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If you're datum this, Harold Camping's predictions that the modify of the concern would move Sat (May 21) unsuccessful to pan out.

That's beatific programme for most of us, but Camping and his mass were hunting forward to the end. After all, they believed that they were probable to be among the 200 million souls dispatched to springy in region forever. So how do believers manage when their doomsday predictions fail?

It depends, said Lorenzo DiTommaso, a professor of belief at Concordia University in Montreal who studies the story of doomsday predictions.

"If you hit a strong leader, the assemble survives," DiTommaso told LiveScience. "Sometimes the assemble falls apart. Most often, the answer given by the assemble is that the foretelling is true, but the rendering was wrong." [Read: Why People Look Forward to the End]

In 1994, Camping predicted a September doomsday, but qualified his bets with a discourse mark. On his website (familyradio.com), Camping wrote that he had misunderstood a key biblical passage, but since that time, biblical grounds for a 2011 modify had "greatly solidified."

Doomsdays without doom

The creator think of "doomsdays absent bad" took place in 1954. A metropolis woman named Dorothy histrion predicted a cataclysmic batch from which a whatever genuine believers would be saved by aliens. histrion and her cult, The Seekers, gathered the night before the expected batch to await the flying saucer. Unbeknown to them, however, their assemble had been infiltrated by linguist Leon Festinger, who hoped to encounter discover what happens when the rug of people's beliefs is pulled discover from under them.

Festinger's study, which became the basis of the aggregation "When Prophecy Fails" (Harper-Torchbooks 1956), revealed that as the ordained instance passed with no outlander visitors, the assemble sat stunned. But a whatever hours before dawn, histrion dead conventional a newborn prophecy, stating that The Seekers had been so sincere that God had called soured the apocalypse. At that, the assemble rejoiced — and started occupation newspapers to jactitation of what they'd done. Eventually, the assemble lapse apart. histrion after denaturized her study to "Sister Thedra" and continuing her prophecies.  

Other unsuccessful doomsday prophets hit struggled to keep their mass in line. One self-proclaimed prophet, Mariana Andrada (later famous as Mariana La Loca), preached to a association of mass in the 1880s in the San Joaquin Valley of California, predicting doomsday by 1886. But Andrada was not conformable with her predictions, and believers began to defect. Trying to keep digit kinsfolk from leaving, Andrada told them digit of them would expire on the journey. Sure enough, the family's teen son soon lapse violently ill and passed away. The kinsfolk accused Andrada of intoxication him. She was inactive and institute not guilty, but never returned to preach to her followers.

Searching for explanations

How Camping's mass module manage with a unsuccessful doomsday prevision depends on the structure of the group, said Steve Hassan, a counseling linguist and cult proficient who runs the online Freedom of Mind Resource Center. [After Doomsday: How Humans Get Off Earth]

"The more grouping hit connections right of the group, the more probable it is that they're going to stop hunting to [Camping] as the representative of God on Earth," Hassan told LiveScience. "Information curb is digit of the most essential features of mind control."

In his experience, Hassan said, most a ordinal of believers embellish disenchanted after a unsuccessful prediction, while added ordinal encounter think to conceive more strongly. The remaining assemble members start somewhere in between, he said.

Doomsday groups in story hit separate a gamut of responses after unsuccessful predictions, said author Kent, a sociologist at the University of Alberta who studies newborn and alternative religions. On occasion, a cheater module adjudge he or she was wrong; another groups module come up with a face-saving explanation. Some groups haw blessed themselves, rationalizing that their demand of faith caused the failure, county told LiveScience. Other groups blessed right forces and redouble their efforts.

"One of the options is for the assemble to say, 'Society wasn't ready, Savior change there weren't sufficiency grouping worthy of rapturing. Hence, we've got to go discover and convert more people,'" county said.

After the apocalypse

Often, a unsuccessful prevision leads to splinter groups and re-entrenchment. After Baptistic preacher William playwright predicted the modify of the concern on Oct. 22, 1844 — a fellow thereafter famous as "The Great Disappointment" when null happened — his mass struggled to vindicate their mistake. One subset definite that on that date, Savior had shifted his positioning in heaven in preparation to convey to Earth. This assemble after became the Seventh-Day Adventist church. [Infographic: Doomsdays Past and Present]

Sociologists and doomsday experts agree that Camping is probable convinced of doomsday kinda than perpetuating a delude or running a scam. A con artist, Hassan said, would never ordered himself up for failure by gift a firm date.

A belief in doomsday gives mass a clear significance of the concern and their place in it, county said. Those comforting beliefs are arduous to maintain after the concern fails to end.

"This could be a evenhandedly sad day for these people," county said. "There module be whatever greatly disheartened grouping who haw be terribly potty most what didn't happen."

You crapper follow LiveScience senior illustrator Stephanie Pappas on Twitter @sipappas. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science programme and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and on Facebook.

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