It’s the End of the World!
12 years ago

Gentlemen, I’ve got some bad news. The world, as we know it, is about to end. On December 21, 2012, the Mayan Long Count calendar completes its thirteenth Baktuun and the 5,125-year count down comes to an end. Long foretold prophecies will come true, and humanity, in general, is completely fucked. How will it end? That’s for you to decide.

The magnetic poles will shift, or something.

Earth’s magnetic poles will reverse positions, out of the blue, and cause massive cataclysmic events that wreak havoc upon mankind. Mass confusion and pandemonium will break out when all the compasses point south instead of north and no one can figure out how to get anywhere. The elves will go on strike when Santa moves his headquarters to Antarctica, but no one will care because he already outsourced all of his labor to China.

Super volcanoes will explode and resurface the Earth with liquid hot magma.

Every 600,000 years or so, super volcanoes fucking explode. It’s what they do. They’ve been doing it for hundreds of millions of years AND WE ARE WAY OVERDUE FOR AN EXPLOSION SO ITS DEFINITELY RANDOMLY HAPPENING ON DECEMBER 21st!!!!!!!!

There’s not really much you can do about this one. Stay as far away from Yellowstone National Park as you can. One thing you can look forward to is making a really cool death pose before you’re permanently entombed in igneous rock. Personally, I’m going to Tebow it.

Aliens will invade.

There’s not much on Earth that would be valuable to a super advanced civilization, so if they come all this way it’s either because they want to eat us or have sex with us. A lot of people think we would be able to put up a fight with our primitive monkey technology, but these people fail to realize how long it takes to travel between star systems, even at the speed of light.

If an alien species has the ability to make it all the way to Earth, that means their civilization is incredibly old and their technology is exponentially more advanced than our own. It wouldn’t be like lasers versus assault rifles, it would be like nuclear weapons versus sponges.

When the aliens come, don’t fight. Remain calm and try to be entertaining. If you’re lucky they might keep you as a pet, or put you in an intergalactic zoo. Or they will mercilessly sodomize your butthole and upload it to alien YouTube. It’s a coin toss, really.

The economy will crash.

The debt crisis will come to a head and we will spiral uncontrollably over the fiscal cliff. The dollar will become useless and the only actual currency will be bullets and cigarettes. Civilization as we know it will cease to exist, and all modern decency and ethics will devolve into primal survival. People will eat each other, and rival gangs will fight bloody turf wars over precious resources at the local Wal-Mart. Mankind will descend into darkness until the day that our savior Ron Paul overcomes adversity with his golden robot army. Gold! Gold will save us all! Buy Gold!

Zombie apocalypse!

A zombie plague will be released from super hell, and infect the global population. The dead shall rise and walk the earth. Pray that they are like the slow tard zombies from The Walking Dead, and not the fast as fuck infected from 28 Days Later. You can minimize your risk by building an underground bunker in your backyard, and stocking up on guns and supplies. Don’t forget to pick up a sword or a machete, because blades never run out of ammo.

If you don’t have the resources to build a crazy box in your backyard, just associate with well-armed fat people. They have plenty of calories to burn through, so they won’t need to consume a lot of food. If the walkers break through your perimeter, just remember: you don’t have to be fast, you just have to be faster than all the fat people.

Worldwide consciousness shift.

Human beings have reached a tipping point in the evolution of consciousness, and December 21st marks the beginning of a global paradigm shift. No one really knows what it means, but some people think that we will all merge into one global consciousness of Gaia or some shit. Some think “Quetzacoatl will return” and the gods will descend into the earthly realm to rule over mankind. Others think we will realize our own divinity and ascend into a higher dimension. It probably all just depends on what kinds of drugs you decide to take on the 21st.

But all bullshit aside…

Mankind has been waiting for the apocalypse since the dawn of civilization. It’s an expression of our collectively unconscious knowledge that nothing lasts forever and all things must come to an end. The beautiful thing about prophecies is that they are vague. If given enough time, you can predict almost anything and it will eventually come true. The difference between most doomsday prophecies and the end of the Mayan calendar is that the Mayans were astoundingly accurate in predicting a very precise galactic event thousands of years into the future.

But relax. The Mayans didn’t know what it meant, and neither do we.

Do solar eclipses “mean” anything? To an astrotheological civilization that worships the sun, yes. It’s very significant. But to secular civilizations? No. An eclipse doesn’t mean shit. It’s kind of cool, but meh… Celestial events are only relevant within the cultural lens that you view them through. The meaning is entirely man made.

The end of the calendar doesn’t refer to the end of the world; it refers to the end of an age. Once that motherfucker hits zero, it just starts all over again.

It’s obvious that we are entering a new age. Just look at the recent Cambrian explosion of crazy technology. Cars barely existed when your grandparents were born, nuclear weapons barely existed when your parents were born, and the internet barely existed when you were born.

What’s going to happen on December 21st? Nothing. It’s just another day, like any other. It’s just one more day closer to when the sun supernovas in a few billion years and kills all life in the solar system.

What happens is irrelevant, what matters is how people react to it. If people freak out, their worst fears can manifest. The apocalypse is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s a reaction to an event, not an event in itself.

As we enter this new age, remember to spend time in introspection and reflection. Remember our history. Remember all the wars, fires, famines, plagues, earthquakes, volcanoes, droughts, revolutions, and economic collapses we’ve already seen. Remember how many times “the world has ended” before. Hell, remember the goddamn dinosaurs.

Relax, grab a beer, and try to remember that in the end…we’re all fucked anyway.