The World Will End on December 21, 2012!

“If you tell the people a lie often enough, and loud enough, eventually they will believe you.”- Adolf Hitler

Our prehistoric ancestors started out like the rest of the animal kingdom, applying day to day skills in order to survive. As time went on, we developed skills as hunter/gatherers and forming communities. Once that was accomplished, someone came up with the brilliant idea of getting others to think or act a certain by scaring the living crap out of them. This is when religion and behavior modification was invented. One of the best methods to get everyone excited is predicting when the world will end.

We all are aware of the latest doom date of December 21, 2012. Why 12/12/12? Because that’s when the Mayan calendar ended. Well, unless you're a Mayan, 12/12/12 means nothing to the rest of us. More likely it probably means nothing to them either. The Ancient Mayans probably got tired of counting and decided 12/12/12 was more than enough. Or maybe they though that by ending their calendar on that date would freak out someone hundreds of years down the road. They succeeded!

One of the qualities that sets you and I apart from, let's say, Daisy the Hamster, is that Daisy is more interested in playing in her exercise wheel than stressing about how the world will end. What I’m basically saying is that, no matter how advanced your brain is developed, if you don’t believe in these end-of-the-world predictions, why should you be scared of them? Remember the Y2K Bug of 2000? It was predicted that utilities, communications, and other electrical dependent objects will come to a crashing halt. I still have the candle my mother gave me on the night of December 31^th 1999 for "just in case". Just like the other 220+ end-of-the-world dates, they all came an went without incident. Although it‘s funny that the Y2K Bug made bigger news than the 15 Doomsday predictions scheduled for 2000. For example, in the November 18, 1997 issue of the Weekly World News, it was reported that the CIA has caught a space alien who had crash-landed on June 20th in a New Mexico desert. The alien was from a destroyed planet that’s over 200 light years from earth and claims to be the sole survivor. He reported, in perfect English, that God is "furious with His creations everywhere." None of the species that he created turned out as expected. So God is systematically working his way across the galaxies, setting fires and exploding planets one by one. Earth is slated to be next! Then there’s the June 24, 1997 issue of Sun Magazine. They reported that in 1961, Pope John XXIII predicted that Doomsday would begin with the detonation of an atomic bomb in a major European city by a Libyan terrorist group. This will trigger a massive six-month war that will cause the deaths of millions of people. Then of course some bored mathematical genius said that if you divide 2000 by 3, you will get the devil's number 666.66666666666667. What that has to do with the world ending is beyond me. But it is listed as #3 of 15 Doomsday Events scheduled for the year 2000. The brain child who came up with this needs to stay out of the prediction business and re-read The Book of Revelation 13:17-18. For those suffering from Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia, 666 refers to "the number of a man," or the beast. There’s no reference to Satan or any kind of anti-Christ. Back when most of the western world was under the management of the Roman Empire, the Jews and early Christians used numerals, codes and symbols to avoid prosecution. Just like how siblings use codes and Pig Latin to avoid prosecution from their parents when they screw up. So the three numbers, 666 or 616, simply refers to “Nerō Caesar a.k.a. Roman Emperor Nero. So the next time you’re in an intense game of Trivia Pursuit, and you get a 666 question, you’ll know the answer.

So what exactly is the end of the world? I’m not referring to last Friday night where the girl of your dreams turned you down for a date. Are we talking about the actual end of the earth, or just simply referring to the end of mankind? The earth will still to continue to be in business with or without humans for another 4+ billion years. Daisy the Hamster’s descendents won’t care either way. Besides we’re already destroying the earth with pollution, nuclear weapons, and over population on a massive scale! So why do we need Doomsday predictions? We got it covered right now! If we really need to worry about something, how about the major issues of the present and immediate future like Global warming, over population, and so on. Often the professional Doomsday dreamer will turn to the Bible, Tora or Koran for inspiration. Theses best sellers have more threats of death and disaster stories than you can shake a stick at. The first end-of-the-world story focuses on wine inventor turned ship builder, Noah. All three books tell the story of how one day, God got pissed off at everyone and decide to wipe the earth clean, except for a chosen few. Then the stories that followed rivaled anything Hollywood produced. Take for instance, John’s train wreck, The Book of Revelation in the New Testament. It’s disappointing because were expecting a cool ending. The bad-guy, Satan, didn’t end up a grease spot and continues to be a nuisance. But with an ending like that, it was a good way to keep your followers in line by saying you’ll go to hell is do this.But with such a lousy end to the Bible, I’m surprised that nobody thought of writing a sequel!

In more recent years, end-of-the-world stories went Hollywood. In the 1968 movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clark and Stanley Kubrick showed us a world were primitive humans had to learning how to communicate, work together and use tools in order to survive. Modern humans had to learn those basic skills all over again in order to survive in outer space. But over the years, humans got lazy and relied more and more on computers, like the electronic villain H.A.L., to do the thinking for them. Everything is great until H.A.L. develops an attitude and all hell breaks out. But now lets take that scenario further in the future, say 300 years from now. Will computers do all our thinking for us like in 2001: A Space Odyssey? How lazy will humans really become? Will our computers come to a conclusion and decide that they don’t need humans around anymore and recreate scenes from the movie, Terminator? Besides being entertaining, the movies 2001 and Terminator simply ask, "What if?" But keep in mind that the military has already experimented with ground level search and destroy robots with artificial intelligence. Of course the guys who play video games all day in their parents’ basement are saying, "Cool!" Plus we’ve all seen the flying Predators patrolling areas of the Middle East on the evening news.

Why are we so fascinated with the end of times? We’re still debating on the earth’s origins let alone its future. The bottom line is that nobody knows what will happen in the distant future. My guess is just as good as Nostradamus’ or Jose the busboy‘s. Whatever conclusion we come up with, it will still be debated, new dates will still be set world’s end and Daisy and her decedents still won’t care. If we did know the exact date the end will come, our immediate concern will be handling the staggering number of unemployed sci-fi writers, filmmakers and clergy. I’m sure Joel Osteen would make an awesome door greeter at Wal-Mart. So to the non-Mayans out there, December 21, 2012 simply means that it's the day between December 20 and December 22, 2012.