Word: cataclysmic
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...MAXx is not just another plastic backboard,” he tells anyone who will listen, chanting the slogan printed on the display behind him. He designed the floating stretcher himself, he explains, to be entirely resistant to pathogens in the case of a biological cataclysm...
...Yasser Arafat?s battered compound and assumes a menacing posture, vowing to act against him for failing to end terror attacks; masses of Palestinians, regardless of what they may think of Arafat?s stewardship, rally to their elected president and national icon; moderate Arab leaders warn of a regional cataclysm if the Israelis carry out their threat; and U.S. officials suggest politely but firmly that Arafat?s physical ouster would be ?unhelpful.? But each rerun of the ?Rumble in Ramallah? appears to simply confirm the aging Palestinian leader?s centrality to the fate of his people - and that of their...
...these apocalyptic visions get you down. If you listen to the weirder radio talk shows, you know that the next real-life cataclysm won't come until Dec. 21, 2012 (something about the winter solstice and a Mayan prophecy). By then, Governor Schwarzenegger will be in his second term and eligible for Social Security...if there is Social Security. But that's a different nightmare. Or two. --By Richard Corliss
...into a seminary library, and it's hard to find scholarly books on apocalyptic theology; academics tend to treat this tradition as sociology. They see End Times interest rising and falling on waves of cataclysm and calm. Masses of people became convinced the end was nigh when Rome was sacked in 410, when the Black Death wiped out one-third of the population of 14th century Europe, when the tectonic shudders of the Lisbon earthquake in 1755 caused church bells to ring as far away as England, and certainly after 1945, when for the first time human beings harnessed...
...standoff is causing concern inside the Bush Administration too. A skirmish over Kashmir could easily accelerate into a broader war. The remote but frighteningly thinkable worst-case scenario would see the two sides escalate in stages to an exchange of nuclear weapons. But even short of that unlikely cataclysm, the seriousness of the dispute requires American diplomatic attention and threatens to affect Washington's war on terror, particularly as Pakistan moves troops away from its western border with Afghanistan to the Kashmir front. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage is scheduled to visit India and Pakistan this week...