2012 & 70 End Dates

[salamon2]

I've been off of LJ for a while... the summer, as always, ate up a lot of time, and fall semester didn't inspire much for me to talk/share with all of you guys. However I've since had an idea I'd like to rant about and discuss:

The sheer folly of 2012
I've been stuck at home during winter break and when I'm not cleaning up after my dad, practicing my cello, or freaking out about possible grad-school possibilities, I've come to watch dad's newest "toy". He decided that 9.99 a month for satellite TV would entertain him in his elderhood--which he has chosen to use as a bear would do in winter. So since there's not a lot to do around home, I've decided to watch TV. I turned on the history channel expecting to get some sort of program on something that happened in history. Instead I got a nice long marathon of 2012 doomsday bullshit.

Okay, I understand that on December 21, 2012, the rarest astronomical event known to man--the galatic alignment will occur, where the sun will appear to line up with the black hole at the center of the galaxy, eclipsing it.

However what I'm wondering is, while the northern hemisphere is suffering galatic catyclism, what'll the southern hemisphere be doing? Afterall it'll APPEAR that the sun will line up with the center of the galatic center from the northern hemisphere, meaning that it's only from that particular point of view that the sun will "line up" with it. In other words, from our point of view the sun moved, but in reality we moved.

Another thought to consider: wouldn't the sun always be lined up with the galatic center? Afterall, if it wasn't lined up with it, wouldn't our solar system go flying off the Milky Way galaxy and hurtle through space? A line made up of two points will always be in line with one another. For those who say that it'll be like crossing the galactic equator, why would the space in the upper half of the galaxy be charged differently than the space in the lower half of the galaxy?

Another thought: the Maya didn't say the world would end, it's just that their "long count" calandar ends. Another would therefore begin. It's modern chicken littlism and Western culture obsession with finding an end date for the end of times that has misinterpreted other cultures like the Maya in this 2012 conspiracy theory.

I believe that according to Neil Howe & William Strauss' Generational Theory, we've just come to that period in time when we have a fear driven society. It's that societal time called a Crisis, when society is undergoing major shifts and changes. The last time we were in a mood like this was in the 1930s and 1940s, when dystopias was a large crazy in world literature. The British in particular had two fears for the future of their culture during this time, that most people have read at least one of them:

1984 - What if the Russians takeover?
Brave New World - What if the Americans takeover?

2012 IMO will proove to be our version of British dystopias with one distinct difference: at least last time they managed to create some first-rate literature with this fear-based society. With all this misinformation and chicken littlism it's hard to write any decent literature, let alone watchable satelite tv.

70 other times the world was supposed to come to an end

1: 2,800BC: The oldest surviving prediction of the world’s imminent demise was found inscribed upon an Assyrian clay tablet which stated: "Our earth is degenerate in these latter days. There are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end. Bribery and corruption are common." This is one of the earliest examples of the perception of moral decay in society being interpreted as a sign of the imminent end.

2: 634 BC: Apocalyptic thinking gripped many ancient cultures, including the Romans. Early in Rome's history, many Romans feared that the city would be destroyed in the 120th year of its founding. There was a myth that 12 eagles had revealed to Romulus a mystical number representing the lifetime of Rome, and some early Romans hypothesized that each eagle represented 10 years. The Roman calendar was counted from the founding of Rome, 1 AUC (ab urbe condita) being 753 BC. Thus 120 AUC is 634 BC.

3: 389 BC: Some Romans figured that the mystical number revealed to Romulus represented the number of days in a year (the Great Year concept), so they expected Rome to be destroyed around 365 AUC (389 BC).

4: 1st century AD: In Matthew 16:28 the following interesting quotation is ascribed to Jesus: "Verily I say unto you, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom." The clear implication is that the final judgement would occur within the lifetimes of those present. The Apostles expected Jesus to return before the passing of their generation. The Book of Revelation too rather suggests an imminent rather than distant date for the last trump. "Behold I come quickly, and my reward is with me to reward every man according to his work." (Revelation: 22:12) These statements are the wellspring of more than 2,000 years of millennial Christian cults.

