The “Rapture” has come and gone – and while the world is still here, the ones who predicted that lives would be destroyed on May 21 weren’t totally wrong.

 Ironically, though, it was their own.

Starting with Robert Fitzpatrick, the retired MTA worker who spent $140,000 of his own money on an ad campaign plastering New York City’s bus shelters, billboards and the like on spreading the word of the world’s imminent demise. Presumably this was close to his life’s savings – if you’re convinced the world is ending, there’s not much incentive to keep dough tucked away for a rainy day.  He was so sure there was no tomorrow he kissed his 94 year old mother goodbye in her nursing home, and stood in the middle of Times Square waiting for it to happen, surrounded mostly by deriders who wished he’d disappear, as in, just go away. When 6:01PM  came and the apocalypse didn’t, Fitzpatrick just shook his head, and said, “I can’t believe it didn’t happen.”

But other believers – some of them convinced by Fitzpatrick’s book, “The Doomsday Code”, or the crackpot-in-chief televangelist Harold Camping, aHa AFhDFASDAFJKLJDFSalso wrecked their lives in anticipation of the Big Day. Because if it’s one thing dumber than believing the end of the world was nigh on May 21, it would’ve been going to work a week or two prior, when you wouldn’t receive your paycheck till after the world ended.  Some undoubtedly gave away their earthly possessions, since they were convinced they were leaving the Earth. Families divided. Children were scared out of their wits.

In Fitzpatrick’s case, perhaps it would’ve been asking too much to ask city officials to look into Fitzpatrick’s financials and cut him off from depleting his bank account on this loony-ness.  Still, we demand bartenders cut off people who drink too much, so why not stop someone who’s ripping through his life savings on a crazy ad campaign?

It’s easy to laugh at them, of course, but let’s remember that deluded as Fitzpatrick was, he didn’t blow his life-savings on women and booze (Granted that would’ve left him stranded on Earth with the rest of us heathens), but on trying to save our souls. If the Rapture HAD come Saturday, today the Heavens would be full of disembodied people praising him for saving their souls.  As it is, anybody his message converted probably needs some saving of their own right now. Of the monetary kind.

But believing in things that aren’t so isn’t a crime, and who among us has not believed stupid things? I believed some women loved me, who clearly didn’t. There were stocks I deemed “sure things.” Back when I was a lad and was introduced to Amway’s multi-level marketing plan, I boasted that I was going to retire by the time I was 30.

Speaking of misguided beliefs, no matter which religion – if any – turns out to be the “real” one, the vast, vast majority of human beings on this planet are betting their money – and their eternal souls – on the wrong one.  Which means most of us are just as deluded as Fitzpatrick, only we don’t know it yet.

The world survived the apocalypse quite nicely. But it doesn’t mean everyone survived intact.