2012 the End of the World? Not So Fast!

Wow! I've got my 2013 summer back!

I had stopped planning trips, mortgage payments, haircuts, and other important things for three years from now because, as everyone knows, the world is going to end in 2012. We all know this because the Mayan Long Calendar (not to mention a recent disaster movie) says so. The Maya knew a thing about the "end of days." Look no further than the fact that they're not around anymore.

For years, we've been told that December 21, 2012 would be the last day on Earth because that's the day that the Long Calendar ended. So all this fascination with President Obama's re-election campaign slated to take place in the summer of 2012 would have little meaning in the long run because first of all, he wouldn't be taking office because Inauguration Day would be January 20, 2013, and secondly, there's would be a long run because the Long Calendar would have meant that time had run out.

But wait. Comes a horseman with knows that the prophecy might be, shall we say, out of date. A new book by an expert in the field says that the calculations to bring the Long Calendar in line with our current calendar might be wrong and that the real year in which the world is going to end might be significantly different, like 50 years different, on either side. So, the world could be going to end in 2063. Or it could have already ended. Take your pick. I know what choice I'd make under those circumstances.

See, this Long Calendar has a long of street cred because the Maya were so good at keeping track of things like days, weeks, months, years, and apocalypses. Trouble was, they weren't so good at keeping track of things like disease, enemies, and other ravages of time. They were fascinated by time itself, however, as evidenced by their writings and etchings. They predicted all kinds of bad things happening in the present and in the future.

There's even a word for this end-of-days business: eschatology. The closer we get to 2012, the more people will escalate eschatology in their daily thinking. The more hype this kind of story gets, the more people will hunker down and get ready for the end, whatever and whenever it may be.

There's also the possibility of people bunkering down, perhaps to avoid whatever cataclysm might be referred to by the Mayan prophecy. It might be a war. It might be a nuclear war. We might go to ground —underground, to be more precise, in the precious bunkers that we built lo those many years ago to escape radiation from expected nuclear explosions. (After all, enough bombs exist now to blow up the planet many times over.)

I'd really rather not see that, actually. We'd have all sorts of issues with food, fresh water, living space, and fights in the War Room. Who would want to live through that?