5: 70 AD: The Essenes, a sect of Jewish ascetics with apocalyptic beliefs, may have seen the Jewish revolt against the Romans in 66-70 as the final end-time battle. You can now read their texts: the Dead Sea Scrolls.

6: 2nd century AD: The Montanists, founded around 155 AD by a guy named Montanus, were perhaps the first recognisable Christian "end of the world" cult. They believed that Christ’s triumphant return was imminent and established a base in Anatolia, central Turkey where they waited for doomsday. Montanus was an immensely charismatic leader, given to speaking in tongues, and despite the failure of all his prophecies, his sect endured for hundreds of years after his death. Tertullian, an early Christian thinker who coined terms like the Trinity, and the Old and New Testaments, became a devotee of Montanism in later life.

7: 247 AD: Rome celebrated its thousandth anniversary this year. At the same time, the Roman government dramatically increased its persecution of Christians, so much so that many Christians believed that the End had arrived.

8: 365: Hilary of Poitiers predicted the world would end in 365.

9: 380: The Donatists, a North African Christian sect headed by Tyconius, looked forward to the world ending in 380.

10: Late 4th Century: St. Martin of Tours (ca. 316-397) wrote, "There is no doubt that the Antichrist has already been born. Firmly established already in his early years, he will, after reaching maturity, achieve supreme power.

11: 500: Roman theologian Sextus Julius Africanus (ca. 160 - 240) claimed that the End would occur 6000 years after the Creation. He assumed that they were 5531 years between the Creation and the Resurrection, and thust expected the Second Coming to take place no later than 500 AD. Hippolytus (died ca. 236), believing that Christ would return 6000 years after the Creation, anticipated the Parousia in 500 AD. The theologian Irenaeus, influenced by Hippolytus' writings, also saw 500 as the year of the Second Coming.

12: Apr 6, 793: Elipandus, bishop of Toledo, described a brief bout of end-time panic that happened on Easter Eve, 793. According to Elipandus, the Spanish monk Beatus of Liebana prophesied the end of the world that day in the presence of a crowd of people. The people, thinking that the world would end that night, became frightened, panicked, and fasted through the night until dawn. Seeing that the world had not ended and feeling hungry, Hordonius, one of the fasters, quipped, "Let's eat and drink, so that if we die at least we'll be fed."

13: 800: Sextus Julius Africanus revised the date of Doomsday to 800 AD. Beatus of liebana wrote in his Commentary on the Apocalypse, which he finished in 78, that there were only 14 years left until the end of the world. Thus, the world would end by 800 at the latest.

14: 806: Bishop Gregory of Tours calculated the End occuring between 709 & 806.

15: 848: The prophetess Thiota declared that the world would end this year.

16: Mar 25, 970: The Lotharingian computists believed they had found evidence in the Bible that a conjunction of certain feast days prefigured the end times. They were just one of a wide scattering of millennial cults springing up in advance of that first Millennium. The abbot of Saint-Benoit of Fleury-sur-Loire sent a letter to his king complaining about the Lotharingians: “For a rumour had filled almost the entire world that when the Annunciation fell on Good Friday, without any question, it would be the End of the World.” The millennial panic endured for at least 30 years after the fateful date had come and gone, with some adjustment made to allow 1,000 years after the crucifixion, rather than the nativity.

17: 992: Bernard of Thuringia calculated that the end would come in 992.

18: 995: The Feast of the Annunciation and Good Friday also coincided in 992, prompting some mystics to conclude that the world would end within 3 years of that date.

19: 1000: There are many stories of apocalyptic paranoia around the year 1000. For example, legend has it that a "panic terror" gripped Europe in the years and months before this date. However scholars disagree on which stories are genuine, whether millennial expectations at this time were any greater than usual, or whether oridnary people were even aware of what year it was.

