For years, soothsayers have been promising that 12/21/2012, aka Mayan doomsday, would be the date that we would live in infamy. The conscientious among us prepared for the worst. Some of us prepared for our demise by simply accepting our fates. We kissed loved ones goodbye then promptly shared our true opinions regarding their lack of taste in friends and shoes. We maxed out our credit cards by upgrading to both Netflix Unlimited and Hulu Plus. We also enjoyed the slightly clammy awkward embrace of strangers we picked up at bus stops, because why not? It’s the end of the world (as we know it). It’s not as if we’ll have to face them in the morning.
However, others of us refused to go down without a fight. We’d seen the Kirk Cameron films, knew we were ungodly and thus, would most likely be left behind. So we stocked up. We made sure Peepa Elliot’s old Cold War bunker had the requisite amount of canned cheese, Perrier and Twinkies. We no longer searched for true love, but screened prospective mates for apocalyptic survival skills with a genetic predisposition toward famine induced bodily fat and fluid storage. However, as it turned out, that careful preparation was all for naught.
Unfortunately, Mayan doomsday was the biggest anticlimactic event of anticlimactic events in the history of recorded history. The magnetic poles didn’t flip; we didn’t make first contact with Vulcans, and Gangnam Style didn’t even get dethroned by an LOLZ cat video. Literally, nothing happened.
If you’re anything like me, this lack of apocalyptic follow through was not only a huge disappointment, but forced me into a crisis of faith. After all, the Mayans weren’t your typical neighborhood quack oracles. They were the Ancients. As we all know, predictions made by really old people are suppose to be at least eighty percent true.
So if we can’t rely on the ancients to accurately predict our demise, then on whom can we rely? I decided to take a chance and try science for a change.
From personal experience, I’ve found that science never shies away from being the harbinger of doom and disappointment. Look at all the bad news science has delivered to our lives. At age eight, I’m fairly certain most of us thought we could leap buildings in a single bound with nothing more than a cape and spandex tights. Well Sir Isaac Newton and his gravity-flavored science ruined that, something about rules of motion, force and innate human abilities. Also, whatever happened to the fact that Pluto was a planet? Well I’ll tell you what happened. The 2006 meeting of the International Astronomical Union happened. That shadow science organization, privately and publicly controlled by Pluto-hating Germans, decided that Pluto could be a planet no longer. Noble Pluto was forced into cosmological ignominy and insult. Now forever forced to roam the Kuiper belt as an ice laden pudgy dwarf sky object. Thanks science! So it should come as no surprise that science once again has provided us with the disappointing news of our impending demise, and his name is Apophis.
Apophis is the mega meteor of mayhem hurling towards our planet within the next twenty years. According to NASA, a scientifically partisan sectarian association controlled by scientists, Apophis is due to make his first attempt at an earth strike in 2029. He will probably miss. Unluckily for us, he will have a chance to lick his wounds, regroup and cause our doom on the 13th of April 2036. So even though the Mayan’s and their doomsday was a bit of a cataclysmic letdown, we can have faith that when it comes to predicting disaster and being the all around bearer of bad news, science will always follow through.