Mayan Anticipation: December Doomsday: What's this all about?

Panic spreads and Doomsayers await the end of the world with each passing day.  Could this be another 'Y2K' false panic or something more serious?  It is anyone's best guess, but the fact that many prophecies such as Pope Malachy's Pope Prediction among other end of the world prophecies are all coming about at the same time cannot be overlooked as mere coincidence.  These are fascinating days we live in. 

Who are the Mayans?

An excerpt from Mayans 2012 Prediction:

The Mayan Indians were advanced in mathematics, writing, and astronomy. They lived in Mexico and built a famous pyramid in the Yucatan peninsula during the year 1050 BC. This pyramid had 365 steps leading to the top of the pyramid which marked the solar year. However, their most famous invention was their calender.

The long calender on the Mayan calender begins August 11, 3114 BC and will be completed on December 21, 2012. This will mark the end of a major 5126 year cycle on the long count calender.

The reason many are interested in this is the fact that during the year 2012, the sun will be aligned with the center of the milky way galaxy during the winter solstice for the first time in 26,000 years! THIS MEANS: Whatever energy typically stems to the earth from the center of the milky way will be disrupted on 12/21/2012 at 11:11 PM. Coincidence? Some believe that the sun spots could wreck havoc on the earth during this time causing power outages, earthquakes, etc.

Recall the words of Jesus in Matthew 24:  "And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars.  See that you are not troubled for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.  For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.  And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places.  All these are the beginning of sorrows."

There is coming a great time of trouble in which the world has never seen before or will see again.  Whether this major time of trouble comes in our lifetimes makes no difference whether or not one should be prepared to face God in the life to come.  We will die. That is sure.

Exciting days though are here now.  The middle east is a lit firecracker, prophecy is coming true, and technology has lurched the world forward toward eventual war using nuclear weapons. 

Mayan apocalypse: panic spreads as December 21 nears

Fears that the end of the world is nigh have spread across the world with only days until the end of the Mayan calendar, with doomsday-mongers predicting a cataclysmic end to the history of Earth.

Cubans participate in a Mayan ritual at Bacuranao beach in eastern Havana. Photo: AFP/Getty

By Nick Allen, Los Angeles, Malcolm Moore in Beijing and Tom Parfitt in Moscow

Ahead of December 21, which marks the conclusion of the 5,125-year "Long Count" Mayan calendar, panic buying of candles and essentials has been reported in China and Russia, along with an explosion in sales of survival shelters in America. In France believers were preparing to converge on a mountain where they believe aliens will rescue them.

The precise manner of Armageddon remains vague, ranging from a catastrophic celestial collision between Earth and the mythical planet Nibiru, also known as Planet X, a disastrous crash with a comet, or the annihilation of civilisation by a giant solar storm.

In America Ron Hubbard, a manufacturer of hi-tech underground survival shelters, has seen his business explode.

"We've gone from one a month to one a day," he said. "I don't have an opinion on the Mayan calendar but, when astrophysicists come to me, buy my shelters and tell me to be prepared for solar flares, radiation, EMPs (electromagnetic pulses) ... I'm going underground on the 19th and coming out on the 23rd. It's just in case anybody's right."

In the French Pyrenees the mayor of Bugarach, population 179, has attempted to prevent pandemonium by banning UFO watchers and light aircraft from the flat topped mount Pic de Bugarach.

According to New Age lore it as an "alien garage" where extraterrestrials are waiting to abandon Earth, taking a lucky few humans with them.
Russia saw people in Omutninsk, in Kirov region, rushing to buy kerosene and supplies after a newspaper article, supposedly written by a Tibetan monk, confirmed the end of the world.

The city of Novokuznetsk faced a run on salt. In Barnaul, close to the Altai Mountains, panic-buyers snapped up all the torches and Thermos flasks.
Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian prime minister, even addressed the situation.
"I don't believe in the end of the world," before adding somewhat disconcertingly: "At least, not this year."

In China, which has no history of preoccupation with the end of the world, a wave of paranoia about the apocalypse can be traced to the 2009 Hollywood blockbuster "2012".
The film, starring John Cusack, was a smash hit in China, as viewers were seduced by a plot that saw the Chinese military building arks to save humanity.

Some in China are taking the prospect of Armageddon seriously with panic buying of candles reported in Sichuan province.

The source of the panic was traced to a post on Sina Weibo, China's version of Twitter, predicting that there will be three days of darkness when the apocalypse arrives.
One grocery store owner said: "At first, we had no idea why. But then we heard someone muttering about the continuous darkness."

Shanghai police said scam artists had been convincing pensioners to hand over savings in a last act of charity.

Meanwhile in Mexico, where the ancient Mayan civilisation flourished, the end time has been seen as an opportunity. The country has organised hundreds of Maya-themed events, and tourism is expected to have doubled this year.

