doomsday cults
End-times religious movements
Doomsday cults are religious or ideological groups organized around belief in an imminent apocalypse or end of the world.
Members typically follow a charismatic leader who claims special knowledge of when and how destruction will come.
The term often implies dangerous practices—mass suicide, stockpiling weapons, or isolation from society: The FBI surrounded the doomsday cult's compound.
Some doomsday cults have ended in tragedy, as at Jonestown or Heaven's Gate.
- apocalypseTotal civilizational collapse
- end of the worldComplete destruction of everything
- brainwashingCoercive psychological manipulation
- end timesProphesied apocalyptic conclusion
- judgment dayFinal divine assessment
final judgment · second coming · millenarianism · prayer · eschatology · fanaticism · existential dread · sectarian violence · bunker · charismatic leaders · Jim Jones · true believers · prophets · communal living · cataclysmic events · zealotry · prophesies · beliefs
- cultsbrainwashing, mind control, Scientology, Jonestown, Jim Jones
- mass delusionsmass hysteria, groupthink, mob mentality, herd mentality, moral panic
- Fringe Groupsmilitias, extremists, radicals, separatists, dissidents
- occultwitchcraft, sorcery, necromancy, black magic, tarot
- end times believersfuturists, Millerites, Adventists
- extremismextremism, extremists, fanaticism, radicalism, radicalization
doomsday cultsestablished churches
Religions officially endorsed by governments
organized religion · civic religion · world religions · state churches · community churches
doom, doomsday, dooms, doomed, dooming, days, cult, cults, cultist