Rapture Letters

Are you spending any time wondering what your friends will think when the Rapture comes and you’ve been taken up to heaven while they are left behind to pay for their sinful ways with seven years of Hell on Earth? They’ll worry where you went, and wonder why you haven’t called.

Problem solved! Prepare for this eventuality with a visit to RaptureLetters.com, where you can enter the email addresses of your friends and family that you fear will be left behind, and when the Rapture comes, they’ll receive an email from you letting them know you’re with God in heaven. Only people who know they’re going to heaven could be so thoughtful.

How does it work? The site’s creator describes it as a ‘dead man’s switch’. Each week, he resets the program to prevent the Rapture Letters from being sent. When the Rapture comes, and he’s snatched up to heaven, he won’t be there to reset the program and so the letters will be sent. It’s one thing to be sure you’re going to heaven, but won’t it be a hoot when this guy finds himself stuck in traffic, or otherwise incapacitated, and the letters go out… false alarm, no Rapture yet… psych!

It raises a larger issue. Who might maintain such online services after the true believers disapear? On the FAQ of RaptureReady.com they deal with the question of how the site will be maintained after the Rapture occurs. It seems to me that what is really needed is a corps of unholy sys admins… non-believing webmasters who will still be around to keep the email flowing and the web sites humming. With all the spammers and pornographers on the Net, there should be no shortage of skilled techies who will be left behind to keep it up and running.

with thanks to Ed Helm on The Daily Show for his great segment on Rapture Letters