Proof the world will not end in 2012.
As the Mayan End of the World approaches, Russians are hoarding matches and torches like they’re forming a D&D raiding party.
“People are buying candles saying the end of the world is coming,” Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said in a Guardian article. “Does no one realize that once the end of the world comes, candles won’t help them?”
The Russians are not alone, of course.
According to a Reuters survey of 16,000 people in 21 countries, at least 10 percent of the population is genuinely concerned that we’ll all be annihilated on Dec. 21, the day one Mayan calendar ends. Other Mayan calendars say nothing unusual will occur in 2012.
“Preppers,” folks who hoard food, ammo and whatever else they think they will need during whatever apocalypse they have conjured, are located all over the world, including the U.S.
Heck, there’s even a TV show about them, Doomsday Preppers, on the National Geographic Channel.
The American Preppers Network stresses a “self-reliant” lifestyle to its members, which, according to the website, means having a year’s supply of food on hand. They even offer samples of freeze-dried food that can presumably survive Ragnarok or even zombies, who tend to eat only non-freeze-dried brains.
NASA scientists, using more modern technology than was available to Mesoamerican cultures, say the world will keep on spinning Dec. 22.
“Just as the calendar you have on your kitchen wall does not cease to exist after December 31, the Mayan calendar does not cease to exist on December 21, 2012. This date is the end of the Mayan long-count period but then — just as your calendar begins again on January 1 — another long-count period begins for the Mayan calendar,” NASA writes on its sadly necessary “Why The World Won’t End” website.
A lot of people aren’t comforted by science. Instead, they use common sense.
Like the surviving 800,000 or so Mayans in Mexico, who apparently don’t look at ancient calendars.
South of the border, they’re keeping it real.
“We don’t know if the world is going to end,” said modern Mayan Yeh Kinil, 62. ”Remember 2006, and the ‘6-6-6′ (June 6, 2006): A lot of people thought something was going to happen, and nothing happened after all.”
“Why get panicky? If something is going to happen, it’s going to happen.”
Still, I’ll be hoarding wrapping paper and boxes. If the world doesn’t end, Santa has work to do.
54 comments Add your comment
Felix the cat
December 17th, 2012
5:00 pm
I plan on coming and going at the same time…just sayin
Realistic Georgian
December 17th, 2012
5:32 pm
Everyone should have some sort of Emergency Preparation plan in place. While “The end of the World” scenario may be unrealistic and even laughable – we have seen situations where society crumbles, where the rule of law becomes survival of the fittest and where clean water and food suddenly become scarce and violence abundant. It happened during Katrina, the LA riots, and it’s currently taking place in far away places like Syria.
Jon Danzig
December 17th, 2012
5:43 pm
The predicted world’s end on 21 December is irrational scare-mongering nonsense – but the ‘Millennium Bug’ was not. There’s a difference, and it’s important to the human race that we understand what it is. See my latest blog: ‘Mayan Catastrophe versus Millennium Bug’:
http://jondanzig.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/mayan-catastrophe-versus-millennium-bug.html
Short link: goo.gl/nok1y
oh, well....
December 17th, 2012
5:57 pm
Everyone hit Rooms To Go and get everything on the no pay til 2015 plan.
Lauri
December 17th, 2012
5:57 pm
I’m a prepper, but I don’t think the world is going to end on December 21, 2012. I prep because Alaska is a long way from the west coast ports that are our food lifeline and the last big labor strike they had at the Port of Long Beach (about five years ago), the store shelves here got mighy empty. It just makes sense to prepare for a natural disaster or a terrorist event. My goal is a year’s worth of food, but in reality, I’ve got maybe three months on hand.
melvinowens
December 17th, 2012
6:52 pm
why would anybody believe the mayans can predict the end of the world? after all, these people worshipped the snake god and sacrificed their children and virgins to volcanoes to appease their gods. i’ll stick to the bible:”no one knows the end of time but the father in heaven” according to jesus
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Kalki Venkateshwara
December 17th, 2012
9:52 pm
Open website http://www.swastik.org for official website “End of world”, “Kalki Jesus”
Exenon
December 18th, 2012
3:39 am
I am now in my 67Th year. The world has ended on numerous occasions since I was old enough to take notice. My favorite was the Seventh Day Adventists, who predicted the end of the world from biblical prophecy. They took to the hills en mass. When they descended in their disappointment, a significant proportion of the church were still convinced it had ended and went about their business as if it hadn’t. Then there was the millennium, but no one ever thought to mention whether it was the Julian or Augustan millennium, or even bother with the millennium of the Abrahamic tradition according to which we have gone through about 7 Milennia without a hitch. Nothing much has been revealed in the Bible, the Upanishads, the Kannon Sutra or even the Koran regarding Mayan theology and their obsessions with seeing who could produce the longest imaginable calender without even noticing it was in the shape of a wheel. As a Scot I am a born sceptic, not given to superstitious rantings about the latter days. And does it not say in the Book of Contradictions that “Death will come as a thief in the night and you will not know the time or the moment” Obviously there are those to whom life is hardly worth living that the doomsday scenario enriches their paltry existence