Apocalypticism, the belief that the world will end soon, is found in practically every religion on the planet. The Romans were periodically gripped by panics involving the prophesied downfall of Rome throughout their history, and early Christians believed they were living in the End Times with as much zeal as modern American evangelists. The following are 10 doomsday cults that still exist.

1. The Panacea Society

In 1792, part-time fortune teller Joanna Southcott started collecting “divine revelations” and had them sealed in a box with strict instructions to open it only for Jesus. Her followers called themselves Southcottians and were mostly early-19th century Spiritualists. Southcott dramatically announced that she was pregnant with the messiah, Shiloh, whose birth would kill all but her followers. However, Southcott was a 64-year-old virgin who showed no signs of pregnancy. To Southcott’s credit, she began doubting her beliefs when she failed to give birth but died before she was able to do anything about it. The sudden power vacuum among the Southcottians brought out all sorts of leadership, all of whom claimed they could psychically communicate with Southcott’s box, and transformed the Southcottians into a bizarre cult that refused to bury Southcott’s corpse, believing that she would be resurrected. They renamed themselves the Panacea Society under the belief that they had healing powers, and still believe that Shiloh will descend from heaven to reboot the world at a later date. The Panacea Society spends most of its time issuing press releases in British newspapers demanding that the bishops of the Church of England assemble to open Southcott’s box, presumably because Jesus is too busy.

2. The Church Universal and Triumphant

In 1957, traveling salesman Mark Prophet founded The Summit Lighthouse to teach the way of the Ascended Masters. According to him, Ascended Masters are individuals who have acquired enough worldly knowledge to attain immortal souls. Most of his original followers were nice old ladies who liked the idea of immortality, but membership exploded through the New Age self-help seminar circuit. Things became a bit bizarre after Prophet died in 1973. His wife, Elizabeth, co-opted a large portion of the followers and founded the Church Universal and Triumphant. She started referring to herself as Guru Ma, claimed that the world’s elite were malevolent aliens, and moved the organization to a remote Montana ranch patrolled by armed guards. There, members are forced into celibacy and aren’t allowed to eat chocolate (it was created by aliens). In the ’90s, Elizabeth made headlines by announcing that the alien elite would wage an nuclear war that would kill all but her followers. Cult members constructed the world’s largest fallout shelter and began stockpiling arms in preparation. When nothing happened, Elizabeth denied ever setting a date and claimed that she was merely warning the world. The Church continues to collect weaponry and upholds that the alien elite will wage their war on a future date.

3. The Jehovah’s Witnesses

In 1875, Charles Taze Russell, the son of a wealthy haberdasher, used his wealth to inform as many people as possible that the Armageddon would take place in 1878. 1878 passed without a blip but Russell was unphased: he simply created an organization which transformed into the Jehovah’s Witnesses and issued another date. Russell taught that Jesus had secretly been enthroned in heaven in 1914 and will return after the Armageddon, which only Jehovah’s Witnesses will survive. After ruling for 1,000 years, Jesus will return to heaven with the most righteous 144,000 souls. The remaining Jehovah’s Witnesses need not worry as they’ll get to enjoy paradise on Earth. Russell developed complicated algorithms to issue alerts about when Armageddon would occur and continued to do so even after the dates kept passing without anything happening. His death in 1916 didn’t seem to deter the organization from arbitrarily announcing a new date either. Jehovah’s Witnesses kept issuing dates until a mass walkout of members in 1976. Since then they’ve been reluctant to say when the Armageddon will occur, but still uphold that it can happen at any moment.

4. Takfir wal-Hijra

In 1971, agricultural engineer Shukri Mustafa joined a splinter of the Muslim Brotherhood called Takfir wal-Hijra (“Excommunication and Exodus”). His loose interpretation of Qur’anic verses involving the Apocalypse transformed the group into a cult that believes it is their right to conquer the Muslim world by any means because it has become too decadent. Takfir wal-Hijra believes that the end of the world will occur after the appearance of the Mahdi, an agent of God who will purify Islam. An epic battle between good and evil will kill all but the followers of Takfir wal-Hijra. Mustafa originally hinted that he was the Mahdi and declared that the end of the world was right around the corner. After Egypt hinted at peace with Israel, he took his followers to prepare in Egyptian caves. When nothing happened, he stated that cataclysmic destruction was required to bring the true Mahdi out of hiding and unleashed a program of terror in Egypt. Most of the group was killed by the Egyptian government fairly quickly. Mustafa was dead by 1978, and Takfir wal-Hijra has been operating in secret since. They were a massive influence on a young Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Al-Qaeda’s second in command, who took the concept of using violence to bring about Armageddon to heart.

5. Association for Research and Enlightenment

In 1902, insurance salesman Edgar Cayce began undergoing hypnosis to cure a bad case of laryngitis. He claimed to have discovered his underlying clairvoyant powers during these treatments and became one of history’s most influential psychics. Most of his early followers were Theosophists, but he became popular with the New Age movement in the ’60s and more recently with the History Channel whenever they’ve run out of Nostradamus shows. After a brief stint as a psychic healer, Cayce set up a nonprofit organization to shield himself from fortune telling laws and had a stenographer record 14,000 prophecies. His most dramatic prophecies involved “Earth Changes“, cataclysms brought on by the United States discovering a crystal powered Atlantean death ray in 1958. The Earth’s axis would shift, California would fall into the Pacific Ocean forever, and New York would be wiped out. Cayce died in 1945 and when nothing happened 1958, his followers associated atomic weapons with his Earth Changes prophecies. The Association for Research and Enlightenment, a modern incarnation of Cayce’s original organization, still studies his prophecies, hosts discussions over them, and occasionally releases cryptic warnings about the coming Earth Changes.