20: 1033: After Jesus failed to return in 1000, some mystics pushed the date of the End to the thousandth anniversary of the Crucifixion. The writings of the Burgundian monk Radulfus Glaber described a rash of millennial paranoia during the period from 1000-1033.

21: Sep 23, 1186: John of Toledo, after calculating that a planetary alignment would occur in Libra on September 23, 1186 (Julian calendar), circulated a letter (known as the "Letter of Toledo") warning that the world was going to be destroyed on this date, and that only a few people would survive.

22: 1284: Pope Innocent III predicted the Second Coming for this year. He based his prediction on the date of the inception of the Muslim faith, and then added 666 years to that.

23: Botticelli’s Mystical Nativity: To this painting, which hangs in the National Gallery in London, Botticelli added a Greek inscription which characterised the early 1500s as a pre-apocalyptic period known as the Tribulation and anticipated a Second Coming in or around the year 1504: "I Sandro painted this picture at the end of the year 1500 in the troubles of Italy in the half time after the time according to the eleventh chapter of St. John in the second woe of the Apocalypse in the loosing of the devil for three and a half years. Then he will be chained in the 12th chapter and we shall see him trodden down as in this picture."

24: Feb 1, 1524. Panicked by predictions made by a group of London astrologers, some 20,000 people abandoned their homes and fled to high ground in anticipation of a second Great Flood that was predicted to start from the Thames. As it happened, it didn't even rain in London on that date. Proving that this was not just the error of a London-centric media, the German astrologer Johannes Stoeffler then made a similar prediction for later in the same month, because of a planetary alignment in Pisces (a water sign).

25: October 3, 1533: Michael Stifel, a German associate of Martin Luther, urged his small band of followers to sell all their property after becoming convined by his mathematical study of the Bible that the end of the world was approaching. On the appointed day he led his followers to the top of a hill so they could be delivered to heaven. A few hours later, with the world very much intact, he hurried down the hill and had to be locked in a local prison for his own protection.

26: 1600: Martin Luther believed that the End would occur no later than 1600.

27: 1648: Having made close study of the kabbalah, theTurkish rabbi Sabbatai Zevi predicted that the Messiah would make a miraculous return in 1648, and that his name would be Sabbatai Zevi. With 1648 having come and gone without any appreciable apocalypse Sabbatai revised his estimate to…

28: 1658: In his The Book of Prophecies, Christopher Columbus claimed that the world was created in 5343BC, and would last 7000 years. Assuming no year zero, that means the end would come in 1658. Columbus was influenced by Pierre d'Ailly.

29: 1666: A year packed with apocalyptic portent. With a date containing the figures commonly accepted as the biblical Number of the Beast and following a protracted period of plague in England, it was little surprise that many should believe the Great Fire of London to be a herald of the Last Days.

30: Fall 1694: Drawing from theology and astrology, German prophet Johann Jacob Zimmerman determined that the world would end in the fall of 1694. Zimmerman gathered a group of pilgrims and made plans to go to America to welcome Jesus back to Earth. However, he died in February of that year, on the very day of departure. Johannes Kelpius took over leadership of the cult, which was known as Woman in the Wilderness, and they completed their journey to the New World. Fall came and went and, needless to say, the cultists were profoundly disappointed at having traveled all the way across the Atlantic just to be stood up by Jesus.

31: Apr 5, 1761: Religious extremist William Bell claimed the world would be destroyed by earthquake on this day. Since there had been an earthquake on February 8 and another on March 8, he reasoned that the world must end in another 28 days' time! Again, Londoners gathered in boats on the Thames or headed for the hills. When his prediction didn't come true, he was promptly thrown into Bedlam, London's notorious nuthouse.

32: May 19, 1780: On this day in New England the skies mysteriously turned dark for several hours in the afternoon, causing people to believe that a biblical prophecy had come true and Judgement Day had arrived. In reality, the darkness was caused by smoke from large-scale forest fires to the west.

33: 1794. Charles Wesley, writer of the Christmas Carol: Hark the Herald Angels Sing & brother of John Wesley, believed that the world would come to an end in this year, thus concurring with the Shakers who also anticipated a final reckoning.

