Joseph Seed (1976-) was an American Christian fundamentalist religious leader who was the leader of the Project at Eden's Gate doomsday cult in Hope County, Montana during the early 21st century.
Biography[]
Joseph Seed was born in Rome, Georgia in 1976, the brother of Jacob and John Seed, and he grew up in a poor rural family of devout Christians. His father was abusive, psychologically impacting him; as a young boy, he claimed to have received revelations from God through "The Voice". After he was separated from his father after his school noticed the scars of his abuse, he squatted in an old packing plant, and he became a Christian fundamentalist and, along with his brothers, began preaching out of a former slaughterhouse in their hometown. They attracted the marginalized of society and built a large congregation called the "Project at Eden's Gate", warning of an apocalypse known as "The Collapse", but the disappearance of a former Eden's Gate member led to the police investigating the Seed family and forcing them to relocate to Montana with their followers. The cult settled in rural Hope County, where they bought up much of the local land and even the loyalty of the police force; the local residents opposed to them derisively nicknamed them the "Peggies". Seed built up a militaristic cult which effectively dominated the county and isolated themselves from the rest of society, and they used abandoned missile silos as fallout bunkers, operated forced labor camps for locals who resisted the cult, and occasionally resorted to violence to enforce their rule. In September 2018, when the local police attempted to arrest Seed for his crimes, his followers shot down their helicopter and attempted to hunt them down, as they believed that Seed's arrest would lead to "The Collapse". The deputies worked with local residents opposed to Seed, nicknamed "the Resistance", to dismantle the Cult's control over Hope County, and they ultimately killed Seed's brothers. Seed then challenged the deputies to a final face-off at the church, but the law enforcement officers decided to walk away and instead bring in the US National Guard to complete the county's pacification.