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Judgment Day: Field Notes on the Rapture

May 21 is here—come and gone already, from Fiji to Australia—and so far there’s been no news of the earthquakes or the mass vanishings predicted by Harold Camping . The rolling disasters that were supposed to have started at 6 p.m. local time failed to appear .

Still, we’re only a little more than halfway through the 48-hour window during which it’s May 21 somewhere on the planet. And what if the Rapture is more subtle than expected? According to one eyewitness, the security gates in the Conde Nast building began flapping uncontrollably on their own yesterday—as if the unseen spirits of countless fact-checkers and senior editors were rushing through, toward the elevators, ascending.

Then there was this, on a downtown D train: 

Where did the subway ads go? Half the sign space in the car was bare; the other half was still covered with Delta ads. Has Delta Airlines been left behind, for the Tribulation? (This makes sense, if you’ve flown Delta.) The God of Harold Camping does not want Delta ads in the hereafter.

God also apparently wanted the kaiser rolls:

But other choices were more inexplicable.

What did the other five bottles do wrong? Maybe Harold Camping can explain, if he’s still around tomorrow.