6. Aum Shinrikyo

In 1987, blind acupuncturist Shoko Asahara started a yoga class after visiting India. It attracted Japan’s educated elite at first, but quickly transformed into a rigid cult that called itself Aum Shinrikyo (“Supreme Truth”) as Asahara incorporated more occult teachings. Advertising campaigns announced that Asahara had attained enlightenment, was Jesus, and could cure everything from venereal diseases to brain cancer. Members were required to live on sparse compounds where children were forced into solitary confinement, had their eyebrows dyed green, and were forced to wear headgear that was designed to produce the same frequency as Asahara’s brainwaves. After a failed attempt to win 1990′s Japanese elections, Asahara began preaching that the Japanese government would wage a cataclysmic war with Aum Shinrikyo in 1997. Ever the altruist, he decided that it was Aum Shinrikyo’s duty to kill as many people as possible before the war since it relieved victims of bad karma. To make this happen the group manufactured Sarin and released it in crowded subways in 1995. Asahara was sentenced to be executed for the deaths of 11 people. Aum Shinrikyo has since reformed itself as Aleph and is under constant scrutiny from the Japanese government.

7. Raëlism

In 1974, sports journalist Claude Vorilhon renamed himself Raël and held a press conference to announce that he had been visited by benevolent aliens called Elohim. Vorilhon claimed that he had been tasked to save humanity from an impending nuclear holocaust. This “Age of Apocalypse” (not the X-Men arc) can only be averted if an interplanetary embassy is built in Israel. The Elohim will reveal themselves at this point and humanity will enter a new era of peace. Unfortunately, Israel won’t allow the embassy to be built because the swastika is prominently displayed in the Raëlism symbol. Raël claims he is from a long line of alien prophets which includes Muhammad, Jesus, and Buddha. He knows this for a fact because he visited them on another planet and they told him so. Although they’ve been cautious enough not to give an exact day for when the nuclear apocalypse will occur, Raëlians have hinted that not building the embassy by 2030 will yield massive destruction. When he isn’t saving humanity from the nuclear holocaust, Raël spends his time playing video games because racing exotic cars that wealthy members donated was too exhausting.

8. Falun Gong

In 1992, cereal factory guard Li Hongzhi started claiming he had godlike powers that allowed him to turn invisible, levitate, immobilize people, control the weather, and see into the future. This last power is especially important, because Li has seen that Fa-rectification, a cosmic process that reduces humanity to a pure state, will cause a “Great Havoc” soon. Li has developed a series of meditation techniques rooted in Taoism and Buddhism called Falun Gong to help mankind attain salvation in its time of need. It is spreading very quickly, there are an estimated 70 million Falun Gong practitioners in China alone. The Chinese government responded by banning the immensely popular religion under the argument that it has all the auspices of a dangerous cult. In 2003, Li announced that the SARS epidemic was the first wave of Fa-rectification. Falun Gong practitioners generally brush criticism aside, claiming that it is slander planted by the Chinese government.

9. Rastafarians

In the early-’30s, stories were published in Jamaican newspapers claiming that Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia was the leader of an East African possession cult known as the Nyahbinghi. These stories were fabrications written by Italian Fascists wanting to smear Selassie, but Jamaicans found them inspirational, and cults which venerated Selassie started appearing. The Rastafari movement developed out of this but didn’t have a central theology until 1933, when Leonard Howell returned after visiting the United States. Howell, a close friend of Marcus Garvey, distributed Afrocentric pamphlets that claimed Selassie was the messiah and was leading a war against western civilization, called Babylon. This struck a chord with Jamaicans who were weary of British rule. Howell never gave a date for the impending race war, but other Rastafari prophets were not as tight-lipped. Some preached that Jamaica would be torn apart in 1977 and that only Rastafarians would survive. Nothing happened and the Rastafarians fractured into various “mansions” who only share a belief in the evils of white society and the divinity of Selassie. Its modern form was brought to a worldwide audience through reggae music.

10. Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University

In 1932, retired diamond dealer Lekhraj Khubchand Kripalani began claiming he was an avatar of Shiva and was receiving apocalyptic visions. He taught that a nuclear holocaust would destroy every continent except for the Indian subcontinent and quickly attracted a core group of 300 followers. Only they would be equipped to lead after the genocide, and they would usher in a perfect paradise. Most of his early converts were wealthy wives who made celibacy oaths and pledged their fortunes to him. Pissed off families starting lobbying the Indian government to ban the group, forcing Kripalani to create the organization that eventually became the Brahma Kumaris. They operated in secret, lobbying foreign governments to recognize them and putting out meditation pamphlets, until they found a lucrative niche teaching meditation techniques to the New Age movement. The Brahma Kumaris exploded across the planet until Kripalani died in 1969, leaving behind strict instructions that he would send messages through the Kumari leadership. The Brahma Kumaris still teach that a great destruction is right around the corner. Their most famous adherent is Pratibha Patil, the current president of India, who in 2007 announced that she had received a message from Kripalani stating that a “great responsibility” was headed her way.

