One of the most interesting elements of the first Left Behind book is its necessity to create some kind of imagined explanation that the non-Christians would come up with to explain the disappearance of so many people. This is what the authors come up with:
The world has been stockpiling nuclear weapons for innumerable years. Since the United States dropped atomic bombs on Japan in 1945 and the Soviet Union first detonated its own devices September 23, 1949, the world has been at risk of nuclear holocaust. Dr. Rosenzweig and his team of renowned scholars is close to the discovery of an atmospheric phenomenon that may have caused the vanishing of so many people instantaneously.”
“Dr. Rosenzweig believes that some confluence of electromagnetism in the atmosphere, combined with as yet unknown or unexplained atomic ionization from the nuclear power and weaponry throughout the world, could have been ignited or triggered-perhaps by a natural cause like lightning, or even by an intelligent lifeform that discovered this possibility before we did—and caused this instant action throughout the world.”
“Sort of like someone striking a match in a room full of gasoline vapors?” a journalist suggested.
This Dr. Rosenzweig character is, in fact, a botanist, and his theory becomes the prevailing explanation among non-believers. In the Left Behind authors’ world, there are no skeptics saying, “Now, wait a minute. We stopped testing nuclear weapons decades ago. Even if your idea of ‘some confluence of electromagnetism in the atmosphere, combined with as yet unknown or unexplained atomic ionization from the nuclear power and weaponry throughout the world’ itself weren’t completely bonkers, there simply wouldn’t be any remnants decades later. The whole idea is ludicrous.”
This lack of skeptical characters is hardly surprising. The Evangelical authors don’t even understand current skepticism toward their faith. Any time any idea comes close to their religious beliefs, skepticism disappears.