The end of the world began with Vyatka

The 25,000th city in the Kirov region has gone crazy: hundreds of people are stocked with matches, salt, candles and kerosene, preparing to meet the end of the world on December 21. A panic was caused by an article-transit in a local newspaper about the prophecy of the Tibetan monk. Now journalists are preparing a new, soothing and explanatory material, but panic continues.

It all started on November 14, when the local private and most circulation in the city of the Omutninsky Vesti newspaper on the last entertainment lane extending under the heading of "Rest", immediately after jokes and instead of a conventional crosswordord reprinted the article from Fontanka.ru "Tibetan monk made a statement for NASA about the end of the world."

The end of the world, according to the prophecy of the monk, should come on December 21. “This darkness will be accompanied by cosmic flashes, illusory outbreaks of light and will last about three to four days. Then the light of the Sun will appear again,” the article says. “... 10% of the world's population may die.”

The monk advised people to make a supply of products for two months, to finish all business, give debts, take children and documents and leave the cities. "During the days of darkness, hanging the windows dark, do not look in them, do not believe your eyes and ears, do not go outside, it is better to meditate, pray and strengthen yourself, go to bed."

The editorial office assures that the article appeared by chance. “There was simply a hole in the strip, and right before sending films to the printing house, we put this article - just entered,” explains Victoria Ushakova, the main reactor of the Omutninsky News News. “We thought it would be perceived as another joke and just laughed. We honestly did not expect such a reaction.”

But many citizens were not laughing. Panic began in the city: after two days, candles and matches ended in many stores, salt, sugar and canned food, as well as kerosene and kerosene lamps, are in particular demand. According to sellers of household shops, candles, salt and matches, not only pensioners, but also youth buy up. "Who explains with what: who says that the stove needs to be drowned in the country, and who admits that he is waiting for the end of the world." Women with salt packages and several packs of boxes of matches, who I met in the supermarket, refused to admit that they believed the Tibetan monk, and when asked why they had so many matches, two mysteriously smiled, and one explained that her grandson in the kindergarten was asked to make a craft of matches.

They say that a woman from the village of Shakhrovka sold a chain for two thousand rubles, which she had previously bought for 6 thousand to buy canned food. And one of the employees of the newspaper Omutninsky Vesti admitted that she had a briefing with her children: how they need to wait for each other from school in a certain place and for the pen to the touch to their home.

“I believe that such Beliberden cannot be written,” Tatyana Kirpikova, chairman of the city society of disabled people, is indignant. “My family and I just smiled. And there are people - old pensioners, disabled people who do not smile, but are very worried. They gather to the other world. One woman calls with tears, cries in the tube: if there is an end of the world, but why not be, but so, but so, but so, but so? I’m crying for three days. "I tell her:" Calm down, this is an article from the Internet, maybe the translation is wrong or just joked ", but it does not emerge.

Omutninsk is a depressed city: dilapidated housing, emergency schools, poor ecology. At the city -forming enterprise - the Omutninsky metallurgical plant - two and a half thousand people work. The next main employer is the FSIN - there are four zones in the Omutninsky district: female, general regime and two strict ones. By the way, according to the stories of the colonies, the prisoners also dismantled all the candles from the local church.

The end of the world on many streets in Omutninsk occurs every evening with a sunset: there is no lighting, and people make their way home in the dark on ice.

“There used to be a children's sports school, they raised an Olympic champion there. This is the end of the world!” The local resident shows the stabbed emergency building. “What is the end of the world? And so we live in the ass.”

The last time the city became famous on the Internet with a story with truckers : local small bandits tried to rob a truck driver on the highway, he called the radio, and the extortionists were seriously flapping. The main extortionist was a resident of Omutninsk Lech Shpan .

In the main and only Orthodox church of the Holy Trinity, recently repaired and painted, in the evening service there are eight people, including a candlestick. According to Dyakon Dionysius, after the spread of rumors about the end of the world, more people did not go to church. “I may not be a very scientist, but I’ll say that I know about the end of the world,” says Dionysius’s father. “As the Savior said, no one knows for a day, nor a day, nor a day-only the Savior. It will be once, but only one god knows when to think about the end of the world? Think about the second coming. And if you think about the end of the world, think about your sin. The temple is more than those who have read everything, but no one thinks that he needs to repent, they think little about the soul. ”

Local entrepreneurs are the alarm: they are afraid to suffer losses due to the fact that people buy kerosene instead of buying gifts for the New Year. “We always drove kerosene in small packs of 0.5 liters, and now they ask 10 liters. Kerosene lamps were sore,” says Evgeny Popov, the deputy director of the retail trade of the company “Everything for you.” “Children from the school come - roar:“ Mom, I don’t want to die! ”The people took stupidity. I say to them! You filter what you read. Well, why do you need 20-50 candles? Well, there will be no end of the world on December 21-what will you do with this? "The people should prepare for the New Year, and they do not take toys for children, but take kerosene. We have 100%believe in the outback of the newspaper. It was not necessary to reprint this article. Who would be interested in the Internet, people who go on the Internet are able to filter information."

“There is nothing like that in Kirov, they laugh at us,” Natalya Alekseevna is indignant. “It was in Perm the other day-there is silence. Everyone is preparing for the New Year, and only in Omutninsk-by the end of the world. We are afraid that we will have losses-we have imported gifts for the Christmas tree and gifts before the New Year, and they will spend all the money on the NEWS, MACAROS and Macaronia and Macarois and Macaro Salt will, or something, to cope with pasta and salt instead of the festive table? She tells that her 12-year-old son, a “very impressionable boy,” after they discussed this topic at the school, thought about the end of the world for a long time, “he took it very much in his soul.”

“Probably, it is necessary that the newspaper write some kind of refutation. Something needs to be done, otherwise the city will go crazy,” says Natalya Alekseevna. And then he suddenly adds: "As soon as a new batch of candles comes, we will all get purchased too."

- For what?
- I consider myself a sensible person, but I will also buy.
- For what??
“I can't answer this question to you.” This is something psychological.

The head of the city, Sergei Balandin, whom I asked on the phone, how he was going to fight panic among the population, accused of all the media: "Not only in the city they say, since we are already watching central television, then everything is coming from there." Then he reported that he was on vacation and hung up.

“What to refute something? What will not be the end of the world?” Igor Khodyrev, the director of the Omutninsky Vesti, laughs. “What if he will look?!

But seriously, then, for example, in the summer we wrote about a family who won an apartment in court at the plant . They were able to prove that living in an emergency house, in the immediate vicinity of the metallurgical plant, they are exposed to the poisonous substance of benzapirene, the level of concentration of which in the air of their house is exceeded 10 times. After our article, the factory chiefs were frightened that now everyone would sue and win, because a lot of people live in the same conditions. We also expected claims from people - but no one sued! Not one moved! It’s easier for them to live and emergency barracks with children, breathe carcinogens and die from cancer, but buy candles by the end of the world. ”

It is curious that in the surrounding villages, where the Omutninsky News regularly deliver and where all newspapers are read from crust to crust, there is no panic. There are matches and candles in the stores, and the villagers are surprised at their young city relatives who stockpile on the days of darkness.

“Well, this end of the world will be,” says the pensioner Faina Fedorovna, a former zootechnik-sector from the village of Zagari. “So what? I’m not finding my cattle in the dark? And I will find my cow and a horse with my eyes closed.” And her fellow villagers with a smile say that the end of the world in their village, where a school was closed four years ago, a year ago - a paramedic point, and now threaten to close mail, where bread is brought once a week on Fridays, and then on Friday the paramedic arrives for half a day, has already come for so long.