Doomsday Cultists With Kids Holed Up In Cave Waiting For End Of The World
Posted November 16, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
A bizarre drama is unfolding in a remote area of Russia that has drawn the planet’s attention – if there’s a planet left to note it. More than 30 members of a doomsday cult have barricaded themselves inside a cave, waiting for the end of the world. And they’ve been threatening to commit mass suicide if police storm their improvised hideout.
“They have covered the entrance and refuse to come out and are threatening to blow themselves up,” a local official confirms. “They threaten to detonate a gas tank and blow themselves up.”
There are 29 adults and four children holed up in the rocky makeshift hillside shelter in Penza in the central part of the country. They first moved into their new digs nine days ago. Many seem to feel the adults can exercise their free will, no matter how misguided. But concern is growing for the fate of the innocent victims secreted there with them.
“No one wants to take on the responsibility of provoking them … because our information is that there are children among them,” the official explains. The group has food and fuel, and smoke and steam has occasionally been seen coming out of a small opening, assuring those outside that someone is still alive inside.
It would appear the group is preparing for the long haul and the tough Russian winter. Word is the cult believes the end times won’t be here until May. “They are simple Christians,” a local priest identified only as Father Georgy told a TV station. “They say: ‘The church is doing a bad job, the end of the world is coming soon and we are all saving ourselves.'”
Even the cult’s leader is having no success in convincing his followers to come out. Pyotr Kuznetsov is being held by police and was taken to the cave to try and plead for their surrender. But they’ve refused to budge. The 43-year-old is believed to be a disturbed individual, who suffers from schizophrenia and sleeps in a coffin. It’s not clear how he convinced others to follow him.
For now, police are taking a wait-and-see approach to this strange siege. Most seem to think it won’t last until next spring. They believe the members will emerge when their supplies run out. But since nobody’s sure just what they took in with them, no one knows just how long that might be.
