Critically examining the "End of the World"
Posts tagged 2012 prophecy
The Year 2012: End of the World?
Feb 2nd
There is a lot of speculation these days about the possibility of a global cataclysm in the next few years. Most of this attention is based on the Mayan calendar. December 21, 2012 is the supposed end of the Mayan long form calendar, but it is only the end of one epoch, not the end of time. This date has been popularized by the modern media, being featured in everything from History Channel specials to a major Hollywood blockbuster film. There is no shortage of people out there willing to cash in on the attention being given to this phenomenon, but sadly, personal gain all too often outweighs informed or reasonable analysis.
To start off with most of the people talking about the “Mayan’s 2012 prophecy” do not have a proper understanding of the long count Mayan Calendar. December 21, 2012 is not actually the end of the calendar, it is the end of the 13th b’ak’tun. We will be delving into the intricacies of the Mayan calendar in the future, but to keep it simple for now, even the Mayans predicted events to occur after the 13th b’ak’tun’s conclusion. Not even the fascinating culture who’s calendar has inspired much of this frenzy thought that this impending date would be the end of the world.
End times prophecies and fears are common. While the most recent and easily remembered is probably the threat of the Y2K virus, they are not a new or recent phenomenon. Even the belief in an impending Rapture and biblical End Times prophecies, a relatively new school of thought within Christianity, is essentially only a little over 100 years old in a religion with a history that spans two millenniums. All you have to do is look at accounts of the turn of the first millennium to find evidence of groups shouting about the impending end of the world, and that was a thousand years ago.
However, it is also true that a failing infrastructure has left large segments of the population at risk from perfectly normal natural disasters. The National Academy of Sciences did issue a statement in January of 2009 warning about potential issues to modern electrical and communication networks caused by solar flaring. Prophecies might not be anything to worry about, but that does not mean there are no dangers presented by our reliance on modern systems and how they would interact with the processes of our planet and solar system.
It is our goal to not only examine theories and risks that modern society might face in the near future, it is our intention to provide reasonable advice you can act upon to help protect your self and your family. With all of the hysteria about the end times in today’s culture it is comforting to know that you are actually doing something. The year 2012 is probably not going to be the end of the world. However, unless we as a civilization fail to prepare ourselves and our culture to adapt to the challenges we will be facing in the future the era of man on Earth may be coming to a close sooner than we think.
Water water, everywhere…
Jan 24th
It is a well known fact that three quarters of the Earth’s surface is water. What is not well known is just how little of that water is actually fit for human consumption. Thanks to the wonders of modern plumbing, or the plethora of bottled waters available for purchase, most people in industrialized nations have come to take potable water for granted. In fact, less than 1% of the planet’s water is clean enough for healthy human consumption. In fact, a number of major US cities are already facing down water shortages even without the possibility of impending threat.
Take into account that the human body is also roughly 70% water and that it is essential for metabolizing nutrients as well as breaking up and removing waste, and the danger of not being able to get clean water quickly becomes very alarming. Water always tops the list of supplies needed for relief efforts after hurricanes, earthquakes, or other natural disasters that can decimate a community’s infrastructure. There is good reason for that.
If there was to be a Earth shattering event like those predicted by Patrick Geryl, or Nancy Leider, you can rest assured that access to clean water would be one of the first things you would need to secure for the health of you and your family. But the wild prognostications of people like this are not the real threat to the drinking water supply. The infrastructure of the United States water supplies is decades old and well past time for replacement. Water and sewage mains are breaking down from disrepair and governments, both local and Federal, are loath to spend the kind of money it takes to replace these systems until it is too late, that is to say, until they’ve already broken.
These breaks can result in homes without water, crumbling streets, and ultimately cost more money to repair than they would have to just refit before they failed. Unfortunately, finding politicians willing to make hard choices now for the sake of the long term picture is increasingly difficult when more and more of their energy is focused on keeping the electorate happy right now. Tomorrow’s problems belong to a nebulous future, while keeping your present day poll numbers up is essential to maintaining your office. The fact that this kind of short sighted policy is ultimately detrimental to the community is a fact that is lost on both the elected officials, and the voters, who are more concerned about today than they are about ten years from now. It is essentially a collective decision to put off the oil change in the car because the budget is tight, so long as the motor keeps running. But eventually the head gasket will blow.
On the plus side, it is possible for individuals to build their own water filtration systems. (Sorry, Brita, you might work on tap water, but you wont work on contaminated water) There are also plenty of methods to both test and purify your water as well. In the mean time, it’s important for people to remember that water might be everywhere, but we can drink very very little of it, and to take steps to conserve as much drinking water as we can, while we can.
The Problem with Prophecy
Jul 22nd
Doomsday prophecies are nothing new. Neither is a widespread desire to believe them. But in the end, they’re meaningless. The thing that most people fail to realize about “prophecy” is that it is ultimately open to interpretation. If an individual wants to believe a prophecy is true, whether as reinforcement for their religious world view, because they’re superstitious, or simply because the idea of a Universe in which they might actually be accountable for their actions is truly terrifying, it is a relatively simple matter to interpret specific lines as being relevant or in reference to actual historical events. The fact that the link between the event and the prophecy exists only in their mind is all too easy for them to dismiss.
