Savagewind. Did you actually watch the video?
The end of the world has been predicted throughout the world via various religions for millenia because the entire world has regularly had to deal with massive catastrophies and, in the old days, those who witnessed such events did what they could to warn future generations.....songs, drawings, stories....oral tradition. As they were extremely supersticious, they didn't just warn people to build their houses on solid ground and not on the beach; they also warned people to not upset the nature gods or they would feel their wrath, fiery in the case of Yahweh the volcano god.
Here are some highlights from this thesis that analyses the effects of religion on the response time of residents near erupting volcanoes.
http://earthquake-report.com/2012/09...ano-eruptions/
Various natural disasters, for example: earthquakes and tsunami can provoke religious and cultural responses. However this thesis focuses on volcanic disasters for several reasons. Volcanoes not only produce various hazards, but eruptions can last days to years (e.g. Mt Etna, Sicily). Another reason is that volcanoes are visually lasting and due to long dormancy times can often create various oral traditions over time.
Volcanic disasters provide notable examples of how cultures and religions shape societies and their risk mitigation strategies (Blong 1984), often referred to as ‘volcano sub-cultures’ (Dove 2008). Volcanic eruptions have the tendency to influence culture, livelihood and reasonings at the local scale. Along with the cultural and religious concepts shaping communities, people’s behaviour and vulnerability, volcanic hazards are also known to be deeply rooted in the socio-economic context and historical development of an area (Chester 1998).
In most cases (e.g.: Mt. Merapi, Mt. Agung and Mt. Vesuvius), human populations who have lived in volcanically active areas for extended periods have oral histories of what can be interpreted as volcanic eruptions (Ort et al 2008). These oral histories can be remembered in legend or can often become incorporated into religious rituals. Transient or migrating populations that live around volcanic regions rarely show such grounded oral histories within their cultures and therefore are likely to be more vulnerable (Ort et al 2008).
Religious links to volcanism is still a debated topic. Elson et al (2002) describes the link in a somewhat lyrical fashion:
“[Volcanoes] are fire-breathing, earth-shaking creatures, who, accompanied by lightning and thunder, have the power to turn day into night… It is little wonder that ritual and volcanism go hand in hand.”
Oral traditions are a major faculty of culture that comes from living close to a certain landscape, they are often shaped and built on various stories from the land; either about the creation of a mountain, a previous event or even a possible future event. Oral histories of volcanic eruptions become integrated into societies and communities surrounding a volcano either through depiction in art, remembered via legend, or most often by becoming incorporated into religious rituals (Ort et al 2008).
It is not uncommon for various forms of communication, such as stories, songs, rituals or paintings to be created during a natural disaster; oral traditions are one such creation. Although shaped by compression, stylisation and time, given their nature of transmission through generations (Barber and Barber 2004), these oral traditions may be constructed, in part, to insure the adaptation of a society to the environment (Minc 1986), including mitigation of local volcanic hazards (Cashman and Cronin 2008) and disaster recovery (Shanklin 2007).
In many teachings of religions, the idea of natural disasters plays a major role; either as an act of God, a form of retribution or sometimes a consequence of sin for non-believers. The most well known examples of this idea are found within the holy texts of Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Hinduism.
