Members of Peoples Temple attend an anti-eviction rally at the International Hotel, San Francisco, US, January 1977. PHOTO | WIKICOMMONS
A doomsday cult is a description of a group believing in apocalypticism and millenarianism, and can refer both to groups that predict disaster and to those that attempt to bring it about.
“Cults have been around about as long as there has been religion, starting as a splinter group that goes against conventional beliefs, sometimes growing into a mainstream religion and sometimes never achieving anything more than sideshow status…,” Abdul Alhazred observes.
