Apocalypse now: is the end actually nigh this time?

The bad news: we’re all going to die on 21 December, 2012. The good news: this is the last year you’ll have to do Christmas shopping,

THE end is nigh. Then again, it always is. Remember 21 May this year, which American Christian Radio Host Harold Camping assured us all was scheduled to be The Rapture – when “God’s elect people” would be called to heaven. That didn’t happen. However, Camping later claimed that 21 May had been in fact a “spiritual” Judgement Day (ie just another Saturday) and the actual end of the world would be coming five months later on 21 October. That didn’t happen either.

How about New Year’s Eve 1999 and the Millennium Bug that was supposed to send us all crashing headlong into a new Stone Age? Didn’t happen. There were also quite a few apocalyptic theories in the run-up to 5 May 2005 when the planets were supposed to line up in a pattern that spelled global catastrophe. They didn’t line up and that theory never really hit big in the UK anyway because we were too busy having a general election at the time. Tony Blair was elected PM [readers should insert their own trenchant, satirical apocalypse-related barb here].

The current bout of End of Days fervour – which you can be sure will be “trending” increasingly for the next year or so – predicts that earth will cease to exist on 21 December 2012, just like in that crappy Roland Emmerich disaster movie, 2012. So don’t bother getting your knickers in a twist about Christmas shopping next year – or anything else for that matter. Resign from your jobs! Do what thou will! The world is doomed! The reason being that the ancient Mayan calendar ends on 21 December next year – yes, it’s that serious!

It’s remarkable how many people take this sort of nonsense seriously. Even the Mayans didn’t think that the world would end when their calendar ran out – theories vary on whether they thought it presaged the dawning of a new age for mankind, or merely the time to create another calendar. It’s Western “civilization” (and I’m using that term so loosely it may just fall off) that is intent on running around like Chicken Little shouting about the sky falling in.

We actively enjoy pondering our own end – it’s cathartic and fun. Recently, cinema-goers have been afforded the opportunity to stroke their chins at the overrated apococobblers of Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia (although I’d recommend the superior, similarly-themed current release Take Shelter). Warner Brothers – looking for a new franchise to replace Harry Potter – is currently in talks with Ben Affleck to direct a series of films based on Stephen King’s journal of the plague years/world-goes-to-Hell-in-a-handcart epic The Stand. Even the next Bond movie, due out next year, will be dropping into your local movie theatre with the ominous, gravely weighted title of Skyfall.

King states that “much of the compulsion I felt while writing The Stand obviously came from envisioning an entire entrenched societal process destroyed at a stroke”, and likens the desire to Alexander lifting his sword above the Gordian Knot and growling: “I’ve got a better way.” Just as every creation myth needs a Devil, so every apocalyptic scenario needs some survivors – otherwise, where’s the story? The appeal of “THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT” both to storytellers and audiences is clear. It’s a chance to start again, set humanity free from the rules and see what happens, and just how good – or bad – we really are.

However, for the evangelists who keep insisting that the end really is nigh and can helpfully give you exact dates as to when it’s going to happen, intellectual curiosity doesn’t really enter into it. In most cases, they’re going to be saved anyway – along with the 3 per cent of the human race that are, apparently, “God’s elect”. They’re not warning us, they’re telling us – and in a very schoolmarmish fashion to boot. It’s just another archaic belief that illustrates – to them anyway – how right they are and how very, very wrong everyone else is.

It’s part of man’s natural arrogance that some of us think we’ll be around to witness such a cataclysmic event as the end of the world – because everything is all about us, isn’t it? But it’s just idle speculation – a diverting fantasy with cracking special effects that distracts us from the very real danger we will face in the not-too-distant future from hyper-intelligent vampire robots. Or zombies.