Richard Heene: 2012 and the cost of conspiracy theories

  Richard Heene // AP Photo/Will Powers

Balloon Boy's father Richard Heene looks to be our first major casualty of the 2012 Apocalypse phenomena. After coming under investigation for hoaxing the country as a desperate bid for national attention and as promotion for a television pilot, Heene's lawyer has revealed his client “believes the world is going to end in 2012. Because of that he wanted to make money quickly, become rich enough to build a bunker or something underground, where he can be safe from the sun exploding."

Conspiracy theorists and Doomsayers are nothing new. While usually religious in nature, people have been warning of the end of the world for thousands of years. The world didn't end in 634BC, 33BCE, 100, 800, 1000,  or any of the hundreds or thousands of proposed dates to this day, and suffice it to say, it won't be happening in 2012. Our sun does not have the mass to go supernova, and isn't scheduled to become a red giant for another six billion years. Time is on our side.

With the increase of New Age mysticism as a social force, doomsday speculation like Heenes has become more common. Reptilians, Atlantians, Planet-X/Niribu, cosmic alignment, alien visitation; these are all at once both very new and incredibly old. What used to be Angels are now Grays. What was once a terrible flood is now gravitational alignment. Heene, it appears, has managed to mentally cobble together a wide range of conspiracy theories and work them into a rich tapestry which will probably end up costing his family several hundred thousand dollars in fines, not to mention time spent in jail.

It is doubtful that this media spotlight will have any dampening effect on the 2012 Doomsayers, and their faux-prognostications. Their volume is only going to increase and become more urgent as we approach closer to whatever date of destruction they latch on to. We saw this with the extreme Y2K/Millennium criers a decade ago, and the 88 Reasons for the Rapture folks the decade before that. The problem here is the cost. Richard Heene will probably be going to prison for perpetuating this hoax, and required to pay a fine for the emergency response resources wasted in the search for his son. That is small potatoes compared to the amount that will be spent by the gullible or easily frightened, once this latest apocalypse scandal gets into full swing.

Expect numerous books to be published and quickly reach national best-seller listings. Quick thinking, morally bankrupt salesmen will begin to push emergency bunkers or survival training. Entrepreneurial religious speakers will offer their newest snake-oil prayer services and faith seminars to prepare your soul for its possible destruction. Millions of dollars, hundreds of hours and no doubt several lives will be spent by those captivated by clever language and plausible pseudo-science. Nibiru does not exist. The collected gravitational pull of all the planets aligning is less than 1% of the Moons gravitational power over Earth. The Mayan calendar doesn't predict the end of the world to begin with. We're going to be fine.

If you really want to know how the world might end, there's plenty of science out there. Phil Plait's Death From the Skies: These Are the Ways the World Will End just came out on paperback. If you're going to spend your money investigating the apocalypse, you might as well make sure it's accurate apocalypse.