Men arrested in French end-of-the-world village

Two men have been arrested for having machetes in the French village of Bugarach, one of the sites that was predicted to be safe during the end of the world, which failed to materialise this Friday, 21 December 2012.

Reuters/Jean-Philippe Arles

Police arrested the men, who had machetes and gas masks in their car, as they approached the Pic de Bugarach, the mountain that certain people believe will open on the last day so that aliens can whisk away nearby humans in spaceships.

On Thursday police arrested a man with a Taser stun gun and another with a baseball bat.

Police have thrown a cordon around the mountain but a predicted horde of New Agers did not turn up, disappointing about 200 journalists sent to the village for the occasion.

Bugarach mayor Jean-Pierre Delord told RFI before the day that he feared collective suicides, although none took place in the end.

He dismissed talk of UFOs.

“They’d better not start telling me that sort of story,” he said. “Because I find it an insufferable Utopianism.”

Reporters were similarly disappointed by a poor turnout of mystics the Turkish village of Sirince, another place supposed to be safe from apocalypse.

But a record number of visitors went to Serbia’s Mount Rtanj, which is believed to be the source of Armageddon-proof electromagnetic waves.

Thousands of tourists have visited Mayan holy sites in central America this week, their interest aroused by the publicity given to the Mayan Calendar prediction.