The End of the World.

Today in my teenage angst, I really do know that this is really old news. But let's recall the whole end of the world 'scare' in December. My favorite part was that it happened twice. Someone was looking at it upside-down or something and so they initially thought it would be on the twelfth but it turned out that it was meant to be the twenty-first. This is the kind of thing that makes me proclaim, people, as a whole, are stupid.

Image via beefjack.com

I didn't pay much attention to it - aside from the endless articles about it's falsifiability - because the Christmas presents I had purchased for my friends were realllly awesome and I didn't want to waste time thinking that I wouldn't get to give them to my people.

So the day came and it went and I didn't once  think about the people that had truly believed that their lives after that day, would cease to be.

I watch a lot of TV. So I have an easy enough time imagining (even if unrealistically) what the whole end of days, apocalypse thing would look like; The Walking Dead is what most commonly comes to mind. (Man the first few episodes of that show were gross. Or maybe I just got used to it.) But when it comes right down to it, I don't anticipate ever having to experience an environment like The Walking Dead. I just don't see it happening. There are, however, as much as I'd like to think there are not, people who truly believe that the end of the world will happen in their lifetime.

I was talking to my friend last night and she got to telling me about how she has an aunt and uncle who had, for several months, put great effort into preparing for the end of the world. They had intended, pre-end of days, to sell their farm and move into the nearest town. They took their farm off the market, and started to stock-pile food. They stored enough food for ten people to live for one year. She told me that her aunt had spent most of 2012 making massive grocery trips and then canning, drying and dehydrating that so as to make it last as long as possible. She told me that they had tried to convince her mom to join them, but first to secure enough gas that she would be able to make the six hour drive without stopping. She told me that they didn't necessarily believe that the end of the world was stemming from the end of the Mayan Calendrical cycle, but from a planet whose orbit is so large that it only circles the earth once in a very, very long while. Within that orbit, this planet would circle so close to the earth that the north and south poles would be caused to switch, quickly over the span of a week.

This is what they were preparing for.

In response to why no one else had heard of this planet, or why there had been no governmental warning, they replied that the government would obviously not want people to know this was come because it would incur mass panic. I'm not sure how or why this family found out when everyone else was meant not to know, but they must have felt extremely lucky.

I think this is amazing. And I want you to imagine investing a year of your life preparing for something that you believed with every fiber in your body, mind and soul, would happen. And then it didn't.

I asked my friend what she thought would they would do now that their lives were going to continue and she said that she didn't know.

I don't know what I would do either. I think I would need to re-examine the places I was getting my information. But I also think that if you're willing to accept disputable sources, you're probably willing to justify your way through their lacking credibility.