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Some historians claim the first doom merchants were causing panic over 1,000 years ago, predicting calamities as the first millennium drew to a close.
The last decades of the 20th Century have seen similar predictions - charismatic leaders of cults convincing their followers that the world will end in sudden disaster.
Some of the more bizarre cults which were not prepared to wait for the final apocalypse, or which believed they had devised an escape route, have resorted to mass suicide.
Jungle nightmare
One of the most notorious examples is The People's Temple, founded by the Reverend Jim Jones in 1957.
Mass suicides |
March 1997-San Diego: 39 Heaven's Gate followers poison themselves believing UFO would pick them up
Oct 1994-Switzerland: 48 Solar Temple members found burned in chalets
Oct 1993-Vietnam: 53 hill tribe villagers die using primitive weapons, led by blind man Ca Van Liem
Nov 1978-Guyana: 914 drink cynanide, led by Rev Jim Jones
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In 1977, he led his followers to Guyana, in South America, and created his dream community, named Jonestown, in the jungle.
Two years later - his utopia allegedly deteriorating into a nightmare - he ordered 638 adults and 276 children to drink juice laced with cyanide.
Those who resisted or tried to escape were shot, and Jones himself died from a bullet wound to the head.
Branch Davidians
David Koresh, a failed rock star turned doomsday prophet, lived with 80 of his followers in the Branch Davidian compound on the outskirts of Waco, Texas.
 Some of the Branch Davidians were shot by the FBI
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In February 1993, federal agents tried to enter the compound, which resulted in a siege of the Davidians lasting 51 days.
It ended with the "fiery apocalypse" predicted by Koresh - the compound was stormed by the police and a fire broke out which killed 86 people inside.
An investigation into the cause of the blaze is still going on.
Solar Knights
The Order of the Solar Temple was founded in 1987 by Luc Jouret and Joseph di Mambro, after the two were expelled from another cult.
Its motto was "Money, Sex and Joy", and Jouret quickly attracted a large gathering of wealthy, professional followers.
 The Solar Temple victims were found in a star-formation
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The Temple came to prominence when police found the charred bodies of 48 members in a farmhouse and three chalets in Switzerland, and several more in Canada.
Not all the deaths were voluntary; some of the victims had been shot or asphyxiated.
Jouret, 46, was amongst the dead.
More Solar Temple deaths were discovered in 1995 and 1997.
Alien Rescue
One of the most unusual mass suicides of the last decade was the Californian-based cult Heaven's Gate, who believed that a spaceship flying behind the Hale-Bopp comet was coming to pick them up.
 Heaven's Gate waited 22 years for Hale-Bopp
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The bodies were discovered lying in bunk beds covered in purple shrouds, each with a five-dollar bill in their pocket and a small suitcase beneath the bed.
Founders Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles wrote on the cult's website that in their suicide they were 'graduating' to a higher level of life.
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Click on the stories below for more on Uganda's doomsday cult. | |
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Key stories: | |
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Cult's quiet life | |
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Priest who murdered his flock | |
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The preacher and the prostitute | |
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Story in pictures | |
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Why East Africa? | |
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More on cults | |
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When devotion means death | |
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'Why I joined a cult' | |
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 TALKING POINT |
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Should cults be banned? | |
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