Until recently, Apocalypse was a complicated term difficult to really understand because the last book of the Christian bible is wrapped in deep symbolism. Thus, the perception of what would happen on the last days are wide ranging, from natural catastrophe such as floods, earthquakes and pestilence to the use of modern weapon such as a nuclear war or chemical warfare.

However, with the emergence of the Daesh, or the Islamic State, end-time scenarios would now include simultaneous and coordinated attacks on major urban centres, just like what happened on Friday evening in Paris. Graeme Weeks, writer of Atlantic, spent several weeks with the jihadists and wrote a book that states the Daesh is not a “collection of psychopaths” but a group with “carefully considered beliefs” which includes the IS being a “key agent of the coming apocalypse.”

With the Daesh now being factored in to major global threats that could lead to the end times, several people have built safe houses designed to withstand an Apocalypse. One such house, reports CNET, is a $17.5 million underground bunker in Georgia that the owner claims could withstand a nuclear blast of up to 20,000 tonnes.

Located at 123 Private Drive in Tifton, the safe house is about 45 feet underground, made up of seven luxury units that could accommodate 13 people. It has a working and secure Internet and a common area with a movie theatre that sits 15 people. Originally constructed in 1969 and updated in 2012 to meet new government benchmarks, the house is said to be the only hardened and privately owned private bunker in the US.

However, since it is private property and could only take in 13 people maximum, people who want to prepare for a zombie Apocalypse, in case it is that type which happens, better heed scientists. The Washington Post reports that in March, a team of Cornell University researchers, led by Alex Alemi, presented at the meeting of the American Physical Society a statistical model of what a “realistic” zombie outbreak would appear like.

Since zombies could only travel on foot, the model advises people against hiding in densely populated regions. Because of the vast geographical area of continental US, “it would take hours, days, months and even year to spread into every unpopulated nook and cranny of the United States,” says Alemi.

He stresses that New York City would fall in a matter of days, but it would take weeks for Ithaca to fall into zombie hands. Alemi’s theory seems to dovetail with Daesh’s strategy to strike at key urban centres. After Paris, it warned, the Big Apple would be next.

According to Weeks’s book, “What ISIS Really Wants,” the Daesh said Dabiq, an area in Syria near its border with Turkey, is where an “Armageddon-like battle will occur.” The caliphate ISIS is not just a political entity but a vehicle for salvation, Weeks writes.

Dabiq is where “the armies of Rome will set up their camp” and where the armies of Islam would meet them. Weeks points out that everything said by the Daesh may sound like middle-school fantasies or video games, but in the minds of ISIS believers, it is very real which is why the terror organisation could recruit people even from overseas.

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