34: Dec 25, 1814: In Devon, a self-styled prophet named Joanna Southcott averred that she was the expectant mother of a new Christ-child to which she would give birth on Christmas Day 1814. That she was a virgin and well over 60 did not appear to weaken her faith that this would come to pass. She was at least correct that something momentous would occur on the fateful date: she died. Despite this disappointment, a large cult continued to believe in Southcott and, as late as 1927, a sealed box said to contain an important message left by Joanna was opened in the presence of the Bishop of Grantham. It contained a lottery ticket.

35: 1836. Notwithstanding his brother's erroneous estimate, the Methodist founder John Wesley expected the End Times to commence in 1836, with the appearance of the Great Beast of Revelation.

36: Oct 22, 1844: Millerites, followers of the American Baptist preacher William Miller, became convinced that the end of the world had been predicted in Daniel 8:14. After a few false dawns, the date was set as Oct 22, 1844. That day is now known for obvious reason, as the Great Disappointment. Most Millerites subsequently rejected their faith.

37: Aug 7, 1847. The leader of a small, largely forgotten German religious cult called the Harmonists and who also established a utopian commune in Economy, Pennsylvania, "Father" George Rapp was convinced that Jesus would return before his death. To his credit his faith in this event was unshakeable right up to the end of his life: "If I did not know that the dear Lord meant I should present you all to him, I should think my last moment come," he said. Only the latter assumption proved to be true.

38: 1874 : Memorable for being the first of a long line of dates posited for the End of the World by the Jehovah's Witnesses.

39: 1881 : Another estimated apocalypse by the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and also by pyramidologists who used the peculiar geometry of the Great Pyramid to extrapolate various world events using a form of numerology. The renowned 16th century seer Mother Shipton was also said to have predicted: “The world to an end shall come, in eighteen hundred and eighty one” That this verse was subsequently proven to be fraudulent did not deter the credulous few from engaging in the now fully-fledged custom known as millennial panic.

40: 1890: Northern Paiute leader Wovoka predicted the Millennium beginning in 1890. This prediction came from a trance he experienced during a solar eclipse in 1889. Wovoka was a practitioner of the Ghost Dance cult, a bizarre hybrid of apocalyptic Christianity and American Indian mysticism.

41: 1891: In 1835 Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism, foresaw the Second Coming taking place in 56 years' time, or about 1891.

42: Oct 1908: Pennsylvanian grocery store owner Lee T. Spangler claimed that the world would meet a fiery end during this month.

43: May 18, 1910: Despite a number of previous documented appearances having caused no deaths, the 1910 return of Halley’s Comet was widely perceived as a threat to mankind - allegedly due to noxious vapours emanating from its tail. This may be the first apocalyptic panic founded on a scientific, rather than religious misapprehension. In Germany, one could buy postcards depicting apocalyptic scenes bearing the caption, "End of the World on May 18". Con artists took advantage of people's fears by selling "comet pills" to make people immune to the toxins...or so they claimed. Interestingly, the American author Mark Twain who was born in 1835 - another Halley’s Comet year - and correctly predicted that his own death in 1910 would coincide with the dirty snowball’s return.

44: 1914: Jehovah's Witnesses have now stopped predicting exact dates for the end of the world after a string of high-profile failures. Charles Taze Russell, who founded the Watch Tower magazine, calculated that Jesus Christ would impose his rule on earth in 1914. The outbreak of the First World War seemed to lend support to his Armageddon prediction, but there was no Second Coming.

45: Dec 17, 1919. Albert Porta, a meteorologist, averred that a rare conjunction of planets would create a powerful gravitational or magnetic flux drawing draw a giant solar flare out toward the Earth, incinerating the atmosphere. Some credulous souls, on hearing this, apparently chose suicide rather than be killed. Which is rather odd once you think about it. Another failure for the scientific method.

