Down With Doomsday

There have been many doomsayers who have jumped on the bandwagon and used December 21, 2012 to target their doomsday from their fatalistic perspective. For example, some scientists speculate the winter solstice will mark the arrival of the next solar maximum, which is just a normal period of heightened solar activity in the eleven year solar cycle of the sun. There will be a large number of sunspots, and according to some, due to increased gravitational forces from planetary alignment; severe solar flares could potentially disrupt the electrical grid, regional weather patterns, and knock out communication systems and GPS satellites.

In the past few years, various other prophets of doom have also come forward, all respected authorities in their own fields, to proclaim that things are going to get a lot worse before they get any better. All of them have argued that their pet calamity is going to be the knock-out punch to bring mankind to its knees; but despite their differences, they all agree that there are numerous converging factors that threaten the existence of humanity right now, and they all feel the end may be near unless there is a serious course correction.

According to the most vocal doomsayers, here is a brief summary of the major convergent fiascos that potentially may destroy the human race if we don't change our wicked ways:

• Global Financial Crisis - this will lead to an inevitable worldwide economic meltdown that will disrupt global trade and create mass unemployment and food shortages.


• Increased Unemployment - this will lead to shortages in tax revenues, disrupting government payments on debts, resulting in mass foreclosures and bankruptcies.


• Increased Government Spending - continued out-of-control deficit spending will lead to an economic collapse when taxes will not cover interest payments on debts. When debts are called due, the U.S. government will officially become insolvent, even though it functionally has been for years.


• Clean Water Scarcity - the U.S. is quickly running out of clean water. Many of the aquifers created by glaciations are being depleted and are not being replenished by nature. Soon rationing may have to be imposed to supply the growing demand from the increasing population.


• Overpopulation - the growing population of the earth has exceeded the carrying capacity of the earth for food and fresh water. When fossil fuels become depleted to the point of scarcity, the existing food production and distribution methods will collapse, resulting in mass global starvation.


• Peak Oil - the U.S. reached the point of extracting cheap oil in 1970 and has used oil from other countries to supply its demand ever since. The world reached its peak oil limit in 2006 and oil production will now cost much more as existing supplies are used up; until it completely runs out around 2025. Gas rationing may have to be implemented, and public transportation will become more regulated and limited.


• Isolated Nuclear Events - as shortages arise in food and fresh water, terrorist aggression will continue to increase, with a strong possibility of global thermonuclear war. Stockpiles of plutonium fuel exist and it is just a matter of time before some terrorist group cobbles together a nuclear device to hold world governments hostage, or remove a major city from the map. The threat of nuclear radiation contamination may also come from destruction to power plants from earthquakes or meltdowns, such as occurred in Chernobyl and Japan.


• Computerized Global Nuclear War - conflicts in the Middle East could escalate into full-scale nuclear warfare between Iran and Israel, or elsewhere in the world between rival nuclear powers such as India and Pakistan, or the U.S. with North Korea; should the technology be developed, and the leadership remain unstable. The world could survive one or two isolated nuclear events if it were just limited to that level, however, the fallout and nuclear winter which could follow a full-scale nuclear war could potentially destroy all plant and animal life on the earth.


• Bioterrorism - involves the intentional release or dissemination of toxic biological agents such as bacteria, viruses, and toxins, which may be in a naturally occurring or human-modified form; intended to cause sickness and death to humans, plants, and animals. Viruses such as smallpox and anthrax have already been used to attack human populations. The use of biological agents that do not cause harm to humans, could instead be used to target the food chain and disrupt the economy, cause widespread fear and panic, and destabilize the normal function of business and societies. For example, the highly toxic pathogen, the foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) virus, which caused the 2001 and 2007 FMD outbreaks in the UK, had little chance of infecting humans, yet it caused widespread economic damage and overwhelming public concern.


• Mass Famine - because food comes from 1,500 miles, on average, from where it is consumed, the transportation of food and goods deplete reserves of fossil fuels. This, coupled with increasing scarcity of fresh water for agriculture, may result in limited food production and starvation for millions of people. Food production needs to be localized to the market area in which it is consumed; perhaps on roof tops, balcony decks, vacant lots, or in dedicated community gardens.


• Climate Change and Global Warming - greenhouse gases are raising the temperature of the earth and oceans severely causing melting of the polar ice caps. Rising Gulf Stream temperatures is accelerating polar ice cap melting, which is raising water levels along coastal properties and creating more frequent, and larger hurricanes, and more intense storms. The UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reports that climate disasters are increasing, and roughly 70% are now climate related, up from 50% only two decades ago. Destruction to human populations comes from intense tropical storms, heavy rains, hurricanes, tsunamis, flooding, droughts, rising sea levels, and the general vulnerability of local communities who are not equipped, or prepared, to handle such catastrophic emergencies.


• Global Pandemic - should a strain of flu virus, or one like the HIV virus, ever mutate and become as transmittable as the common cold, then the world would face another potential Great Plague disaster. Any pathogen that kills its host slowly will allow carriers more time to spread an infection; thus spreading it around the world in only a matter of hours on airline passengers.


