity's only hope is to "hit them [the undead] hard and hit them often".

Welcome back everyone ...

Murder suspect claims "the apocalypse is now"

An American man who allegedly stabbed his sister "claims that he is God, his sister was Satan and the Apocalypse is now".