You may have noticed a recent trend of trying to fit every hackneyed doomsday prophecy into the same red-letter year of 2012. The theories are obtuse, their connections are flimsy and the perceived consequences are completely unsubstantiated. Unsurprisingly, these prophecies are enormously popular. The Mayans are probably the most-quoted of the 2012 doom prophecies, and can perhaps be credited with getting the whole fad started. Back when they were an advanced civilization living in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula about 3,000 years ago, they developed around 15 to 20 calendars, all with a slightly different purpose: the Tzolk'in was used to calculate crop cultivation, the Haab followed the cycles of the sun and the Long Count ticked off the harrowing last days until face-bursting ultimate destruction.
It's all fairly self-explanatory.
The Long Count calculates a period of time known as the Great Cycle, which is a count of about 5,125.36 years. Scholars paired up the dates of the Long Count with Gregorian calendars and found that the current Great Cycle began August 13, 3114 B.C, and ends on December 21st, 2012. Dum dum DUUUUUMMM!!! Bolstering their theory is that the date coincides with a winter solstice during which the Sun will align with the center of the Milky Way galaxy. When that happens, some say the Earth's poles will shift and every horrible natural disaster imaginable will come together to form a Megazord of planet crushing assbeat.
What Predictions (Supposedly) Came True?
Uh... It's a calendar. It accurately predicts the rise of the sun every day. Otherwise nothing.
Why it Might be A Bunch Of Crap:
First of all, the end of the Long Count holds no more significance than Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve: the Maya just had a celebration and then started a new calendar. Even they didn't think it was going to be the end of the world, and even if they had, why the fuck would they be expected to know? As for the winter solstice thing, that's just when the Sun is at its greatest distance from Earth. Our poles shifting because the Sun is aligned with the center of the Milky Way makes about as much scientific sense as saying you shouldn't drive at sunset because your car might crash into the sun. Besides, the solstice occurs in June in the southern hemisphere, so if the world looks like it's going to end we can all just move to Australia.
A less popular but equally convoluted source is the I-Ching. In the pre-800-number era of human existence, the people of China received their psychic advice from one of their oldest texts, the I-Ching. You asked the I-Ching a question and a certified physic flipped three coins in to the air, drawing a hexagram based on the results. This told your fortune, somehow. The I-Ching had nothing to do with the end of the world until a man by the name of Terence McKenna came along and made a pattern out of every possible result. After applying this pattern to a line graph accompanied by a timeline of recorded history, he discovered that the high and low points of the graph coincided with several significant events.
On December 21, 2012, the line slowly dips off of the chart, once again supposedly indicating a world-ending catastrophic buttfuck.
What Predictions (Supposedly) Came True?
The Fall of the Roman Empire
The Discovery of the New World
World Wars I and II
Why it Might be Bullshit:
The reality is McKenna utilized a pattern of his own invention to create a timeline of his own invention, and then predicted world events that had already happened. After all, there's enough bad shit in human history that you could probably correlate several large scale catastrophes right alongside the peaks and valleys of a line graph showing Disney's stock price over the last decade. He couldn't even decide what the end of his timeline signified, claiming everything from the apocalypse to alien invasion to time travel. Honestly, what kind of half-assed prophet was this guy? Maybe the next Batman movie comes out in 2012 and it's a huge disappointment, and the I-Ching just takes it way harder than everybody else.
In the late 90s, some brainiacs created a computer program called Web-bot to make stock market predictions, perhaps out of a belief that large amounts of money would be the only way any of them would ever get laid. Web-bot works like an Internet search engine does, but it presents its results in the form of numerical trends. Basically, it was designed to tap in to our collective unconscious by analyzing information on the Internet and then make predictions based on its findings. So it's kind of like Trending Topics on Twitter, only people inexplicably trusted it to provide meaningful financial advice.
In 2001, the aforementioned brainiacs reasoned that if their program could be used to predict the stock market, it should be able to predict the future as well. According to the Web-bot, small nuclear wars will erupt somewhere in the world in 2009, initiating a series of events resulting in a major cataclysm sometime in--wait for it--the year 2012.
What Predictions (Supposedly) Came True?
9/11
Space Shuttle Columbia tragedy
New York blackout of 2003
Anthrax scares at the U.S. House of Representatives
Hurricane Katrina
Why it Might be Bullshit:
The Web-bot's data pool is limited to what is being discussed on the Internet. If the National Hurricane Center predicts that an upcoming hurricane season will be a particularly bad one, and everyone online starts talking about it, the Web-bot will spring into action by helpfully predicting the upcoming hurricane season will be a particularly bad one. So why is the Web-bot predicting a cataclysmic event in 2012? Because end of the world alarmists are flooding the Internet with tons of information alleging some apocalyptic occurrence in 2012, that's why. Seriously, it's the Carlos Mencia of clairvoyant robots.
