It is three days past the zero hour and there have been no horriffic terrorist bombings, deadly subway gassings or nuclear fallouts. The world, it appears, is still normal.

Some people are a little surprised.

Six months ago, a website named eon8 debuted, consisting of nothing but a noir black and white image of a world map, a count down timer to 1 July and bits of code. Viewers of the site assumed the worst. They assumed the site was counting down to the date of our oblivion. The end of the world. Some even linked the site to apocolyptic passages of the Book of Revelations to stoke their fears.

But, it was all a hoax. Well, not a hoax, exactly. The site’s creator chooses to file it under the term “social experiment”. In a message posted on the site after the ticker turned to zero, he said he wanted to see what conclusions people would come to about a site with such little information. Of course, people assumed the worst.

“We were amazed to discover that the site was instantly linked with terrorism, simply for the fact that it seems mysterious”, he said. “Evil was the number one first impression people had of the site, in spite of the fact that there are no threats on the site”.

The experiment, while indentifying the bleak state of society’s paranoia, also showed people’s desire to band together during moments of fear. Some eon8 fanatics held countdown parties. Others used it as an opportunity to make ammends before the ticker ticked out.

The site’s creator concluded, “People take things too seriously and panic over the most trivial things”, he said. “You can’t let pointless speculation rule your lives and force you to live in fear”.