Might want to rethink your long-term plans. In case you haven't heard, a surprising number of people believe that the end - make that, The End - is only three years away.
On Dec. 21, 2012 - or the 23rd, depending on the math - the 5,125-year-old Maya calendar runs out of days. Add in an assortment of prophesies and some unusual celestial forecasts, and you've got the ultimate doomsday scenario, a script that includes everything from ecological collapse to cosmic cataclysm to a reversal of the Earth's polarity.
Hollywood cashes in on it all next month with the opening of the mother of all disaster movies: "2012." Its catchphrase is: "We were warned."
Which begs the question: Were we really? No, says Mark Van Stone, at least not by the Maya, a people who flourished in Central America from around A.D. 250 to A.D. 900.
Van Stone, a professor at California's Southwestern College, is a Maya scholar and hieroglyphic expert. He says 2012 merely marks the end of a cycle on the ancient calendar, a point at which it resets.
"The Maya were noteworthy and interesting and all that stuff," Van Stone said, "but they probably weren't anybody who'd be able to pinpoint the end of time."
The 2012 phenomenon doesn't seem to care. A cottage industry of books, seminars and T-shirts has been spawned. The History Channel and Syfy have produced "what-if" specials. In Virginia Beach, a company that designs 2012 shelters says it can't keep up with demand.
"We're slammed," said Brian Camden of Hardened Structures Hardened Shelters, a division of Powell Management Associates on Lynnhaven Parkway.
Doomsday calls for the most expensive type of shelter - a "standalone fortress," as Camden calls it, able to withstand earthquakes, tsunamis, solar flare-ups, explosions, impacts and armed assaults.
Costs run between $350 and $600 per square foot, depending on location. So far, all of the company's clients have been out of state. Confidentiality is part of the deal, Camden says. Most of his clients are millionaires building bunkers beneath remote retreats.
Camden figures that companies like his have built more than 1,000 doomsday shelters across the country, with another 100 under construction.
"I really don't buy into any specific part of 2012," he said, "but we have a simple philosophy here: Our clients' priorities are our priorities. I'm not going to argue with them about what might or might not happen."
John Hoopes at the University of Kansas specializes in ancient cultures and myths of the past. He says people have been eyeing 2012 since the early 1900s, when Maya dates were first translated. Over the decades, their ranks grew, swelled by followers of Nostradamus, Edgar Cayce and others whose predictions seemed to point to the year as well.
In time, they were joined by other subcultures - a psychedelic circle that based its 2012 fears on a handful of drug-induced visions; UFO believers convinced of alien influence on the Maya; star gazers concerned about celestial alignments destined to push the sun across the galactic equator; the religious right, long poised for Armageddon.
"It's made for some really strange bedfellows," Hoopes said, "groups that don't typically think on the same page."
Mark Wilson, a visiting professor of early Christianity at Regent University, doesn't think most Christians are buying into 2012.
"It's not linked to the Bible, so there's not much interest," Wilson said. "Besides, the Christian community is experiencing a bit of apocalyptic burn out."
Too many doomsday dates have come and gone. The granddaddy was Y2K.
"It all fizzled," Wilson said. "The Bible says that only the Father knows the day or the hour."
As for the Maya, they were indeed deep thinkers for their time - equipped with a written language, adept at astronomy and math. But they also favored elongated heads, crossed eyes and human sacrifice.
Van Stone, the Maya scholar, says their calendar, while impressive, is just another calendar, flawed by inaccuracies and historical agendas: "All calendars are like that - even the one we're using today."
He finds the 2012 phenomenon "fascinating. As a professional, I've been looking at this as a chance to draw the spotlight off the crazies and onto the actual Maya."
So far, he's had limited success. The movie won't help. Starring John Cusack, Woody Harrelson and Danny Glover, it's directed by Roland Emmerich, the man behind "Independence Day" (alien attack) and "The Day After Tomorrow" (global warming).
Van Stone plans to see "2012" with some of his anthropologist pals. What the heck, they like to see famous landmarks blow up as much as the next guy.
Hoopes, the ancient cultures specialist, says 2012 hype is self-perpetuating. It'll keep going as long as it sells, and it'll keep selling as long as the hype fans the flames.
"So it spirals out and keeps people's juices going and makes them spend money," he said. "Looks like a good time to invest in bottled water and duct tape again."
For the past three years, the Edgar Cayce Association for Research and Enlightenment in Virginia Beach has held an annual 2012 conference. Hundreds of people have come, mostly out-of-towners.
"It's one of our best conferences," said Alison Ray, ARE's marketing manager.
Speakers touch on 2012's many ties and theories, with an emphasis on the ARE's own take. Cayce followers are among those who believe 2012 won't bring global catastrophe, but just the opposite.
They think 2012 will herald the dawning of a new age - a phase of enlightenment and evolution for mankind.
But that won't make nearly as cool of a movie.
Joanne Kimberlin, (757) 446-2338, joanne.kimberlin@pilotonline.com
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Coincidence or Conspiracy?
No one said anything about the world ending in 2012 until after Obama was elected President. Is this yet another Republican plot?
The party of NO is really going negative in 2012 big time.
Obama wins and is elected President in 2008 so declare the world over just a month before the end of his first term.
If he wants to run for a second a term? No problem the world is going to end before that can happen.