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Most of the stories we grew up hearing about Africans, Polynesians, and other “savages” eating colonists were exaggerated blood libels used to justify enslaving them. The following are 10 incidents of cannibalism. They delve into the cultures that practiced it, tell the stories of a few murdering cannibals, and also of some extreme situations where people were driven to eat their fellow man in order to survive.

1. Aghori

The Aghori are Hindu sadhus who believe immortality is attainable by spending 12 years bringing oneself closer to everything that is unclean in society. Most sadhus are content to roam around India smoking hash, but Aghoris smear themselves with cremation ash, drink wine and urine from human skulls, and practice cannibalism. They collect corpses that have been ceremonially disposed of by family members in the Ganges and consume them after praying. Aghoris believe that the proper combination of prayer and cannibalism gives them powers such as levitation and the ability to control weather.

2. Anyoto

Also known as the Human Leopard Society, the Anyoto was an 18th century West African secret society that practiced cannibalism. Each member had to murder a loved one to join, and had to provide a fresh victim every four years thereafter. They believed that a victim’s body fat allowed wishes to be granted. Members dressed in leopard skins and attacked travelers with weapons resembling a leopard’s claws and teeth. The flesh of victims was cut from the body, distributed to members, and consumed in a ceremony. Edgar Rice Burroughs based Tarzan’s Leopard Men on the Anyoto.

3. watuSimba

Today, watuSimba (were-lion) stories are used to scare misbehaving children. But in the ’40s, the watuSimba were young women who had been enslaved by East African witch doctors. They were forcefully addicted to drugs to make them compliant, forced to live in tight cages, and had their foot tendons reshaped to give them the gait of a stalking lion. The witch doctors would then send them out as assassins. The watuSimba wore the skin of a lion and were outfitted with prosthetic claws while hunting. Most shockingly, they were primarily fed the meat of their victims. They killed approximately 300 people over the course of four years and continued to kill even after the witch doctors were captured and hanged.

4. Fritz Haarmann

Fritz Haarmann‘s victims were young refugees that he picked up at train stations in a post-World War I Germany. Similar to the watuSimba, Haarmann killed by gnawing through the throats of his victims until they were decapitated. He then sold their flesh as horse meat, ate what he couldn’t sell, and disposed of the bones in the Leine. In 1924, Haarmann was caught and charged with 27 murders after some local boys discovered human skulls while fishing. He was Germany’s first experience with a serial killer and it was just their luck that he would also be history’s most prolific cannibalistic murderer. Some investigators believe he killed many more people, with estimates reaching as high as 600 people in one year alone.

5. Albert Fish

Albert Fish was a pedophile who described the flesh of children as the “sweetest.” He claimed the idea came from a deck hand who described a trip to Hong Kong during a famine when children were being sold as meat. Fish was caught when he sent a letter to the mother of his final victim, a 10-year-old girl, six years after she vanished. In the letter he gave graphic details about using her body to make a stew, complete with bacon strips, carrots and onions. Fish spent the next nine days locked in his room, eating his stew and compulsively masturbating. Fish was a religious maniac who punished himself by inserting needles into his groin. These needles caused Sing Sing’s electric chair to short circuit during the first attempt to execute him.

6. The Siege of Suiyang

Fish wasn’t entirely off the mark when he claimed that the Chinese had resorted to cannibalism during a famine. He was, however, wrong about the time and place. In 757 AD, the Tang army was fending off a siege by the Yan army in the city of Suiyang. The Tang were vastly outnumbered and placed their hopes on outlasting the Yan. A local governor forced Suiyang to share supplies with surrounding fortresses, causing supplies to run out after a few months. Unwilling to give themselves up to the Yan, the people of Suiyang eventually resorted to cannibalism. A total of 20,000-30,000 people were eaten. In reference to this, The Old Book of Tang eerily states: “People always remained loyal.”

7. The Siege of Ma’arrat al-Numan

In 1098, the city of Ma’arrat al-Numan, in what is modern-day Syria, was besieged by a group of defeated crusaders who had run out of supplies. They massacred a large portion of the Muslim population after they surrendered, but quickly discovered that the city was not as rich as they had hoped. By winter, supplies were dwindling again and the crusaders resorted to cannibalizing the remaining Muslim population. One of the crusader commanders wrote to Pope Urban II: “A terrible famine racked the army in Ma’arra, and placed it in the cruel necessity of feeding itself upon the bodies of the Saracens.”

8. Richard I of England

The Siege of Ma’arrat al-Numan was not the last time crusaders resorted to cannibalization. Richard I of England, better known as Richard the Lionheart, was one of the main architects behind the Third Crusade, a move to reclaim the Holy Lands. But Saladin, the Sultan of Egypt and Syria, earned the crusaders’ respect by being too shrewd, organized, and powerful to defeat. The best Richard could do was to negotiate a peace treaty that gave Christians the right to visit Jerusalem’s holy places, and he remained very bitter about the defeat. In spite, he invited some of Saladin’s ambassadors to attend a banquet and reputedly dined on the curried head of a Muslim warrior in their presence.