• Ecological Disaster - there is a strong potential for the collapse of ecosystem services, which were formally defined by the UN in 2005 in a four-year study called the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA); conducted by more than 1,300 scientists worldwide. A global ecological disaster, such as a world crop failure, could be induced by existing trends in overpopulation, economic failure, and non-sustainable agriculture. Most of these scenarios involve things like the disruption of the food chain due to scarcity of fresh water, overfishing, massive deforestation, desertification, oil spills and water pollution episodes, pollinator decline, decomposition of wastes, pests and diseases extending beyond historical boundaries, and the Holocene Extinction Event, which is mainly based upon climate change and humanity's presence. Currently there are up to 140,000 species of living organisms going extinct per year on earth. The period on earth since the emergence of humans has shown an ongoing reduction in biodiversity and an accompanying loss of genetic diversity. The reduction is caused primarily by human impacts, and particularly by habitat destruction, especially in the Amazon rain forest.


• Natural Disasters - super volcanoes and asteroid collisions pose a real, existential threat to our species, but they are risks that cannot be listed as immanent or calculable. Any real threat that will terminate intelligent life on Earth will likely be a man-made event. If several earthquakes or volcanoes erupt simultaneously around the Pacific Rim of Fire, then the loss of human life from the ensuing tsunamis may pose a significant tragedy to coastal populations, but not an extinction event. Civilization would continue on.


• Biotechnology - most threats to civilization may come from humanity itself. Advances in medical science and nanotechnology, which is the manipulation of matter on an atomic and molecular scale; may create many new devices and materials. This new biotechnology has an enormous range of applications in medicine, electronics, biomaterials, and energy production. However, these new technologies could lead to grey goo, in which self-replicating, out-of-control robots consume all matter on earth while duplicating themselves, either deliberately or accidentally. This hypothetical scenario is known as ecophagy ("eating the environment").


• Artificial Intelligence - some future disasters may lie in the unforeseen consequences of technology. Someday soon, it has been suggested, a moment may come when computers and robots become smarter than humans. This has been called "the Singularity", and it may prove to be quite dangerous for humans if machines ever develop a high degree of intelligence and decide they no longer need mankind to service their needs. They will potentially be able to process thoughts at the speed of light, compared to the speed of bio-chemical processes in humans.

Doomsayers and whistle-blowers, although quite annoying, serve an important function in our society to raise awareness about potential wrong-doing or danger, and to call attention to serious things that need to be changed in our society for the common good. Consciousness is not raised without a price, however, and most prophets of doom often only fan the fires of fear and hysteria, offering no real solutions. Al Gore, for example, certainly performed a valuable contribution to the world in his attempt to raise public awareness about climate change and global warming just a few years ago, resulting not so much in stimulating corrective action, as seeding a great debate in the scientific community as to whether it really existed or not.

Well, just because there seems to be a long litany of hysteria and fear being recited the closer we get to the winter solstice; I wouldn't pull the kids out of school and move out to grandpa's farm just quite yet. If you're subjected to a lot of negative television programming about doomsday scenarios, then simply don't watch it. The Doomsday Preppers and Survivalist programs grab a lot of media attention, but they provide no positive purpose. Despite what little information value they convey, they actually only contribute to the overall undercurrents of worry and apprehension. People have enough to worry about anyway without having to deal with the end of the world in addition to every other stress factor in life.

Amid all this clamor and furor, the fear and anxiety, there are several interpretations of the transition that will occur on December 21, 2012, and they are actually quite reasonable and positive. The Mayan Calendar, for example, will mark the end of one Long Count and the beginning of another; and time will keep pressing forward. Both the Mayans and Hopis recognized mankind is nearing the end of a World Age, but neither prophesied that everything will completely come to an end. The message they give is rather about how we choose to enter the future ahead; with resistance or acceptance.

The transition into the next World Age could either be done through a series of cataclysmic changes, or through gradual, peaceful events and tranquility. Scholars from numerous disciplines, including astronomers, have dismissed the idea of a final cataclysmic event, saying that such negative interpretations actually conflict with simple astronomical observations and scientific data and distract attention away from more acute concerns such as global warming and the loss of biodiversity. Many professional Mayan scholars are also coming forward to set the record straight. They claim that the predictions of impending doom are not valid, nor found in any of the classic Mayan books, and that the idea that the Long Count Calendar will end on the winter solstice misrepresents Mayan history and culture. What doomsayers fail to mention is that the next Long Count period will begin on December 22, 2012 and continue for another 5,125 years.

The New Age interpretation is that we are entering the "Age of Aquarius"; the start of a new age of spiritual and intellectual enlightenment. Many see this transition time as nothing more than a grand New Year's party; something very positive, and more in the spiritual plane than in the physical realm. This is not to say that there may, indeed, be physical and social changes that may converge and will have to be managed; but the end of the world is not in the crystal ball just quite yet. There is always hope.

Mankind may experience an epiphany and realize that we are all a single family of man, and that we all share this planet and its resources together. What will end is the notion that races of man, divided into autonomous, independent countries, can no longer compete for, and consume, natural resources as if they have no end. The world economies, based upon greed, are non-sustainable and need to be retooled; and the world's resources need to be distributed so that everyone in the family of man can share and benefit, not just a privileged few. The wealth of the world needs to be redistributed so that all may enjoy a basic and reasonable quality of life. There can't, and shouldn't be, such a large disparity between the rich and poor; the haves and have not's. Perhaps the awakening will be the realization that we are all in this together and either we all win, or no one wins. Mankind is at a crossroads, not the end of the road.

According to Wikipedia, the Greek translation of the word Apocalypse actually means "lifting of the veil, or revelation". An apocalypse is a disclosure of something hidden from the majority of mankind in an era dominated by falsehood and misconception, i.e. the veil to be lifted". It is possible to have an apocalypse in human consciousness without having a doomsday of the earth.