Some Bad News

Ladies and Gentlemen I'm sorry but I have some bad news: the world is not going to end in 2012. For those of you who do believe that the end of the world is going to happen in 2012 here are some facts that should illuminate you:

• Academic research does not indicate that the Maya attached any apocalyptic significance to the year 2012: the date for the end of their world lay unimaginable aeons of time in the future.

• John Major Jenkins's 'Galactic alignment' theory is based not only on a misleading astronomical claim, but in part on the same false calendrical premise.

• As the Timewave Zero theory has never been published in a peer-reviewed journal and its sources and reasoning are primarily what would be considered numerological rather than mathematical, the theory has failed to gain any scientific credibility or much recognition by professional mathematicians and scientists.

• Professional astronomers ridicule the Nibiru collision theory, which is based on claimed 'channeling' by extraterrestrials.^[43][44]

• More academic research is needed into the claimed Hopi prophecy: it does not appear to mention the year 2012.^[45]

• The Bible's Book of Revelation, composed some 1900 years ago, did indeed offer a dramatic picture of the end of the world—but it also promised that it would happen 'very soon'.^[46]

• The prophecy of the Tiburtine Sybil, as reproduced in the 16th century, did indeed likewise present a dramatic picture of the apocalypse, but did not date it, least of all to 2012.^[47]

• While the quatrains of Nostradamus are clearly intended to be read in a pre-apocalyptic context, they do not specifically mention (or, consequently, date) the end of the world: their Preface states that they are valid until the year 3797.^[48]

• The so-called Lost Book of Nostradamus is a version of the anonymous Vaticinia de summis pontificibus — a book of prophetic papal emblems dating from centuries before his time – and does not mention the year 2012.

• The Prophecies of Merlin were a fictional composition by the medieval Geoffrey of Monmouth,^[49] amplified in 13th-century Venice, and did not mention the year 2012.^[50]

• The original 1641 edition of The Prophecies of Mother Shipton says nothing at all about doomsday or the end of the world or, consequently, any proposed date for either.^[51]

• The alarmist claims of imminent doom made by Sony Pictures in their fictional publicity for the forthcoming film 2012 are not supported by reputable independent academic research.

So there you have it. Now stop worrying and go and have some fun.