Are We All Going to Die on December 21, 2012?

Apocalypse! The end of the world! End to life! End to humanity!….?

There are many theories on when Earth might die out, when the Sun might die out, or when so called “apocalypse” might happen. I didn’t believe in those theories because one famous apocalypse theory that the world would end in 2000 happened to be false. (Obviously since we’re all alive today) People started to get interested in 1999 whether the apocalypse was going to happen or not, but it did not. But this time, I saw this Korean documentary on a newly calculated apocalypse date set to December 21, 2012, and it scared the heck out of me. Multiple theories from multiple time periods from multiple people all pointed at the single date, December 21, 2012, as the date for the apocalypse. It isn’t a single theory: that wouldn’t scare me like I am right now. But the fact that so many theories point to an exact date, not a year, frightens me suddenly.

http://blog.naver.com/peachyi?Redirect=Log&logNo=20088418191

The first apocalypse theory that points to the year 2012 originates from the Mayans. Mayans, who are famous for their outstanding math and science developments, believed that there were 6 suns in our universe. They predicted that their tribe was going to die out when the fourth sun dies out. The Mayans actually did die out when the fourth sun died according to their calendar. They also predicted that the world was going to come to an end when the last sun, the sixth sun, dies. Coincidentally enough, the last day of the Mayan calendar, which is when the sixth sun dies, is December 21, 2012.  According to the Mayan calculation of gravity, that is sometime accepted as more accurate than the Gregorian theory we use today,  all of the planets align on December 21, 2012, and some great natural disaster is going to sweep Earth due to a sudden gravity change. Some people might say, “Oh, whatever. It’s just one date that the Mayans made up.” But this date keep reappearing in other theories as well.

http://blog.naver.com/peachyi?Redirect=Log&logNo=20088418191

Nostradamus, a 16th century doctor and a reputed seer, also predicted the apocalypse to happen on December 21, 2012. In the last page of his Lost Book, which is filled with prophetic drawings, he drew an alignment of eclipses that all point to the date December 21, 2012. Many people interpret his prophetic drawings on the apocalypse in 2012 as the occurrence of World War III.

The third prediction of the apocalypse was from the program “Web Bot”. “Web Bot” was originally made to infer on stock market changes by calculating all the key words and events in the world. Web Bot predicted a drastic change on 9/11 and the twin towers terror incident actually happened for real. The scary part is that the “Web Bot”‘s graph stops at the date of December 21, 2012. Even the inventor doesn’t know exactly why. People just interpret the end of the graph as the end of the world, where no stock market would exist.

The last theory comes from the existence of planet X. A professor from the Goebe University in Japan discovered the tenth planet in our solar system and named it “Planet X”.  He announced that the planet’s rotation sequence was every 3600 years, and that on December 21, 2012, Planet X was going to collide to Earth. When Planet X collides with the earth, almost a quarter of the Earth would get squashed by the planet and half of the rest would be covered with magma that would erupt after Planet X starts melting after the collision. NASA disagreed with him on the existence of Planet X but people counter-questioned NASA on the reason why they were building a modern “Noah’s Ark” in the artic filled with seeds and cells of animals and plants.

There are lots of other theories that all point to the year 2012 as when the apocalypse might happen. There’s even a movie on this apocalypse theory called “2012” that’s soon to start. Here’s a trailer:

This theory and all the interest to this theory reminded me of “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” that we read just recently in our A.P. Literature class. In the short story, there’s one quote that goes like this:

“Ten years ago any symmetry with a semblance of order — dialectical materialism, anti-Semitism, Naziem — was suffiecient to entrance the minds of men”(Borges 7).

This quote represented the theme of how easily people are deceived about things and how people justify their own beliefs to make them “reality”. The apocalypse theory could be a coincidence just like any other predictions that are sometimes right and sometimes wrong. But people are deceived by the statistics, documentaries, and photos and hypnotize themselves to believe it as “reality”. I wondered if more people are going to believe in this theory as more media comes out on this topic and as 2012 comes closer. I definitely don’t want the world to end at 2012 when I would finally be in college. Apocalypse. Is it real? Would it happen? Can we stop is somehow? Should we believe in this 2012 apocalypse theory and prepare?

So many questions come into mind. My solution is this; just like UFOs or just like any other superficial belief, we should look at this theory with the same view as we look at a hypotheses. We should interpret it as some event that’s absolutely rare to happen more than believe in it because it has been never “scientifically” proven. And what’s so good to predict about our apocalypse? I’ll rather get to know the day before or a week before so that I make sure that I spend my last days with my family.

It’s just like how people answer differently to the question, “Would you like to know the exact date when you would die?”

I say, “No.” It’s better to enjoy life as it is now. Why predict the end when it’s still continuing now? But I have to admit, it is indeed slightly scary though. : P