Nostradamus is famous, or infamous, for a plethora of prophecies he wrote in his life time. He has been credited with predicting World War 2, the Atomic Bomb, and the 9/11 terrorist attacks of 2001, and more, but the truth is none of these things are actually explicitly expressed in his own words. Rather, he uses vague poetic images which people hundreds of years later have decided allude to events that transpired between the time of Nostradamus and their present time. This is like seeing a television with no signal, cluttered with snow, then suddenly seeing the image of a sailboat after somebody else tells you it is there. It is all to easy to fit the random elements into a pattern when you have a pattern you want or expect to see.
This same process holds true with “biblical prophecy.” Most “biblical prophecy” as espoused by the “Rapture Ready” is a crude hack job of biblical texts that has as much reason and consistency as William S Burrough’s “cut up” technique of writing. That is to say, they’ll take a few lines from one book, a few lines from another, toss them in a blender, set it to puree, and then pour out the sauce and go “literal interpretation of the ineffable word of God” despite the fact that for it to be the “literal interpretation of the ineffable word of God” it would a) have to be true for the present time, which would b) make it utterly meaningless and insensible for the 2000 some odd year history of Christianity. I have a hard time seeing how something “ineffable” can be right for the last 20 years, and wrong for the 2000 years proceeding it. That seems like a pretty huge and glaring error.
At the end of the day, the value of prophecy to those that believe in it is the concept that things are preordained. That they are not accountable, or for that matter, even capable of affecting the world in which they live or it’s future. It is in short a “bury your head in the sand” card. If everything has already been foretold, why make an effort to change it? This is why prophecy, despite being utterly bogus, is all too dangerous. If people at large do not make an effort to create positive change, to push for progressive reform that safeguards the environment while elevating the living conditions of human beings, then nothing will change. The status quo is not our friend. While what we know may be comfortable, it is anything but safe.
Nostradamus 12-21-2012 Predictions
Jan 16th
Much has been said about the events of 12-21-2012 and the perceived end of the long form Mayan calender. This has given light to many end of the world theories an predictions, but mostly from profiteers who want to take advantage of public fears. This doesn’t mean that we can not take a practical look at possible scenarios and what we can do to survive 2012.
Ironically enough Michel De 
Nostradamus was said to be born on December 21, 1503. Throughout his life Nostradamus was a renowned seer and in 1555 published a book of entitled “The Prophecies” where he gave his predictions of different major world events that would occur.
Since this time the writing of Nostradamus has been used by those looking to predict future events ranging from major world wars to natural disasters. Seldom has one book caused so much divisiveness and controversy among believers and skeptics.
Many people have been curious about the Nostradamus 12-21-2012 predictions and how he saw this conceived “end of the world” scenario. While there are no direct predictions for this date in his works many people believe that his prediction of a comet hitting the earth can be related to a realistic 2012 doomsday scenario.
Several excerpts many link to a Nostradamus 12-21-2012 prophecy include
Quatrain II.46
After great misery for mankind an even greater one approaches, when the great cycle of the centuries is renewed. It will rain blood, milk, famine, war and disease. In the sky will be seen a fire, dragging a tail of sparks.
Quatrain II.41
The great star for seven days will burn, The cloud will cause two suns to appear: The big mastiff all night will howl, When the great pontiff changes countries.
Quatrain II.70
The arrow from heaven will make it’s journey. Dead while speaking; a great execution. The stone in the tree, the pond nation brought down. The rumour of a human monster, purge and expiation.
These words have often been used to describe a doomsday scenario where a comet from space would strike the Earth causing massive devastation and the extinction of the human race.
How plausible is a Nostradamus 12-21-2012 comet scenario?
Many people may think that with December 21, 2012 fast approaching this scenario would not be possible. If there was a giant comet of asteroid on a collision course with Earth we would have seen it already, right?
This may be the scariest part of all. Currently it’s reported that NASA and several different independent agencies monitoring efforts are falling short of their goal to track 90 percent of all near earth objects between 140 meters and 1 kilometer in length. While these objects are too small to cause planetary damage, they’re still large enough to cause devastating damage to a local region, especially if they were to hit near a populated urban area. However, they are on track to meet their goals for tracking objects 1 kilometer or larger. These objects are massive enough that they could inflict major catastrophic damage on a planetary scale were they to impact the Earth
Wait, 2020? This means that currently NASA is currently way below this number if they’re not even on course to meeting the 90% mark.
What this could potentially mean is that an object with the size to cause massive devastation to major cities, infrastructure and the economy could sneak by without us even knowing. While there is no way to know for certain this has left many to ponder whether the Nostradamus comet predictions and 12-21-2012 are linked.
We’ll be delving further into this link in future posts as we go over different plausible doomsday scenarios.
