Op/Ed, Views »

Amie Faulkner

Advertising Director

The idea of the world ending has been a topic ever since there have been people around to talk about it. Once the millennium turned and the much-feared Y2K fiasco did not happen, people have focused on the 2012 theory. This theory is that the world will end on December 21, 2012. It is based on many major cultures such as the Mayans, Egyptians, even the Christian Bible. The significance of that day in particular is that on that day the sun will align with the center of the Milky Way and, supposedly, some change will occur, which only happens every 26,000 years. 

Major religions talk some about how the world will end and we will be joined by a higher being or beings. In these religions it sets up signs to look for to tell if Armageddon is coming. In the Bible it the signs relate to violence and the coming of the Anti-Christ.

People also look to the predictions of Nostrodomus saying that he predicted the end of the world in 2012. They are commonly mistaken. He did not predict it, his transcript just ended around the year 2012.

Some people speculate that solar flares will hit the earth and wipe out all of humanity, but in actuality solar flares hit the earths atmosphere everyday and there is no effect. NASA states that there is no solar flare slated to occur in the foreseeable future. 

The most common fear refers to the Mayan calendar. In 2012 the calendar just runs out, yet many people do not think about the fact that the Mayans may not have thought far ahead enough to make their calendar never ending. The Mayans were completely wiped out of South and Central America by the Spanish so they may not have had the chance to finish the calendar.

How these conspiracy theorists make predictions works the same way as a Rorschach test- you look at the inkblot and you see what you want to see. When people look into the future they project upon it what they want to see or what they fear will happen, then they try to find reason and facts to back up what they have already decided. 

The world was going to end in the year 1792, 1914, 1994, 2000, and now 2012. This pattern of “end of the world” years should really ring a bell to some people. Some have even gone to the extreme to killing themselves during the 1900’s because they were so convinced the world was going to end anyway.

The end of the world cannot be predicted until it actually happens and until that moment occurs. Regardless, people will predict and speculate to what the future holds.