9. Idi Amin

Idi Amin was Uganda’s military dictator from 1971 to 1979. (He is also a frequent subject on this site.) Over those eight years he managed to wipe out a fairly large portion of Uganda’s population for fairly tenuous reasons. Basically, if he hated you, you died. When he first rose to power he had the military leadership rounded up and decapitated. He then sat on a pile of their heads and chastised them while taking bites from their flesh. Amin was a member of the Kakwa tribe. They believed that if you ate a section of a man you killed then his spirit could not return to haunt you. Amin ate a lot of his enemies before switching to oranges.

10. Joshua Blahyi

In the ’90s, Joshua Blahyi was one of many Liberian warlords who killed thousands of people. What separated Blahyi from the rest was that went by the nickname “General Buck Naked” and believed his nakedness protected him from bullets. His group routinely performed human sacrifices that involved cannibalism before battle. A quote from Blahyi said:

So, before leading my troops into battle, we would get drunk and drugged up, sacrifice a local teenager, drink their blood, then strip down to our shoes and go into battle wearing colourful wigs and carrying dainty purses we’d looted from civilians. We’d slaughter anyone we saw, chop their heads off and use them as soccer balls. We were nude, fearless, drunk and homicidal. We killed hundreds of people – so many I lost count.

Blahyi now works as a minister, talk about an amazing career transition. There is a documentary about him in the works.

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Some disasters are unavoidable. Hurricanes, earthquakes, meteor strikes: only mad scientists are blamed for these mishaps. Sometimes fate decides to go ahead and give people a good spanking just for shits and giggles. Other times, its our own damn fault.

1. The Great Smog of 1952

The Disaster:

On December 5, 1952, London’s fog, tired of being the butt of many a British joke, got serious. On that particularly cold morning, London’s fog teamed up with vehicle exhaust, factory and power plant emissions, and smoke from coal-fired furnaces to sink London in a noxious haze for the next four days. The smog was so intense that it brought traffic to a standstill, closed schools, ruined an opera and several sporting events, and acted as cover for numerous intrepid robbers and thieves. Oh, it also killed an estimated 12,000 people.

What happened?

One of the instigators for the smog was the sooty diesel fumes from London’s brand new buses. Earlier that year that the city had brilliantly replaced their system of electric, pollution-free streetcars with smoke-belching, people-killing buses. Fortunately, when visibility fell to a foot in parts of London, the smog put a stop to the antics of these bright, shiny death-wagons. The largest contributors to the smog, however, were probably coal-fired furnaces. In a stroke of genius, the people of London hunkered down and kept the home fires burning brighter than ever. If they had put on coats and threw a few extra blankets on the bed, they probably could have kept from killing their neighbors.

2. The Draining of Lake Peigneur

The Disaster:

Lake Peigneur (pronounced pen-your) was a shallow, unassuming lake in southern Louisiana until November 21, 1980. It was on this day that the 11-foot-deep lake became vain and swallowed two enormous oil derricks, 11 barges, a tugboat, 70 acres of an island, and an impressive portion of the Gulf of Mexico. All of this was sucked down a whirlpool that reached a quarter mile in diameter, forcing water that normally flowed towards the Gulf down a 12 mile canal to flow backwards. In what would have been an engineering masterpiece, had it been intentional, Lake Peigneur was permanently transformed from a shallow fresh water lake into a 1,300-foot-deep inland sea in only three days.

What happened?

The disaster began when a Texaco oil rig accidentally drilled into a salt mine beneath the lake. Texaco was fully aware of the mines location and had intended to drill in a different part of the lake. Unfortunately, none of their employees could read a map and proceeded to rip a hole right through the top of the mine. When water began to pour in, it (unsurprisingly) began dissolving all the salt in the mine causing it to collapse rapidly. The collapse of the mine created a feedback loop of destruction: water entered the mine causing the salt to dissolve, causing the mine to collapse, causing the hole to grow wider, allowing more water in… By some miracle of fate, none of the oil riggers, salt miners, or tugboat crewmen died in this moment of glaring idiocy.

3. The Manila Garbage Slide

The Disaster:

The 15,000 residents of Promised Land had it bad. Despite their settlement’s cheery name, they lived in a disease-ridden shantytown wedged between Manila, the capital of the Philippines, and a gigantic garbage dump that really would have looked like the Promised Land to Oscar the Grouch. Their luck finally changed on July 10, 2000, for the worse, when the world decided to take a dump on them. After being buffeted for several days with heavy rain, the 50-foot high mountain of garbage that towered above Promised Land engulfed the shantytown, killing at least 234 people, and displacing many more.

What happened?

The way Manila approaches garbage disposal leads one to believe that its sanitation duties were in the hands of Captain Planet’s nemesis Sly Sludge. The government was aware that the landfill was already overfull by 1993. It was ordered closed in 1998, but it remained in use, even after a smaller garbage slide destroyed 32 homes in 1999. In November, 2000, only a few months after the dump’s deadly collapse, the city reopened the dump without even bothering to finish recovering the dead from the garbage.

