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2012 Prophecies calling for the end of the world: Creating real fears and suicide warnings
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The End of the World
It's almost the end of the world, according to purported Maya predictions, and the 2012 apocalypse business is booming.
Survival kits, documentaries, and nearly 200 books presenting the "real" 2012 story are all on offer. And you could probably surf the Web from now until Armaggedon—tentatively slated for December 21, 2012—and still see just a fraction of the Web sites and products devoted to the topic.
But amid all the hype—including a viral marketing campaign for 2012 The Disaster Movie opening Friday—some people are developing honest "end times" anxiety that has experts seriously concerned.
NASA for example, has received thousands of questions regarding the 2012 doomsday predictions—some of them disturbing, according to David Morrison, a senior scientist with the NASA Astrobiology Institute.
"A lot of the submitters are people who are genuinely frightened," said Morrison, who thinks movie marketers, authors, and others out to make a buck are feeding some of the fears.
"I've had two teenagers who were considering killing themselves, because they didn't want to be around when the world ends," he said. "Two women in the last two weeks said they were contemplating killing their children and themselves so they wouldn't have to suffer through the end of the world.
"In general, fear over the 2012 doomsday prediction is just another example of a scenario that has been repeated over the centuries, said University of Wisconsin historian Paul Boyer.
Baptist preacher William Miller, for example, convinced as many as a hundred thousand Americans in the early 1800s that the second coming of Jesus Christ would happen in 1843. It didn't, much to the "Millerites great disappointment."
And Hal Lindsey's 1970s national bestseller The Late, Great Planet Earth suggested that the end could come in the 1980s. We're still here and so is Lindsey, who has since revised his theories.
Anthony Aveni, a Maya expert and archaeoastronomer at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, has also seen the effects of 2012 hysteria firsthand.
"I got into an email dialogue with a high school student who was quite seriously concerned that the world was going to end," he said. "This person thought we were all going to die. That motivated me to write about it."
His book, The End of Time; The Maya Mystery of 2012, is one of several attempts by experts to dispel the myths of the Maya apocalypse and instead focus attention on the facts about the ancient culture.
"It's a teaching moment," Aveni said. "If we allow people to fear 2012 and miss a great opportunity to learn about the Maya and their amazing culture, then we're not doing our job."
So before you start over-indulging with your credit cards & giving your possessions away, remember it's true, we've been there before. Don't buy into the hype. 1984 came and went and so will 2012. The only lasting memories will be a bunch of B movies & a few books on the subject. Until the next anticipated apocalypse begins.
My Contact: LisaRKohl@aol.com Send me your emails. Tellus your story. Subscribe to my column.
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