Hey, we all know the world will end in 2012. That's the year Sarah Palin is elected president! 
Seriously, though. This whole 2012 thing dates back to some highfalutin' interpretation of Mayan calendars, which apparently stop in 2012. The thing is, people aren't really living unless they have some end-date catastrophe waiting for them.
Back in 1980 I remember being freaked out by a full-page ad in a magazine asking "Will you be alive in 1982?" It was from some religious sect that was convinced Armageddon was due in 1981. Not a year goes by when someone doesn't say the world is due to end imminently. Hell, the Weekly World News made a cottage industry of such reports. Even the semi-parodic Church of the Subgenius got into the act, predicting X-Day - the day the aliens come to take us all - as happening sometime in 1997. Oops. On top of all that, I knew a guy who had a nervous breakdown when he turned 30 (about 15 years ago) because he was so convinced he'd be dead by then due to nuclear war that when the 3-0 came and went with the world going on as usual, he couldn't handle it.
After all is said and done, we're still here. The 5-planet conjunction that was supposed to kill us all on May 5 2000 came and went without so much as giving anyone the farts. The worst that happened with Y2K was some guy got a bill for $100,000 or something like that from a video store. It became such a non-event that the coming of 2010, which I believe was supposed to be Y2K Part 2 isn't even causing anyone to bat an eyelash.
I'll avoid going into Biblical predictions because some people take it very seriously. All I'll say is the success rate on predicting the arrival of the Antichrist over the last 2000 years has been zero percent and leave it at that.
Everyone likes to scare themselves with "the end is nigh" talk, and the 2012 movie is capitalizing on that fear, just as numerous films took on Y2K and meteor impacts. But chill, everyone.
The Technological Singularity will get us all long before 2012, anyway.
Alex
Seriously, though. This whole 2012 thing dates back to some highfalutin' interpretation of Mayan calendars, which apparently stop in 2012. The thing is, people aren't really living unless they have some end-date catastrophe waiting for them.
Back in 1980 I remember being freaked out by a full-page ad in a magazine asking "Will you be alive in 1982?" It was from some religious sect that was convinced Armageddon was due in 1981. Not a year goes by when someone doesn't say the world is due to end imminently. Hell, the Weekly World News made a cottage industry of such reports. Even the semi-parodic Church of the Subgenius got into the act, predicting X-Day - the day the aliens come to take us all - as happening sometime in 1997. Oops. On top of all that, I knew a guy who had a nervous breakdown when he turned 30 (about 15 years ago) because he was so convinced he'd be dead by then due to nuclear war that when the 3-0 came and went with the world going on as usual, he couldn't handle it.
After all is said and done, we're still here. The 5-planet conjunction that was supposed to kill us all on May 5 2000 came and went without so much as giving anyone the farts. The worst that happened with Y2K was some guy got a bill for $100,000 or something like that from a video store. It became such a non-event that the coming of 2010, which I believe was supposed to be Y2K Part 2 isn't even causing anyone to bat an eyelash.
I'll avoid going into Biblical predictions because some people take it very seriously. All I'll say is the success rate on predicting the arrival of the Antichrist over the last 2000 years has been zero percent and leave it at that.
Everyone likes to scare themselves with "the end is nigh" talk, and the 2012 movie is capitalizing on that fear, just as numerous films took on Y2K and meteor impacts. But chill, everyone.
The Technological Singularity will get us all long before 2012, anyway.
Alex
