This is part one of a new, three part series called The More Things Stay The Same.
I'll tell you right now, I have no idea what the deal is with the Mayan calender, and I didn't see the movie 2012 starring John Cusak, although based purely off watching the trailer, I doubt the film explained anything about it. Or mentioned the calender at all. I *could* look it up, but the Aztec calender is just one example of a long, long line of things that continue to drive people up the wall with predictions of the ever pending apocalypse.
In the late nineties it was Y2K, in the fifties it was nuclear annihilation, in 1910, or there abouts, it was Haley's Comet, and before that it was mostly some fashion of religious disaster. These days it's either global warming, some new animalistic strain of flu or that uppity calender. We're an amazingly paranoid species. Excluding a large comet, or perhaps God throwing a tantrum, none of the above mentioned dooms day scenarios would be enough to completely end the world. A raging super virus or everyone simultaneously loosing access to Justin Bieber's Twitter feed would certainly cause no small amount of chaos, but it would scarcely manage to bring the ultimate finality to life on Earth.
Consider a contagious plague ripping its merry way through humanity. Regardless of where it began, be it a small island or a continent, it would be very nearly impossible for the virus to attack every single human being. Even if we were slow to act, failing to shut down international travel quickly, or not properly quarantining the first effected area(s), there are still remote communities the world over that have very little contact with the outside world, or at the very least take more than a single plane trip to get to. That's not just the few remaining tribes in places like the Amazon and Papa New Guinea that throw spears at helicopters we're talking about here, there are thousands of small townships and settlements the world over, Africa, Eastern Europe, The Middle East, and even remote towns in rural areas that could either easily protect themselves or simply wouldn't get visitors. Then there's oil rigs, ships, islands. In the Philippines alone there are over 7000 separate islands. Whether it be a naturally developed flu type virus or some kind of super terrorist plague you might not do so great, but you can at least take some consolation that not everyone is doomed.
Perhaps our fear of Armageddon is down to a simple case of everyday exaggeration. I'm not hungry I'm starving, it's world war three in there, Avatar is the best movie ever, etc. Even if every nuclear weapon on the planet went off at the same time they'd still be plenty of places humans could live comfortably. Since the late 1940's the United States have tested hundreds of warheads in their own backyard, it certainly left parts of the western deserts a little worse for wear but there are millions of people living just around the corner.
A skeptical person may suggest that the idea of a world ending event was created by authorities, be they government, religious or both, to keep the plebs in line. Ceasing spraying too much Raid on that pesky fly, lest it bring forth the four horsemen, is certainly a more efficient way of getting your warning across than having to explain the ozone layer in great, confusing detail.
As to why we continue to seemingly leap into hysterics and claim the end of the world is upon us at every opportunity, that probably has less to do with any grand manipulative conspiracy and more to do with immediate danger. Most of the terrible ever looming predictions of apocalypse do have plenty of potential to wipe out a good chunk of the population, but not all of it. Maybe it's not the end of the world we fear so much, as the end of our little slice of it.
The end is nigh, and it has been for a really, really long time.
