[Insert epic movie trailer voice.] Oh. My. Gawd. It's the year two-thousand and twelve, and we're all gonna die. You have been warned. [End epic voice.]
Or something like that, right? In 2008-9 Columbia Pictures launched a stealth marketing campaign under the guise of the fictional “Institute for Human Continuity.” This farce of an organization used TV spots and various forms of online media to encourage people to prepare for the ultimate end of mankind. The goal was to promote their movie sensationalizing the 2012 apocalypse scare fittingly entitled “2012.” And while the campaign was spectacularly successful, leading way too many people to see a truly atrocious film, it also promoted uninformed panic.
For those who don't know, this film was inspired by the latest doomsday theory, which predicts that the world will end on December 21, 2012, beginning with a slow decline starting mid-March of course. No one knows precisely how the world is going to come to a screeching halt, but that hasn't stopped people from throwing their theories around.
It all began with a misinterpretation of the Olmec Long Count Calendar now closely associated with the Ancient Mayans. This calendar aligned with the belief that the gods created the world, didn't like the results and started over three times. We are now living in the results of the fourth creation of the world according to them.
The third world ended after exactly 13 b'ak'tuns – about 5,125 years. Thus the current Long Count Calendar for the fourth world ends after 13 b'ak'tuns. However, even living Mayans don't consider this to be the mark of the apocalypse. For Mayans, this date is a celebration of renewal like a birthday party for the world. Not exactly a reason to go screaming for the hills. Yet conspiracy theorists aren't about to let this one go that easily. In fact they flat out ignore this and point to other theories that corroborate their 2012 apocalypse predictions.
The History Channel was swift to swoop in on this trend and released several doomsday 'documentaries' between 2005 and now. Supposed supporters of the 2012 end of the world scenario include the oracle Sybil, Nostradamus, the I-Ching, the Web Bot project, Merlin and last but not least the Book of Revelations. I don't know about you, but I don't exactly consider modern interpretations of these to be a lot of hard evidence. Furthermore, the History Channel documentary 2012, End of Days (2009) states that at least a few of these predictors arrived at the end date 2012 independent of each other, which isn't precisely true. Rather, once the popularity of the 'Mayan count down' took hold, supporters of these other predictors came out of the woodworks, demonstrating how well their prophetic theories fit this mold.
A much more factual look at our 2012 prospects can be found in the 2009 Discovery Channel documentary 2012 Apocalypse, featuring footage from the Columbia Pictures movie 2012. Anyone concerned about our chances of annihilation this year should really give this a look. Instead of citing ancient prophets and oracles, this documentary analyzes the theories that have been proposed as possible world enders such as supervolcanoes, planetary alignment, cosmic energy, solar flares, geomagnetic reversal and collision with Planet X. It maintains an entertaining atmosphere, parodying – whether intentional or not – the tones of other doomsday proclaimers, while using cold hard science to poke holes in these fire and brimstone theories.
See, some of these theories actually do have some basis in fact, but they completely blow the consequences and possibilities out of proportion. They condense timelines and give absolutely 210% worst case scenarios. Or they assign an exact day to an event that could happen tomorrow or in 200,000 years. As proven by Columbia Pictures' Institute for Human Continuity campaign proved, conspiracy and fear are great marketing tools.
The way I look at it is this. We can't know what's going to happen in the future. Heck, according to quantum mechanics what happens in the next few seconds is even uncertain. Yes, it's fun to speculate and get all worked up about impending doom, but the possibility of an apocalypse doesn't change anything because we can't know. Regardless of whether or not the world ends with this year, any of us could die tomorrow – fact. Take life by the horns and live it to the fullest. Time never stopped on account of fear before, and I don't think it's about to now.