4. The Bradford Sweets Poisoning

The Disaster:

On October 23, 1858, William “Humbug Billy” Hardaker, sold peppermint lozenges to the good people of Bradford, England, as he usually did. This particular Saturday he had the good luck to buy his batch of mints at discount because of their substandard appearance. By the time he fell sick that afternoon, he had sold enough lozenges to satisfy some 200 peoples’ sweet tooth. The next day, still ill, Hardaker had to explain to the police why everyone who ate his candy was either getting sick or dying.

What happened?

Joseph Neal, who sold Humbug Billy his peppermints, regularly replaced expensive sugar with the much cheaper and less tasty “daft” which could consist of just about any white powder from plaster of Paris to gypsum or limestone. Neal had sent one of his assistants to a druggist’s to buy some daft. The druggist’s assistant got the daft, or more correctly, he got arsenic which he thought was daft. Despite the fact that the lozenges made with arsenic looked notably odd and the fact that one of his employees fell sick while making the candies, Neal saw no reason not to sell them. Neither did William Hardaker, who also fell ill after tasting the not-so-sweet sweets. The carefree use of non-food ingredients and selling of obviously questionable candies lead to the death of 20 people and the non-lethal poisoning of another 200 or so.

5. The Boston Molasses Flood

The Disaster:

January 15, 1919, was an unusually warm day in Boston. It was also the day a 2 million gallon tank of molasses on top of a rum distillery exploded, pouring a 10-foot-high wave of molasses through the city’s streets at a whopping 35 mph. This wave of syrupy death managed to shove a building from its foundation, demolished a section of elevated train track, all the while killing 10 horses, 21 people, and, for the hell of it, injuring another 150. Problems didn’t stop there. It took 4 days to recover all the victims of the spill as the thick molasses made it almost impossible to move through the affected areas. Then came the cleaning effort, which involved massive amounts of salt water from the Atlantic Ocean and a lot of pumps to get the molasses out of people’s basements.

What happened?

Although the United States Industrial Alcohol Company, which owned the offending molasses tank, tried to pin the flood on crazy anarchist bombers, the likely culprit in the disaster was simple negligence. Coincidentally, the day after the disaster, the 18th Amendment, which initiated Prohibition, was ratified. On January 16th, 1920, it went into effect, a year too late to save the people of Boston. Had Prohibition begun earlier the distillery, no longer being able to legally make rum, would have had little reason to keep such a deadly amount of molasses sitting idly on its roof.

Bonus: Hurricane Andrew

Few would argue that Hurricane Andrew, which ravaged the Bahamas, Florida, and Louisiana in 1992 was avoidable. Few, that is, except for Imelda Marcos, the wife of former Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos. After her husband’s death, the Philippine government refused to allow his body to reenter the country for burial. Imelda, a woman most famous for her massive collection of shoes, claimed that in response his restless spirit caused Hurricane Andrew and numerous other natural disasters.

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Mental retardation is generally understood to be the lack of normal intellectual development. It was one of the most misunderstood conditions before the advent of modern medicine and there were literally hundreds of pseudo-scientific terms used to describe it. Not surprisingly, the practice of inbreeding helped stack royal courts with hundreds of mentally retarded heirs. Occasionally, one would manage to make it to the throne. These are the stories of 6 of them.

1. Philip III Arrhidaeus

A persisting rumor claims Alexander the Great’s mother Olympias caused Philip III Arrhidaeus’ mental condition with a botched poisoning while clearing out roadblocks to Alexander’s ascension. It is more likely that Arrhidaeus was born mentally retarded and was shielded from the Macedonian army’s politics while Alexander was alive. Afterwards however, he was thrust into a powersharing agreement with the infant Alexander IV and became a pawn for a series of power-hungry assholes. First came Perdiccas, a paranoid regent, who kept Arrhidaeus close to himself and almost caused a troop revolt by killing Arrhidaeus’ half-sister Cynane after she sent her daughter Eurydice to marry Arrhidaeus. The less batshit Antipater was made regent after Perdiccas’ officers had enough of him and killed him. This left Arrhidaeus in the hands of Eurydice, who used him to lobby for more power. She attempted to lead a rebellion against Olympias after Antipater’s death but found that Macedonians were unwilling to fight Alexander the Great’s mother. Arrhidaeus, unaware of what was happening, ended up in a narrow dungeon cell with Eurydice and was executed there.

2. Fyodor I of Russia

Fyodor I of Russia, the not-so-terrible son of Ivan the Terrible, was born with a “minor” case of Down syndrome. Fyodor was an extremely pious man whose idea of a good time was hanging out with monks, listening to Bible stories, and ringing church bells. By contrast, Ivan the Terrible’s idea of a good time involved creating succession issues by beating up his pregnant daughter-in-law, causing her to miscarry, and then murdering the heir-apparent. The “Oh, shit!” moment that followed left 3 possible options: Fyodor; a 3 year old boy; and Boris Godunov, an ambitious veteran of the royal court. Godunov was clearly the most suitable, but the church picked Fyodor anyway thinking that a pious retard would be easier to control. Fyodor managed to become a moderately popular tsar by not being a mass murdering psycho, and also by loosening trade restrictions, favoring the lower classes, and reforming the judiciary. Most of the public didn’t realize that these reforms came from Godunov, who had managed to claw his way into becoming the sole regent, and instead credited Fyodor’s belief that God spoke to him in his dreams. Unfortunately, Fyodor’s failure to sire any male children allowed Godunov to claim the throne after his death and signaled the start of the Time of Troubles.

