Apocalypse Soon is a website devoted to signs of the end. It’s written and compiled by Pietro Arnese, a Christian layperson.

An April 2010 survey from the Pew Research Center found that 41 percent of Americans believe Jesus will return by the year 2050, with breakdowns according to faith tradition. The data were drawn from a wider Pew survey on the public’s expectations of what life will be like at midcentury.

Read a March 23, 2011, story from Religion News Service (published in USA Today) about Harold Camping and his prediction that the world as we knew it would end on May 21, 2011.

Read an April 6, 2011, story at CNBC.com on the current wave of apocalypticism.

Read an April 28, 2011, column at Religion Dispatches by Peter Laarman that compares religious and secular “end times” impulses.

Read a March 18, 2011, essay at First Things by Meghan Duke, in which she recounts the history of failed prophecies and critiques the tendency to believe in them.

Read a May 20, 2011, essay at the Science + Religion blog that explores the appeal of apocalyptic thinking for secular people.

Michael Shermer, author of The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies — How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths (2011), wrote a June 7, 2011, column in New Scientist explaining that for both religious and secular people, apocalyptic thinking is spurred by a desire to bring order to the randomness of events.

Read a March 9, 2012, ABC news story about an online post in which Harold Camping acknowledged being wrong about a 2011 doomsday.