2012: It’s (Not) The End Of The World As We Know It, So I Feel Fine….

Hi folks!

Thanks for making 2011 another record setting year for Serenity Now… The SDC Blogs. Lots of new developments in readership, product reviews, and writing gigs with media outlets have been fun and welcomed. Looking forward to what the next 365 days will bring!

I thought it appropriate to repost an old blog on the old 2012 end-of-the-world hype, which no one is too worried about anymore. It was originally post for a site that is now defunct, so it’s a good opportunity to get it back in circulation. Enjoy!

-SDC
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Isn’t it great when Hollywood, and other media outlets, inspire panic in people by suggesting in a film or other propoganda that the world is going to end in the very near future? Isn’t it also interesting how much material on the topic becomes purchasable in various formats immediately after the report catches fire?

Contrary to suggestions of the 2009 straight-to-dvd blockbuster, Here’s why 2012 will simply be another year in history, and you can take a break from building your refuge tunnel to the center of the earth:

1) The Mayans did indeed have a calendar that ends on 2012. However, just like any other calendar, all you have to do is start it from the beginning again. Their calendar begins from a time Mayans identified as a point of creation, and then counted forward in units of “tun”. Similar to the way we sequentially write 10, then 20, 30, etc., Mayans change the names after 20 units. 20 tun equals 1 k’atun; 20 k’atun equals 1 b’ak’tun; then piktun, kalabtun, k’inchiltun, and so on. On December 21, 2012, the 13th b’ak’tun cycle will end, and then the 14th will begin. After the completion of 20 b’ak’tun’s, the first cycle of 20 piktun’s will begin October 13, 4772, and so on, and so forth. So if the Mayans already had names for all this, why would they/why should we think the world was ending?

2) There’s no planet or celestial body named “Nibiru” (or anything else) that is on a collision course for earth. NASA’s got plenty of instruments in space, like the Spitzer and Hubble telescopes, that would have relayed a message about a planet on an intercept course by now. NASA launched a spacecraft named Voyager 1 in 1977 (yes, there’s a Voyager 2 as well) that is just now in the process of leaving our solar system. So if it took us 33+ years to get something out of our solar system, don’t you think we’d know about something coming towards us by now? The odds of something that size getting to us through our galaxy in one piece (the Milky Way is filled with much larger and dangerous things like larger planets and asteroid fields) is extremely slim. Besides, if something we actually coming, The US or some other country would put up some sort of missle defence system, or we’d just deal with it ala Armageddon style, right?

3) The earth is subject to solar activity ALL THE TIME, and is able to deal with flares and such due to its magnetic field and atmosphere, which deflect harm. The earth’s magnetic field does reverse polarity once and a while (approximately every 400,000 years), but the effect takes several thousand years to complete, and would not interrupt the earth’s rotation or point of axis.

4) Planetary alignments also happen ALL THE TIME. They’re called “eclipses”, and chances are, you’ve heard of, or maybe even seen them. Even if all the planets in the solar system aligned (which they won’t), it wouldn’t be cataclysmic. It might be cold for a few hours or so, but that’d be about it until the sun started hitting us directly again. The earth isn’t going to flood, the oceans won’t boil, Hawaii won’t burn down, and the continents aren’t going to crash into each other.

So there’s the scientific explanation of why 2012 will hold nothing to worry about except for living your life. I’m a Christian, and my personal beliefs are to the tune of what Jesus said himself in the Bible,

“No one knows of the hour of the final days, not even the angels in heaven, except for God alone. The Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.” (Matthew 24:36, 44)

In other words, none of our fancy methods of determining the end of the earth will be accurate, as it will happen in an incalculable way; no calendars, no psychic or prophetic predictions, it’ll just happen. According to scientific theories, we’ve got a few billion years yet (but no pinpointed time), so don’t pack up or quit your job just yet. Until then, go live and enjoy your life! I’ll do my best to keep you afloat of other catastrophic cosmic events that are of no consequence to your, and everyone else’s, existence.

Happy 2012!

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