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Area People React To Doomsday Prediction

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- Maybe you saw the campers drive through Oakland, or the woman in Downtown Pittsburgh with the sign, or the billboards that have popped up across the country proclaiming that May 21, 2011, is Judgment Day.

Richard Peirce of Punxsutawney has covered his car with the date, which he says definitely attracts attention.

"Doesn't bother me at all," said Peirce. "I am being obedient to God's command to go into all the world and warn."

He's a follower of Family Radio led by 89-year-old California preacher Harold Camping.

Camping, who also predicted the end of the world back in 1994, thinks there will a huge earthquake Saturday evening at 6 p.m. that believers will go to heaven and everyone else will be left to endure months of anguish before the world is destroyed in October.

"I really think he's doing a disservice to believers all around the world," said one local woman who did want her name used. She believes in the rapture described in the Bible, but thinks Camping will look like a fool.

Others are having some fun with the prediction. At the Time Bomb Shop in Shadyside, they're having a sale and have a line in their promotions: "You've got to look fly to die."

"The end of the world official 10 percent to 60 percent off sale. Everything in the store on sale. Hopefully, we get to open before the end of the world," said owner Brian Brick.

The Mosaic nightclub in the Strip is having an end of the world party, and at the Church Brew Works in Lawrenceville, the Pittsburgh Secular Freethinkers has a reservation. "On Sunday, we're having a group of about 25 to 30 people coming to celebrate the world not ending," said Susan Padolf from the Church Brew Works.

RELATED LINKS
Family Radio
Pittsburgh Secular Freethinkers

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