3. Mustafa I

The Ottomans were good at avoiding succession wars by allowing each new sultan to kill all other potential heirs when he claimed the throne. In fact, the Ottomans got so good at wiping out anyone with a claim to the throne that for a while, the continuity of the dynasty was threatened. Eventually, a more “humane” solution was developed which allowed the heirs to live, but still provided the sultan with security: penning all the heirs in a palatial prison called the “Kafes” – literally, “the Cage”. Even then, it was fairly common for an unpopular heir to be found strangled to death in spite of the heavy security. Mustafa I was born “mentally weak” and was driven completely insane by the constant threat of strangulation. He spent most of his life in the tiny windowless apartments looking for guidance in the Quran, but was forced to become Sultan after his brother, Ahmed I, died of typhus. He was quickly deposed after refusing to learn ixaratte, the royal court’s complicated sign language system, and running around the palace screaming for his dead brother to take away his throne. The Jannisaries made short work of his successor and asked Mustafa to rule again. He responded: “I am reading the Quran, and I do not want to be the Sultan,” but no one listened and Mustafa was forced to reign until the Grand Mufti decreed that Murad IV should be allowed to take his place.

4. Ibrahim I

Allowing Murad IV to rule was a mistake. His bloody reign allowed his power hungry mother, Kösem Sultan, to become the most powerful woman in Ottoman history. She ruled from behind a silk curtain while Murad ran around brutalizing anyone he came across. When Kösem realized she would lose power when Murad died, she began lobbying for the mentally retarded Ibrahim I to become the next Sultan. Murad responded by ordering Ibrahim put to death, but Kösem managed to convince the royal court that Ibrahim suffered from “weakness of the nerves” and posed no threat. Much like Mustafa, Ibrahim had spent most of his life in the Kafes. Unlike the hapless Mustafa, Ibrahim was a sex crazed sociopath who immediately began kidnapping and raping married women. He became enthralled with obese women and paid immense bounties to anyone who could bring him a larger woman than he already had in his harem. Ibrahim eventually became obsessed with a cow’s genitals, had them cast in gold, and ordered his agents to find a woman with a similar vagina. They found Sechir Para (“Sweet Lump of Sugar”), a 300 pound Armenian woman who he dressed only in furs. Ibrahim was finally deposed after he raped the Grand Mufti’s daughter. He was found strangled to death in the Kafes a few months later.

5. Charles II of Spain

Charles II of Spain‘s birth was widely celebrated because it helped avoid a succession war. That celebration was short lived, as people began worrying after getting a good look at him. Charles, the result of generations of Hapsburg inbreeding, resembled a Dane Cook joke: countless ailments, severely retarded, and constantly on the edge of an emotional breakdown. His head was freakishly misshapen, his jaw made it impossible for him to eat, and his tongue was so large he could barely speak. He was literally carried around like a baby for the first 10 years of his life because the royal court feared he would die if overworked. Even after he learned how to walk on his own, his legs could barely support him beyond a few steps. By the time he was 35, Charles had given up on cleaning himself, could not walk, and suffered multiple epileptic seizures a day. He spent the final years of his life desperately attempting to have a child. Even though his doctors tried everything from balancing dead pigeons on his head to draping him with the warm entrails of mammals, he could not manage to sire an heir. His death sparked the bloody War of the Spanish Succession, which some argue was the first world war.

6. Ferdinand I of Austria

Ferdinand I of Austria‘s “feeble-mindedness” was well known to the general public. In the end, that knowledge probably saved his life. In person, it was practically impossible to understand him (though he did manage to keep a readable dairy). Reportedly, one of his few coherent sentences came after being told that apricot dumplings were out of season: “I am the Emperor, and I want dumplings!” Bedridden by up to 20 epileptic fits a day, Ferdinand relied on a cadre of counselors to guide his decisions. The most controversial was Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, who had brought peace between kings at the Congress of Vienna but ignored the general public’s demands for democratic reform. Ferdinand was forced to dismiss Metternich when revolutionaries started picking up supporters. Before fleeing to London, Metternich informed Ferdinand that the angry mob outside his palace was revolting and demanding that Ferdinand abdicate. A puzzled Ferdinand asked: “But are they allowed to do that?” Considered harmless by the revolutionaries, Ferdinand made it out unscathed and spent the rest of his days in Prague Castle.

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The sheer amount of insane or mentally unstable heads of state is evidence that the one job that requires the least in the way of mental stability is absolute rule. In honor of every mad monarchs and deranged dictators who tried to live up to Zarkon, this is a list of the 10 most whacked-out despots in history.

