Harold Camping’s doomsday predictions are very amusing, but it’s worth remembering that there are a few troubled souls out there who take this kind of thing very seriously.

A California woman named Lyn Benedetto has been accused of cutting the throats of her two daughters with a box cutter knife because she wanted to save them from the impending end of the world. Allegedly, Benedetto made the girls, aged 11 and 14, sit on a bed while she cut their throats, and then tried to kill herself. Miraculously (pun intended), someone saw what had happened and called help. All three are expected to recover.

In similar news, a man reportedly had his pets taken away by animal services after he said he would kill them to prevent them from suffering through the rapture, while an elderly man in Taiwan is said to have jumped to his death because he was scared the world was going to end.

Obviously Harold Camping isn’t responsible for the actions of these people. But you could argue that it’s wise to avoid making alarmist statements that might hurt vulnerable people. Hopefully this kind of thing won’t happen again, and – oh, wait, Harold Camping has changed his prediction and now says the world will end on October 21st. Do we have to go through all this hilarity again?