Firstly, that "reset" joke had nothing to do with a presumed Armageddon.
Are you sure Al?
It was just a joke.
What is the purpose of jokes Al? To let out steam, to resolve unconscious problems in a none painful way just like dream work.
And getting to your change of topic, Armageddon;
The purpose of this joke is to deal with "reset", our global human suicide, in a none threatening way for the self defense mechanism of conscious self. By displacing the real danger of the third world war, or if you prefer the word Armageddon, on to faceless cartoon characters barely recognizable (double disassociation), the whole event becomes disassociated from us. It appears as something far away and therefore of no threat to us. Also, another key purpose of joke is laughing, to let out the frustration that has been building up in our unconscious.
a third or even any amount of people believing in something doesn't make it happen.
one needs a certain amount of energy to accomplish global human suicide (fish crawling out of the water), and how could this be possible without a significant amount of people who would support it?
And it is laughable even to suggest that a third of the people on earth believe there will be an Armageddon.
Two billion of them are Christians, and one billion are Muslims.
Not even a sixth of the earths population even has a high enough standard of living or even education to contemplate an Armageddon in the sense that privileged Westerners mean the word.
One does not have to have the education of privileged Westerners to be a suicide bomber blowing up radioactive, chemical and biological weapons
the only thing they need to know is that when they die in the "holy war", they will go to "heaven" and get 70 women. And the privileged Westerners, when they die, Jesus will "come" and bring the good guys to "heaven". And of course, every side in this game believes to be the "good" one.
Why suffer here Al when in "heaven" Christians "awaits" eternal life, singing "the song of the Lamb" and Muslims will "get" their 70 women?
Sigmund Freud:
Jokes and their relation to the unconscious
Brain
Albert Einstein:
The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.