1. Murad IV

Sultan Murad IV put the “homicide” in “homicidal maniac”. A large man with a fetishistic attraction to violence, Murad took capital punishment to levels very few have been able to match. A powerful warrior in his own right, Murad’s favorite weapon on the battlefield was a 130 pound mace which he used with one hand. But his most memorable act was attempting to root out corruption by instituting a universal death penalty for even the most minor of offenses. He would patrol the streets of Istanbul, disguised in civilian clothes, and would kill people on the spot with his mace if they broke the law. He had 18 people killed for the use of tobacco, coffee, opium, and wine in one particular day. This was Murad at his most sane. He beheaded anyone who got on his nerves, and he was fond of taking potshots at people unlucky enough to be standing nearby when he got the urge. On one occasion, he had a group of dancing women drowned because they were making too much noise. Murad eventually succumbed to cirrhosis of the liver as a result of excessive drinking. One could say that he executed himself for breaking his own laws.

2. George III of the United Kingdom

Most remember King George III for losing the American colonies but seem to forget that he was a popular king when he first took the throne. He united political rivals, funded the Royal Academy out of his own pocket, and created a new national library. But he suffered his first setback five years into his reign and things were never the same. Stricken with a nasty hereditary disease called porphyria, George’s symptoms included partial paralysis, full blown psychosis, and blue urine. If peeing Smurfs weren’t bad enough, the king endured Francis Willis’ “treatment regimen”. Simply put, Willis quite literally began beating the crazy out of King George III. The frequent cycle of lucidity, insanity, and torture wreaked havoc on George’s abilities to rule, and he started making increasingly bad decisions. He allowed Prime Minister William Pitt to increase taxes, raise armies to fight France, and suspend the right of habeas corpus. Then, to add insult to injury, Pitt blamed it all on George after the shit hit the fan. George became increasingly unpopular even among his supporters and compounded it through bizarre behavior. This included babbling for hours without ceasing, foaming at the mouth, and reputedly shaking hands with a tree after mistaking it for the King of Prussia. He spent the last years of his life in isolation, blind, deaf, mostly straight-jacketed, and some historians argue he wasn’t even aware he had lost the American colonies.

3. François “Papa Doc” Duvalier

Featured in our 10 Plundering Politicians list, François Duvalier was the product of an affair between a Haitian official and an insane woman – an event that foreshadowed his later life. He lived innocuously in his early years and even received acclaim for his work as a doctor. But as Haiti grew poorer, Duvalier witnessed gross human rights violations and started studying voodoo intensely for answers. In 1956, he won the election by positioning himself as a populist and challenging the power of the mulatto elite. He lost all semblance of sanity after this point. Duvalier began acting and dressing as Baron Samedi, the voodoo spirit of death, and even started speaking in the nasal tone associated with the spirit. To make things worse, he created the Tonton Macoutes, a private army named after a voodoo bogeyman that disappears people. Duvalier even had all black dogs in Haiti killed after hearing that a political rival had transformed into one. Duvalier eventually declared himself “President for Life”, and presided over Haiti’s decline into poverty, famine, and despair until the day he died.

4. Idi Amin

Also featured in our 10 Plundering Politicians list, Idi Amin’s life is the classic story of boy meets girl, boy becomes dictator, and dictator abuses power. He seized power by promising democratic elections and the release of political prisoners. Instead, a week after the coup, he declared himself president, put military tribunals above civilian courts, and started suspending rights. Amin suffered from syphilis and as time went on his behavior became increasingly erratic. When a diplomat asked him why he ate hundreds of oranges a day, Amin mused they tasted better than human flesh. After the British severed relations, Amin claimed to have defeated them and declared himself “His Excellency President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea, and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular.” He never paid for his sins, as he escaped to Saudi Arabia after Uganda had enough of his shit and deposed him. He spent the last years of his life enjoying a lavish lifestyle and hundreds of oranges a day.

5. Caligula

Historical records overflow with rumors and speculation concerning Caligula’s level of kiddie crazy. Some sources speculate that he engaged in his uncle Tiberius’ perverse proclivities involving women, children, and even infants. Others believe that his obsession with his sisters started very young (and, he did bed all three of them during the course of his short lifetime). Regardless of which rumors you choose to believe, it’s safe to say that Caligula was balls-out crazy by the time he became emperor. He was a short, gangly man with too little hair on his head and too much on his body. As emperor, he would execute – at whim – anyone who he believed to be staring at his bald head or anyone who mentioned a goat in his presence. Early in his reign, he became deathly ill and began seeing conspiracies everywhere. In his mind, the illness itself was a conspiracy and when he got better he killed, banished, or imprisoned loyal friends, relatives, and compatriots. Caligula’s extravagant lifestyle emptied the state treasury and created a financial crisis that almost broke the Roman Empire. Later on, he marched an unprecedented number of legions all over Europe to annex more territory. It failed, so he ordered his troops to gather seashells as “spoils from the Ocean“. Soon after, he decided he was a god and killed everyone who disagreed. The stories of his eccentricities are too numerous to mention. One highlight, however: he tried to make his favorite horse, Incitatus, a consul. Eventually the Roman elites had enough of him and he was killed by a cadre of conspirators. I guess he was right to suspect everyone.