46: 1966: Between 1965 and 1966, an apocalyptic battle was to occur, resulting in the fall of the United States, claimed the Nation of Islam.

47: 1967 : A banner year for apocalypse: Jim Jones, Sun Myung Moon, and UFO contactee George van Tassel all independently arrived at the conclusion that the Summer of Love would be the end of us all.

48: 1969: Charles Manson believed that simmering racial tensions in the US would erupt into an Apocalyptic race war, after which his band of criminals - the "Manson Family" - would rule the world. When no race war erupted, his gang began a killing spree to "show the blacks how to do it". Manson is currently serving life for murder.

49: 1977: Fundamentalist cult leader William Branham predicted that the Rapture would take place no later than 1977. Just before this, Los Angeles was to fall into the sea after an earthquake, the Vatican would achieve dictatorial powers over the world, and all of Christianity would become unified.

50: 1980s: The US evangelist Hal Lindsey believed that Armageddon would follw the expansion of the EU into a 10 country United State of Europe ruled by the Antichrist. he never set a date for the end of the world, but hinted that a final battle between good and evil was imminent. He still broadcasts his biblical prophecies on evangelist networks.

51: Apr 29, 1980. Leland Jensen, leader of a splinter group from the minority Bahá'í faith, announced that this day would see a nuclear exchange between the superpowers resulting in the deaths of millions. In fact 1979 and 1983 would have been the two most likely years for this to have happened, with nuclear strikes averted by sheer fluke on both occasions. Finding himself alive on April 30, the prophet fell back on the traditional "This is [only the] start of the Tribulation" excuse.

52: Mar 10, 1982. In a near repeat of the erroneous 1919 prophecy, a popular "science" book, The Jupiter Effect, expostulated that a planetary conjunction would cause earthquakes, or a solar flare, or both. In fact, the only appreciable effect of the gravitational pull of all the planets combined was a possible higher tide measured in some places - peaking 0.04mm above average. Two years earlier, the televangelist Pat Robertson had also predicted this, saying: "I guarantee you by the end of 1982 there is going to be a judgment on the world".

53: Apr 29, 1987: The irrepressible doom-monger Leland Jensen was back with more portents of extinction, this time as a result of a collision between the Earth and that old favourite Halley’s Comet.

54: 1988: Another rash of predictions nominated this year as our last, chiefly influenced by best-selling 1970 book The Late, Great Planet Earth, which interpreted a passage from the book of Matthew as indicating the return of Christ within 40 years of the founding of the state of Israel.

55: Sept 11 - 13, 1988: Former NASA engineer Edgar Whisenant sold 4.5 million copies of his book 88 ReasonsWhy the Rapture Could Be in 1988, mostly to evangelical US Christians. Follow-up works, which revised the prediction for dates in the 1990s, failed to sell as well.

56: Sep 28, 1992: "Rockin" Rollen Stewart, an eccentric evangelist who started the craze for holding up signs representing bible verses at public events [John 3:16 was the most popular of these] was certain that The Rapture would occur on this day. He went on to instigate a campaign of stink-bombing churches and other religiously inspired acts of madness, which culminated with his imprisonment for kidnapping.

57: Oct 28, 1992: Lee Jang Rim, leader of the Korean doomsday cult Mission for the Coming Days (also known as the Tami Church), predicted that the Rapture would occur on this date. Lee was convicted of fraud after the prophecy failed. Lee's cult was part of the larger Hyoo-Go (Rapture) movement, which took Korea by storm in 1992.

58: 1993: David Koresh and more than one hundred followers barricaded themselves into the Branch Davidian ranch in Waco, Texas, to await the end of the world. They were surrounded by the FBI in a 51-day siege that was only ended by a fire that killed 76 of those inside, indluing Koresh.

59: Dec 9, 1993: James T. Harmon added 51.57 years to May 15, 1949 (the date the UN recognized Israel) and subtracted 7 to arrive at the date of the Rapture, approximately December 9, 1993. He also suggested 1996, 2012 and 2022 as alternative rapture dates.

