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July 25, 2008 12:18:55 AM CDT

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Final Doomsday Cultists Exit Russian Cave

Posted May 16, 08 10:15 AM CDT in World 

(Newser) – The final nine members of a Russian doomsday cult holed up in a cave to await the apocalypse (coming this month) have abandoned ship, unable to stand the stench of two people who had died. Thirty-five followers of a self-declared prophet calling himself Father Pyotr climbed into the cave in November and threatened to blow themselves up if police tried to remove them, the BBC reports.

A local official said the end of the siege was prompted by the “threat of poisoning from toxic corpse fumes.” One cult member had died from fasting and a second from cancer. The other cultists had left over several months. Pyotr himself, who never entered the cave, is receiving treatment at a psychiatric clinic—and has been charged with founding a violent religion.

Source BBC

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Women, members of a Russian cult, who left a cave after waiting the end of the world, together with their leader, self-declared prophet Pyotr Kuznetsov, right, on March 28.   (AP Photo)
Olga Denisovich from Belarus, right, smiles in a house which was used as a church by the members of a doomsday cult.   (AP Photo/Dmitry Barkhatov)
Black spots of the vent holes of the underground hideout where more than two dozen members of a doomsday cult are believed to be holed up.   (AP Photo/Mikhail Metzel)
Russian businessman German Sterligov, left foreground, and psychology specialists led by professor Zurab Kekelidze, right, have talks at a vent hole.   (AP Photo/Dmitry Barkhatov)
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Russia  • cancer  • psychiatry  • cult  • corpse  • caves


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