The beginning of the first serious experiments using CERN’s Large Hadron Collider this week has given rise to a welter of fanciful scare stories about the obliteration of the Earth by a pocket black hole or a cascade reaction of exotic particles. Similar predictions have been made around the launch of several other particle physics experiments and even the first atomic weapons tests.

Predictions of the world’s end are nothing new though. We’ve picked out 30 of the most memorable apocalypses that never, for one reason or another, quite happened.

1: 2,800BC: The oldest surviving prediction of the world’s imminent demise was found inscribed upon an Assyrian clay tablet which stated: "Our earth is degenerate in these latter days. There are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end. Bribery and corruption are common." Wherever more than two people over 30 are gathered together, expect to hear remarkably similar sentiments.

2: 1st century AD: In Matthew 16:28 the following interesting quotation is ascribed to Jesus: "Verily I say unto you, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom." The clear implication is that the final judgement would occur within the lifetimes of those present. The Book of Revelation too rather suggests an imminent rather than distant date for the last trump. "Behold I come quickly, and my reward is with me to reward every man according to his work." (Revelation: 22:12) These statements are the wellspring of more than 2,000 years of millennial Christian cults, as we will see below.

Times Archive, 1815: Joanna Southcott, her funeral

After dissection, the body was put in a plain coffin, and pitch applied to the edges and rim

• Death and dissection of Joanna Southcott

• 1927: "Joanna Southcott Box" opened

Related Links

• Millennium by Tom Holland

3: 2nd century AD: The Montanists, founded in around 155 AD by a chap called Montanus, were perhaps the first recognisable Christian "end of the world" cult. They believed that Christ’s triumphant return was imminent and established a base in Anatolia, central Turkey where they waited for doomsday. Montanus was an immensely charismatic leader, given to speaking in tongues, and despite the failure of all his prophecies, his sect endured for hundreds of years after his death. Tertullian, an early Christian thinker who coined terms like the Trinity, and the Old and New Testaments, became a devotee of Montanism in later life.

4: Mar 25, 970 AD. The Lotharingian computists believed they had found evidence in the Bible that a conjunction of certain feast days prefigured the end times. They were just one of a wide scattering of millennial cults springing up in advance of that first Millennium. The abbot of Saint-Benoit of Fleury-sur-Loire sent a letter to his king complaining about the Lotharingians: “For a rumour had filled almost the entire world that when the Annunciation fell on Good Friday, without any question, it would be the End of the World.” The millennial panic endured for at least 30 years after the fateful date had come and gone, with some adjustment made to allow 1,000 years after the crucifixion, rather than the nativity.

5: 1284: Pope Innocent III predicted the Second Coming for this year. He based his prediction on the date of the inception of the Muslim faith, and then added 666 years to that.

6: Botticelli’s Mystical Nativity: To this painting, which hangs in the National Gallery in London, Botticelli added a Greek inscription which characterised the early 1500s as a pre-apocalyptic period known as the Tribulation and anticipated a Second Coming in or around the year 1504.

7: Feb 1, 1524. Panicked by predictions made by a group of London astrologers, some 20,000 people abandoned their homes and fled to high ground in anticipation of a second Great Flood that was predicted to start from the Thames. Proving that this was not just the error of a London-centric media, the German astrologer Johannes Stoeffler then made a similar prediction for later in the same month.

8: 1648: Having made close study of the kabbalah, theTurkish rabbi Sabbatai Zevi predicted that the Messiah would make a miraculous return in 1648, and that his name would be Sabbatai Zevi. With 1648 having come and gone without any appreciable apocalypse Sabbatai revised his estimate to…

9: 1666: A year packed with apocalyptic portent. With a date containing the figures commonly accepted as the biblical Number of the Beast and following a protracted period of plague in England, it was little surprise that many should believe the Great Fire of London to be a herald of the Last Days.

10: 1794. Charles Wesley, the founder of Methodism, believed that the world would come to an end in this year, thus concurring with the Shakers who also anticipated a final reckoning.