Whaddaya know, doc? Dead men DO bleed.

What happens to a doomsday cult when the world doesn't end? This article says they mostly decide that their efforts to warn everybody about it warded it off. That doesn't seem too applicable in this case, though human ingenuity may be up to it. It also gives Biblical support for the logical chop that if a prophecy doesn't come true, then its promulgator wasn't a prophet. Mass abandonment of their leader sounds even less likely in this case.

There should have been more about the Millerites and their Great Disappointment as they called it. The Millerites were the most striking previous American example of a large cult of people who sold all their belongings and waited on a hill for the millennium to arrive. This was in 1843. When it didn't, they pushed the date forward by months a few times, and eventually concluded that it must have been a heavenly event rather than an earthly one, or something.

The article does refer to the psychologist who studied the attempt to reconcile firm beliefs with inconvenient facts and coined the term "cognitive dissonance" to describe it. Even without millennarianism, one finds such self-deluding going on in everyday life. My favorite example ( deals with a topic that, knowing me, may surprise you: baseball )