6. Nero

Like Caligula, rumors have circulated concerning Nero and Tiberius. On his island home in Capri, Tiberius kept a sicko version of the Playboy Mansion stocked with a bevy of “little fishes” – young 5-7 year old boys trained to swim around the naked Tiberius. Some historians claim that Tiberius kept Nero for a time, and if that is, indeed true, it’s at least part of the reason why Nero was so whacked-out. He rose to power through a series of backroom maneuvers and murders perpetrated by Agrippina the Younger, Nero’s mother and Caligula’s sister. Nero thanked her by having her killed. Early in his reign, Nero was obsessed with becoming a popular ruler so he passed a series of laws that favored the poor. But he quickly lost interest and became more interested in writing poems and playing music. In fact, it is said that he was singing the poem “Sack of Ilium” in stage costume during the infamous fire of 64 AD. The rumors that he was playing a fiddle, however, are false. It was more likely a lyre. After a series of other exciting missteps which led to several large rebellions, Nero absconded to avoid being killed by a large portion of his guard and an uppity governor. He found shelter in a villa, where he decided that the most noble option was suicide. He forced one of his servants to commit suicide first in order to research the process and to steel his nerves. Nero was unable to kill himself until the horsemen were right upon him, and even then he required assistance from his secretary.

7. Frederick William I of Prussia

Frederick William I probably didn’t suffer from any mental condition… he was just a good, old-fashioned psychopath. He was the type of monarch who carried a large rattan stick with him to test the fighting abilities of random strangers. He also threw plates at servants for no apparent reason and starved his children to test their mettle. Most of his valets were missing an eye because Frederick always carried two pistols, loaded with rock salt, and shot anyone who startled him. But his love for military display bordered on the obsessive. After inheriting a regiment from his father, Frederick became attached to the idea of a regiment composed entirely of the tallest men in Europe. The Potsdam Giants, as they became known, eventually included kidnapped priests, monks, and an Austrian diplomat. But, the bulk of his giants were mentally retarded, as William made disastrously bad agreements with the French, the Ottomans, and other nations to fill out his regiment. On his deathbed, a priest read from the Book of Job: “Naked I came out of my mother’s womb and naked I shall return thither.” “Not quite naked,” Frederick responded. “I shall have my uniform on.”

8. Charles VI of France

There is a good reason why Charles VI‘s most common sobriquet is “The Mad.” Perfectly normal in his early life, he became unhinged after a mystery illness forced doctors to shave off his hair. He was prone to random bouts of violence where he would assault anyone within arms reach. When he was 24, Charles set off to capture a would-be assassin hiding in Brittany. While traveling, he was approached by a barefoot leper in rags who warned, “Ride no further, noble King! Turn back! You are betrayed!” A little later, Charles was startled when a page made a loud noise by dropping a lance. Convinced he was under attack, Charles drew his sword, spurred his horse, and bellowed: “Forward against the traitors! They wish to deliver me to the enemy!” He then promptly started laying waste to his own men and killed several of them before he was restrained. His psychotic episodes only got worse after that. He was prone to running like a madman through the palace halls, refused to wash, and even forgot that he was king at one point. Physicians attempted to cure him by shocking him. No, not with electroshock, instead they hired seventeen men in blackface to jump out of the darkness to startle him. Charles simply responded by assaulting the men. His madness left the throne up for grabs, and the resulting power struggle greatly weakened France.

9. Nader Shah

As a young boy, Nader Shah was captured by the Uzbeks but managed to escape and joined a tribe of bandits who eventually made him their leader. His rise to military power from that point onward was meteoric, and eventually he had himself made their leader, by virtue of being the baddest motherfucker around. While he was relatively respected and mostly supported by his subjects, the fact that he considered somebody like Timur his personal hero should have indicated what was to follow. As time passed, his campaigns grew more violent – during his invasion of India, Nader Shah’s troops killed as many 30,000 Indians in one day. Then his health started to decline rapidly, making him amazingly paranoid and ruthless. He saw enemies everywhere after a failed assassination attempt. Convinced that his son was behind the attack, he had him blinded, and then, just to make sure, he killed everyone who had witnessed the blinding. Pretty soon he stopped thinking up excuses and started executing everyone he suspected of treachery. He started exorbitantly raising taxes, and when his subjects rose up in revolt, he crushed them without mercy and built towers out of their skulls just like Timur. The captain of his guard and several other assassins surprised him in the night, stabbing him with a sword, but he managed to kill two of them before finally succumbing to his wounds.

10. Prince Sado of Korea

Prince Sado of Korea was so incredibly insane that he wasn’t allowed to become emperor until he was dead. A series of childhood illnesses laid the ground work for his insanity, and by the age of ten he was showing serious signs of mental issues. Sado became increasingly delusional, had frequent nightmares about a thunder god, and developed intense phobias about the sky, thunderstorms, and even the Korean characters for “thunder” and “thunderclap”. He frequently beat the crap out of his eunuchs, and would either rape, murder, or murder-rape servants and court women to pass the time. Murder was his Xanax, as on one occasion he remarked: “It relieves my pent-up anger to kill people or animals when I’m feeling depressed or on edge.” Not surprisingly, everyone was scared shitless of him. His father, King Yeongjo of Joseon, eventually got wind of his son’s insane behavior and ordered Sado locked in a rice cask for ten days. In a moment of lucidity, the prince complied and died in the cask. A few days later the dead prince was removed from the chest and posthumously declared emperor.

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