"You people are destroying everything and it's your fault and you'll deserve every bit of it!"

Yeah, that's probably a good chunk of the motivation.

One is what initially motivates people to predict apocalypses. I think there are many motivations. They variously include, in no particular order: a desire to see other people get their comeuppance; some sort of assumptions about the nature of life (e.g., that God will destroy all injustice or that mass violence is the inevitable consequence of human striving); a propensity to believe engaging stories compellingly told; the existence of actual grave dangers; and the excitement of knowing something other people don't. (I'm not sure if you had in mind the first of those, the last of them, or something else.)

Once people expect apocalypses, it's often hard to get them to abandon the expectation -- and that may have something to do with wanting to prove that they are right. It doesn't seem to me that just wanting to be proven right is much incentive for apocalypse in particular, unless it's "right" as in "one of the elect."

hope it happens and they get floated to heaven and sit at the right hand of god. They would hate to find out they could have done all those things that the didn't and everything would be the same pretty much.

If you know some arcane knowledge or a cabal hidden conspiracy then you get to look at everyone else and tell yourself you're smarter than they are. But knowing pi to the 200th decimal place isn't nearly as exciting as knowing the earth is going to end. Of course, once they're emotionally invested they're intractable. To disprove The End or dismiss The Grand Conspiracy is to forcce them to realize they were really quite ordinary after all.

Then any survivors would look to them as some sort of prophet, and thus they gain a form of power.

A lot of these apocalypse predictors always assume they will survive because they are "prepared". And they will be able to exert some form of control over other survivors.

I think it boils down to power fantasies for people who are otherwise powerless.

no doubt about that at all

A lot of them gave up all their possessions, walked away from their families, etc., all over a claim that the world was going to end on 5-21-2011..

There was another group that had it slated for 11-21-2011...

Zero for Two and counting, lol

So, I don't this is just about being right, but also about divine justice in a seemingly unjust world, and deleverence from perceived evil.

Without a doubt, most of us seem to love having our beliefs confirmed, but I don't think that is the only reason.

My honest and sincere opinion is that many people have too many badly-written, post-apocalyptic, science-fiction novels, and thought to themselves, "well, although I'm anti-social and a proud misanthrope, I'd make a great hero in one of my hack-authored novellas. Heck, I've even read part of an article on the internet about how to survive the apocalypse, and I have a knife I hide under my bed, and a really cool military can-opener... so yeah, I'm a survivalist, and that's my ideal world and I'll project that in my day to day affairs."

as if the "end of the world as we know it" some how justifies their rampent stupidity.

Tonight we're gonna party like it's 1999
Maybe it's cuz
We're all gonna die

The artist formerly known as Prince sure made it sound exciting.

And you can stop worrying about your bills. Awesome! You may think it sounds pessimistic, but a good chunk of people are looking forward to an apocalypse, rapture, end of the world.

The desperate person isn't content with just ending his/her own life (usually a he, let's be honest here), he wants to take people with him. It's like thinking, "I'm going, and I'm taking all you lousy mofos with me!" without having to actually do anything. Nobody has to be the bad guy. Nice people can join the fun.

I am convinced apocaypse ideation is wishful thinking about 95% of the time.

It all starts with explaining suffering. And as the answers really didn't provide every day real human beings with meaning - the answer had to evolve.

First:

It may have been that you sinned, or to make you a stronger person, but suffering was some type of judgment. Understand in this first phase of questioning, there was no heaven and hell. Orthodox Jews don't believe that stuff: everyone, good and bad, goes to Sheol.

Among this first phase were the prophets who berated the people for going against God's will. Remember, prophet in the Bible is essentially a critic of contemporary society - not a fortune teller. Not until the last book of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) does Daniel start offering visions of the future (don't bring up Amos or the others; it wasn't future stuff - read within the context!).

Then, it was that the good and the bad would get their due; but here, on the Earth. See the first view of why we suffer wasn't working out so well for a lot of our ancestors in the Hebrew faith. But don't worry: Jesus comes along, as well as John the Baptist, claiming Jews have fallen away from God's law but something is gonna change. Rather than you questioning how your 3 year old kid, with a loose grasp on reality, could 'sin' so badly that he suffered death from a vicious disease, now all would be made aright.

But Jesus wasn't promising 'Heaven' per se; not up there, but down here on Earth he said a new kingdom would overthrow all the evil in the world. And get this: he was talking about his timeframe, not ours: he told his disciples that some of them would see the day the Kingdom arrived before their death. In fact, he talked like that a bunch.

Well, Jesus got crucified, and his posse sat there waiting. And waiting. But that Kingdom on Earth didn't quite materialize. Big bummer if you were following him. So what to do...

Finally, Christians (especially through Paul) developed the idea that: No, suffering isn't just because you're sinful or crappy; it's not just cause you suffer it here but then a great utopia will fall upon your head and smite those who exploited you...

Now the Christians when vertical, rather than horizontal: you will be rewared AFTER death. Forget that stuff that Jesus and Paul (the bulk of the New Testament) were saying. Now you'll see when your brain and heart quit: rewards for the good, punishment for the bad.

That's the evolution in Judeo-Christian religion; not a perfect summary, but good enough to be understood. Hopefully...

I'm the person who originally started this discussion. Now I have a second part to it.
Do you think the person predicting the end of the world not only wants to survive to say "I told you so," but also has some kind of megalomania that wants to come out? Do you think the predictor wants to be able to take over as President/King/Dictator/Emperor/God/All of the Above?