Whether he wins or loses re-election in 2012, there will be no second term because the world ends in Dec 2012, no inauguration in 2013.
Rio just thought it got the Olympics in 2016 -- the world will have ended in 2012.
Seems like a lot of trouble to go to just to deny Obama a second term.
Is there no limit to Republican hard feelings?
When I will believe the world is ending in 2012
1) When the parties quit collecting money for the next Presidential Election
2) When they cancel the 2014 and 2016 Olympics
3) When pension systems stop their projections past 2012
4) The IRS decrees that it will be unnecessary to with hold income taxes for 2011
5) All the charities and religious organizations for go fund raising in 2011 since they won't need money anymore.
6) When everyone who really believes this is true gives ME all their valuables and assets since they won't need them after 2012. I expect to be here in 2013 and will gladly spend it for them.
And in 2013 we will hear of the next date the world will end....Remember Y2K?
Hmmm...
I think the answer may be more simple than the 2012 theorists believe. Maybe when the Mayans were making the calendar, they just decided to stop at 2012, because they got tired or finaly found girlfriends.
I dunno ...
There could be several ways to interpret this.
1. Barack Obama is re-elected on Nov. 6 2012 and the world ends 6 weeks later;
or,
2. Sarah Palin is elected president on Nov. 6 2012 and the world ends 6 weeks later;
or,
3. The Cubs win the Word Series and the world ends 4 weeks later.
Any bets?
6 weeks?
Would Palin last 6 weeks before quitting?
Oops...
Re the Cubs, make that 8 weeks later ... probably the day they're greeted at the White House by ... whomever.
Whatever you believe it's all fulfilling
Maya prophecy may be running out ,but we can't predict the end time to a day or hour or year.If you believe in the Bible it is all taking place as it says and if you you don't believe in the book as the Bible someone wrote this book and it is fulfilling,either way of how you believe or don't believe it is all happerning,More so in the last 21 years as we see the Gov.taking more control of our lives and changing what we believe in and how we want to live I belive that we are close or already in the way of 666 happerning,Now I voted for this Pesident either way some president would have won and all things would still take place and happen,no stopping it,the one will be here in time that will take control over us if we let him,Now we all have see a lot of Gov.changes big changes in the last 21 years or so,one way of taking control over us is though our kids and controling them think about now this President want to take away our family time from us he wants the kids away from the family more hours aday and possible weekends also,they may say that is education,but I dont believe that,most kids go to school and have to come home and do hours and hours of home work now,Look at our milita
Can I have your stuff?
Can I have your stuff?
THE END OF THE WORLD:
For someone,the world ends every day. It is a part of living.We c annot stop what God intended to happen.If you beliece in GOD,and rhe fact that he made the world,and everything in it,there is a great reward at the end of life. I do, and there is always a reward in life.If you don't,that is your choice.Man has been predicting the coming of the end of the world for thousands of years.People have sold their homes and gone on mountain tops and into caves waiting for the world to come to an end.No one knows for sure when the presant world as we know it will cease,but it has been promised that it will be be a joyful time of celebration when it does come.
Interesting
how we are such sheep that we believe a civilization that couldn't last for the length of their calendar. But then we also believe such thngs as Nostradamus and his very vague predictions, or even a man who only lived 33 years and was executed for treason. Myths always seem to have a life all their own.
Skipping to the end of *my*
Skipping to the end of *my* desk calendar I can say with some authority the world will end on January 3, 2010. The only possibility we have of staving this calamity off is to go to mall and buy a new calendar.
Given up?
Has the pilot given up totally on reporting news and fluff articles like this are now front page material?
Hey!
This story is important. I certainly want to know when the world ends. I have to make sure my affairs are in order!
Jesus DID in fact say
The bible is a book written by man for his own purposes and reinterpreted when man needed to reinvent religion to control the behavior of others or justify his own bad behavior. There are no FACTS in the bible.
So Jesus, did in FACT, say nothing. If in FACT he ever existed.
"It is amazing what some people will believe." Said very well in one of the first comments.
You are writing this as if
...what you think is fact. Sounds more (to me, anyway) like some philosophy course you took before you got kicked out of community college.
Cool Dude...
You must assume you are cool because you are a heretic...the Bible which took 400 years to assilimate...was well argued about Jesus the man, the God, the Man/God...until you study how all this came about in truth you are showing your buttocks...
On the bright side
If the world will actually end in December of 2012, then President Obama's economic policies would actually make sense.
what do the mayans say today?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091011/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_mexico_apocalypse2012;_ylt=Ahtmw9MyrG4Pf8TYAzPGbAes0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTM2cWxqZzhtBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMDkxMDExL2x0X21leGljb19hcG9jYWx5cHNlMjAxMgRjcG9zAzMEcG9zAzgEcHQDaG9tZV9jb2tlBHNlYwN5bl90b3Bfc3RvcnkEc2xrAzIwMTJpc250dGhlZQ--
BULL!
Oh Well.......Always the Pessimist.
After working hard my entire life, on 22 December 2012 I will become eligible for Social Security. I suppose that for me anyway, Murphy's Law dictates that these folks must be correct.
Biblical Quote
It seems that Mr Wilson was paraphrasing the text which was correctly noted as being from Matthew 24:36....however the comments from the other individual which took him to task were not quite correct....Jesus DID in fact say, "No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." (NIV)
~ Retired Pastor