11 May 2011 – The end of the world (again)

Last May 11th 2011 looked as one of these days that the world is supposed to end.

The readers living in Europe heard about Raffaele Bendandi (died at 1979) who talked about a huge earthquake that would destroy Rome on that day. More than a few decided to leave Rome. Nothing happened in Rome, but in southern Spain a pretty bad earthquake hit Lorca :(

Master Wang and May 11th

In Taiwan, May 11th 2011 was at 10:42:37 am, was marked by (self proclaimed) master Wang as the exact moment when a 14th degree earthquake would hit Taiwan splitting the island in two, destroying Taipei 101 and the presidential building. A tsunami would carry waves up to 170m.

Taiwanese society loves this kind of gossip. Master Wang, a middle-age man, based his prophecy on a classic Chinese book (I Ching). He reported his stories to the press who amplified the history. After the quake in Japan the story got a lot of traction.

Most of the people doesn’t take it seriously (the ones we know at least) but others consider it a real possibility.

• Accordiong to “Lianhe Bao” newspaper, an old man on his 70’s killed himself in Taipei by jumping from a 5th floor in order not to experience the earthquake.
• Even the military is moving helicopters to safe locations (although they mentioned that it was unrelated to the prophecy) and the Keelung City Government published a tsunami escape route map.
• Master Wang mentioned that to avoid being killed people had to buy a container (USD $5000 a piece) and move it to Puli mountainous area. More than 100 containers were sold. The interesting twist is that master Wang might be connected with the company that sales the containers
• Master Wang and his followers collected more than 9000 sacks of rice and a lot of water in order to survive the doom’s day

As you would expect nothing happened. Shortly after journalists and followers gathered in front of master Wang’s container asking for an explanation and/or an apology at least. He argued that it was the press who made a big story, but he only made comments to a reduced group of friends about a possible earthquake.

Others called very upset and asking the authorities to take legal actions against master Wang for his absurd claims about 511 doomsday. Fiscal in Taiwan has opened the case and the maximum sentence would force master Wang to remain in prison for 5 years and to pay large penalty.

… but we had a mini tornado on May 12th

The day after we had a small tornada in Xindian district, south of Taipei and not too far from my office area. There were no casualties and just few cars were damaged.