Even
Mainstream media is getting into the swing of things. Funny, I haven't yet encountered anyone who thinks that the world is going to end, in that literal sense of things, on December 21.
"Reassurance" from governments is a joke!
Doomsayers
await the end of the world – in 12 days' time
But
governments try to reassure their citizens not to panic
9
July, 2012
The
end of the world is nigh, or so apocalypse observers would have you
believe. The Mayan and Hopi Mesoamerican Long Count calendar may have
begun in 3114BC and continued unerringly ever since, but it comes to
an abrupt halt on 21 December 2012. Hence, the belief gaining ground
among those who fall for this kind of thing that the cosmos will
cease to exist in 12 days' time.
Although
it may not yet have taken root in Britain's Acacia Avenues, the idea
of an approaching cataclysm is troubling folk from Moscow to France,
and the US to Brazil. The New York Times has reported that some
spooked Russians have been panic-buying matches, fuel and sugar to
prepare for the post-apocalypse. And they are not alone. A poll by
Ipsos recently found that one in seven people believe the world will
end during their lifetime (or, presumably, just after it). The same
poll suggests that one in 10 people have experienced fear and/or
anxiety about the eschatological implications of Friday week.
But
reassurance is at hand. Governments around the world are taking the
prophesied threat seriously enough to inform their citizens that they
are not taking it seriously at all. Here in the United States, for
example, an official government blog entry was posted on Monday,
reassuring Americans that "Scary rumors about the world ending
in 2012 are just rumors".
Nasa
itself has waged a campaign of facts to combat the fear-mongering,
releasing a 6.5-minute YouTube video, in which David Morrison,
astronomer and Nasa scientist, personally debunked the Doomsday
theories. Last month, the space agency published detailed rebuttals
of five separate apocalyptic scenarios on its website, including a
meteor strike, a solar flare and the so-called polar shift, whereby
the Earth's magnetic and rotational poles would reverse, with
devastating consequences. While magnetic reversals do take place
approximately every 400,000 years, admits Nasa, "As far as we
know, such a magnetic reversal doesn't cause any harm to life on
Earth. Scientists believe a magnetic reversal is very unlikely to
happen in the next few millennia."
A
few days ago, the Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, tackled
the Mayan predictions in a spoof television appearance for the radio
station Triple J. Acknowledging that "The end of the world is
coming", she grimly intoned, "It turns out the Mayan
calendar was true … Whether the final blow comes from flesh-eating
zombies, demonic hell beasts or from the total triumph of K-Pop, if
you know one thing about me, it's this: I will always fight for you
to the very end." Some Australian commentators wondered aloud
whether such a light-hearted intervention was becoming of the PM. In
Russia, meanwhile, the Minister of Emergency Situations, Vladimir
Puchkov, issued a statement insisting that the world would not end
this month, a sentiment echoed by senior clerics from the nation's
Orthodox Church.
Experts
in Mayan culture – which flourished in what is now Central America
between AD250 and 900 – have dismissed the doomsayers, claiming the
2012 phenomenon misrepresents the Long Count calendar, and is
unsupported by any surviving Mayan texts. The internet, with its
capacity for sustaining conspiracy theories, is thought to be to
blame.
One
such theory is the "Nibiru cataclysm", which posits that
the Earth will collide with a planet by that name. The notion
originated in the 1990s, with an American woman called Nancy Lieder,
who claims she is a "contactee" with an implant in her
brain that allows her to communicate with aliens from the Zeta
Reticuli star system, 39 light years away. Ms Lieder, who has a
website and a Twitter account, says she was chosen to warn mankind of
the interplanetary danger that awaits us.
In
South and Central America, where the original prophecy was allegedly
made, responses are mixed. The mayor of the mountain town San
Francisco de Paula, in the far south of Brazil, has urged local
residents to stock up on supplies in preparation for the worst. But
in Yucatan, Mexico, which still has a large Mayan population, a
cultural festival is planned for 21 December. Any British people
still concerned about the Long Count's conclusion could perhaps seek
refuge in Bugarach, a tiny French village in the Pyrenean foothills,
which the web has inexplicably agreed will be spared the ravages of
Armageddon – possibly due to a nearby mountain, which resembles the
alien landing site from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Or
they could do what most of us do when our calendars run out: buy a
new one
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.