Nasa has been aggressively seeking to dispel doomsday fears. It says there is no evidence Nibiru exists, and rumours it could be hiding behind the sun are unfounded.

"It can't hide behind the sun forever, and we would've seen it years ago," a Nasa scientist said.
The space agency also rejected apocalyptic theories about unusual alignments of the planets, or that the Earth's magnetic poles could suddenly "flip."

Conspiracy theorists contend that the space agency is involved in an elaborate cover up to prevent panic.

But David Morrison, an astronomer at Nasa, said: "At least once a week I get a message from a young person, as young as 11, who says they are ill and/or contemplating suicide because of the coming doomsday. I think it's evil for people to propagate rumours on the internet to frighten children."

Mayans themselves reject any notion that the world will end. Pedro Celestino Yac Noj, a Mayan sage, burned seeds and fruits to mark the end of the old calender at a ceremony in Cuba. He said: "The 21st is for giving thanks and gratitude and the 22nd welcomes the new cycle, a new dawn." 

Doomsayers await the end of the world – in 12 days' time

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The end of the world is nigh, or so apocalypse observers would have you believe. The Mayan and Hopi Mesoamerican Long Count calendar may have begun in 3114BC and continued unerringly ever since, but it comes to an abrupt halt on 21 December 2012. Hence, the belief gaining ground among those who fall for this kind of thing that the cosmos will cease to exist in 12 days' time.

Although it may not yet have taken root in Britain's Acacia Avenues, the idea of an approaching cataclysm is troubling folk from Moscow to France, and the US to Brazil. The New York Times has reported that some spooked Russians have been panic-buying matches, fuel and sugar to prepare for the post-apocalypse. And they are not alone. A poll by Ipsos recently found that one in seven people believe the world will end during their lifetime (or, presumably, just after it). The same poll suggests that one in 10 people have experienced fear and/or anxiety about the eschatological implications of Friday week.

But reassurance is at hand. Governments around the world are taking the prophesied threat seriously enough to inform their citizens that they are not taking it seriously at all. Here in the United States, for example, an official government blog entry was posted on Monday, reassuring Americans that "Scary rumors about the world ending in 2012 are just rumors".

Nasa itself has waged a campaign of facts to combat the fear-mongering, releasing a 6.5-minute YouTube video, in which David Morrison, astronomer and Nasa scientist, personally debunked the Doomsday theories. Last month, the space agency published detailed rebuttals of five separate apocalyptic scenarios on its website, including a meteor strike, a solar flare and the so-called polar shift, whereby the Earth's magnetic and rotational poles would reverse, with devastating
consequences. While magnetic reversals do take place approximately every 400,000 years, admits Nasa, "As far as we know, such a magnetic reversal doesn't cause any harm to life on Earth. Scientists believe a magnetic reversal is very unlikely to happen in the next few millennia."

A few days ago, the Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, tackled the Mayan predictions in a spoof television appearance for the radio station Triple J. Acknowledging that "The end of the world is coming", she grimly intoned, "It turns out the Mayan calendar was true … Whether the final blow comes from flesh-eating zombies, demonic hell beasts or from the total triumph of K-Pop, if you know one thing about me, it's this: I will always fight for you to the very end." Some Australian commentators wondered aloud whether such a light-hearted intervention was becoming of the PM. In Russia, meanwhile, the Minister of Emergency Situations, Vladimir Puchkov, issued a statement insisting that the world would not end this month, a sentiment echoed by senior clerics from the nation's Orthodox Church.

Experts in Mayan culture – which flourished in what is now Central America between AD250 and 900 – have dismissed the doomsayers, claiming the 2012 phenomenon misrepresents the Long Count calendar, and is unsupported by any surviving Mayan texts. The internet, with its capacity for sustaining conspiracy theories, is thought to be to blame.

One such theory is the "Nibiru cataclysm", which posits that the Earth will collide with a planet by that name. The notion originated in the 1990s, with an American woman called Nancy Lieder, who claims she is a "contactee" with an implant in her brain that allows her to communicate with aliens from the Zeta Reticuli star system, 39 light years away. Ms Lieder, who has a website and a Twitter account, says she was chosen to warn mankind of the interplanetary danger that awaits us.

In South and Central America, where the original prophecy was allegedly made, responses are mixed. The mayor of the mountain town San Francisco de Paula, in the far south of Brazil, has urged local residents to stock up on supplies in preparation for the worst. But in Yucatan, Mexico, which still has a large Mayan population, a cultural festival is planned for 21 December. Any British people still concerned about the Long Count's conclusion could perhaps seek refuge in Bugarach, a tiny French village in the Pyrenean foothills, which the web has inexplicably agreed will be spared the ravages of Armageddon – possibly due to a nearby mountain, which resembles the alien landing site from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Or they could do what most of us do when our calendars run out: buy a new one.