60: March - May 1997: The year of the comet Hale-Bopp gave rise to a welter of "end of the world" theories all based on a mistaken observation by amateur astronomer Chuck Shramek. When his assertion that the comet was being trailed by a companion object found its way onto Usenet message boards, it was magnified by the full power of the then-young internet into a worldwide hullabaloo. Another contributory factor was the suggestion that the Solar System was about to pass through a mysterious and entirely imaginary region of space called the Photon Belt. The Heaven’s Gate cult seized on these combined rumours as their signal to commit mass suicide in March of this year. It was also the 6,000th anniversary of the Creation, as calculated by Bishop Ussher, leading to another wave of "Last Days" panic.

61: 12:01am, Mar 31, 1998. One of the more precise predictions of the Second Coming. Hon-Ming Chen, leader of the Taiwanese cult "The True Way" - claimed that God would announce his imminent return on every television in the USA at this moment, prior to an actual landing in his spacecraft. Chen had the good grace to admit his mistake and offer to be crucified when the deity failed to materialise, but no-one seemed enthusiastic.

62: 1999: Throughout 1998 and 1999 the predictions of Apocalypse came so thick and fast as to dwarf any previous doomsday craze. For Nostradamus, arguably the best-known seer of all time, July was the chosen date of Armageddon. No sooner was the July panic over when the rumour began to spread that the Cassini space probe would crash to Earth, spilling its radioactive fuel and fulfilling the prediction in Revelation 8:11 “And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.”

63: 2000: No less a luminary than Sir Isaac Newton believed that the year 2000 would see the events foretold in the Book of Revelation as detailed in his book Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John.

64: Jan 1, 2000: Dozens of Christian cults predictedt he turn of the millennium would coincide with the Second Coming of Christ and the end of the world. Concerns that the Y2K computer bug would collapse computer systems stoked an atmosphere of impending doom. But, as ever, life went on as normal. Carlos Roa, the Argentine goalkeeper who declined to negotiate a new contract at his Spanish club because he was convinced the world would end, returned later in the season.

65: May 2003: Nancy Lieder claimed to be channeling information from aliens on a planet orbiting the star Zeta Reticuli. She warned that a worldwide cataclysm would strike the Earth, and that it name was Nibiru. Nibiru apparently was a rogue planet on a 3,600 year oribt and was about to enter the inner solar system. It was supposedly discovered by the ancient Mesopotamians, who named it. To add a little spice to the story, NASA apparently had known about this for a while and according to Nancy had been trying to cover up the story and suppress the info about our impending doom.

66: 2004: Major world events beginning in August 1999 would lead to full-scale war in the year 2000, followed by a rebirth from the ashes in 2004, according to Taoist prophet Ping Wu.

67: Feb 12, 2006: Clinton Ortiz claimed on his website that Prince William, whom he suggests is the Antichrist of Revelation, would come to power on this day. He also quotes William’s mother - Diana, Princess of Wales - as having said: "I believe Wills can rebuild Camelot and I will be his Merlin. Together we will return to the chivalry, pageantry, and the glory that was King Arthur's Court. William will remake the Monarchy by showing love, leadership, and compassion."

68: Friday 13th April 2007: An un-named punter placed a £10 bet at 10,000/1 with Ladbrokes, the bookmakers, that the world would end on that day. It is unclear how he expected to collect.

69: Mar 21, 2008. A minor Christian sect The Lords' Witnesses announced this date for the end of days on their website, which is still online.

70: May 2008: Thirty-five members of a cult called the True Russian Orthodox Church spent six months in a cave in anticipation of the apocalypse predicted by their leader Pyotr Kuznetsov. They began to emerge from their maekshift underground home after the roof began to collapse in March. Kuznetsov, who never accompanied his followers into the cave had been ordered to undergo psychiatric treatment by a Russian court.

From several sources, including:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article4717864.ece
http://www.abhota.info/end1.htm

Something to really be concerned about:

What happens when Yellowstone blows up?

~Salamon2