We see in movies, old men with signboards proclaiming that 'the end is nigh'. Usually we scoff and roll our eyes - but what if it's written in the stars? What if the end of the world is truly what Nostradamus and the Mayans predicted centuries ago?

 

Waking up one morning, you find the world outside is dark. It is difficult to breathe and there seems no sound, no life and no light. You call out for your family, but no one answers. Everywhere you see the bleakness and the gloom. You look out through your window and see grim destruction.

The end of the world had come while you slept.

The impending threat of global warming, melting icebergs and the frequency in which tsunamis sweep across continents have had scientists, doom-sayers and apocalypse-aficionados warning the world that the end is nigh.

The millions of lives lost due to war, famine, earthquakes, floods and typhoons all point towards a rare galactic occurrence set to happen in two years time; a galactic occurrence said to be of an apocalyptic scope.

So apocalyptic, in fact, that it portends the end of humanity.

And, backed with some eerily plausible scientific evidence and the predictions of ancient times, they have set a date: 21 December, 2012. 

 

The Doomsday Prophecies

Way, way back into the 16^th century, a scholar and seer named Nostradamus predicted that the world will go through a great change when the sun appears to us to be in perfect alignment with the centre of the Milky Way galaxy - an occurrence that happens only once in 26,000 years.

In a documentary on the History Channel, 'Nostradamus 2012', it is said that Nostradamus wrote quatrains (four-verse, poem-like paragraphs) that told of famines, disasters, floods and droughts as our Earth spins closer to being in the bulls-eye of the most dense magnetic field of energy known to man - a dark rift in the centre of the Milky Way galaxy.

Along with seven explicit, horrifying and abstract drawings, he put them all into a manuscript - now believed to be his Lost Books. The Lost Books predicted that this galactic alignment will see much suffering and disaster before it all culminates in the mother of all disasters.

The images in his books became symbols of the sequence of events leading to this happening - a sword plunging through an S-shaped figure (this would represent the Milky Way which appears as an S when we see it from Earth). This symbolises war (World War III?).

Another drawing is of missing spokes on one of his Wheels of Time (he illustrated many "wheels" all of which had eight spokes. But in the last one, there were none). The spokes represent the eight intersecting axis of our planet with the Milky Way galaxy. When removed it could spell chaos.

There is another symbol involving a club on top of the Tree of Life. We all know what trees signify life and the club is a weapon used in ancient times. Again, another indication of destruction.

It does tie up.

In recent times, we have seen an increase in natural disasters and loss of lives. Do they lead to the end: Hurricane Katrina, typhoon Helen, the deadliest tsunami in history in 2004, the 9/11 tragedy, the subsequent war against Iraq, the floods in the Philippines, the earthquakes of Java and Sumatra, the collapse of Wall Street and the economy of the world...

Nostradamus also points this time - our time - to be inflicted with plagues and famine - it is chilling to recall that the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) took the lives of hundreds and infected thousands in 2003, that AIDS and HIV now affect the lives of 33 million citizens of the world and continues to spread, and that over 20 million people have died from starvation, waterborne diseases and AIDS this year alone.

Nostradamus ominously foretells that as our Earth draws closer to this alignment, more such tragedies will occur. There will be famine, fire, earthquakes and drought. There will be more floods, tsunamis and the drowning of coastal cities. In that programme, authors of doom-books and scientists come forth to say: the next two years will be the most disastrous of them all.

The fact that the Mayans, said to be one of the greatest and most advanced civilizations of ancient times, ended their Long Count calendar at exactly 21 December 2012, gives one the goosebumps.

But the Mayans are not the only ones with these doomsday warnings - the ancient Egyptians, the Freemasons and the Hoppi Indians have predictions of their own which simultaneously corroborate the initial predictions - the galactic alignment which will bring the disastrous finale.

The Egyptians were believed to have built the pyramids with the peaks pointing directly at this location of galactic alignment, which Nostradamus too, wrote about in his Lost Books. The ancient brotherhood of the Freemasons supposedly carved clues that foretold this end into gothic cathedrals and churches over the centuries - such as the church of St Michael of the Apocalypse, which Nostradamus used to further support his theories.

In all these doomsday prophecies, the one common prediction that stands out is this: doomsday is closely linked to the galactic alignment.

Then again, the world might not end in the near future after all. And Nostradamus himself might not even have predicted it this way.

Some experts have discovered that the Lost Books were not, as previously believed, written by Nostradamus himself. According to the History channel programme 'Nostradamus 2012', Nostradamus was named as the author, and the manuscripts have been proven to be from the 16^th century - but the writing is not his.

This could suggest that the Lost Books are copies, and they could be misinterpreted and misunderstood. The fact that Nostradamus' quatrains are written in ancient French supports the idea that various interpretations could have been mistaken.

The writings were extremely vague and filled with double-meanings and innuendos. They could describe anything from his grocery list to the end of the world as far as our modern interpreters are concerned.

The fact that much of it, say non-believers, is obscured by symbols, signs and secret codes found wrapped within even more obscure symbols, signs and what-have-yous, means that all this is open to debate.

Also, the end of the world has been predicted (and proven wrong) a dozen times before. Remember the Y2K scare - where panicked citizens started stocking up on food, storing water, and escaping into underground hatches?

In addition to that, certain religious groups have been hailing the end since 1983, 1993, and 2000 and every other random year. The coming of the Hale-Bopp comet in 1997 even saw a mass-suicide by the Heaven's Gate cult, an American UFO cult. The members were convinced by their leader that the comet was a way to 'recycle' Earth, and the only way they could save their eternal souls was to leave the living world at once.

However, from various websites such as '21December2012.com', doom-sayers are hitting back, saying that Nostradamus could have purposely hidden his predictions and warnings behind these double-meanings and symbols, since the 16^th century was a time of persecution, where anyone who displayed even the slightest hint of 'witch craft' and 'prophesing' would be cruelly burned at the stake.

Also, there can be no denying the effects of astrological and planetary occurrences upon Earth's ecological conditions - what the nigh-sayers are insisting is that this galactic alignment could be the trigger of some of the sleeping giants of the world: the volcanoes.

One such sleeping giant is the Yellowstone Park volcano, which is reaching its red-zone; when in the red zone, says Gregg Braden, author of Fractal Time: The Secret of 2012, a volcano does not simply just explode by alarm clock. It explodes when a powerful trigger sets it off.

This trigger could be the magnetic fields and the magnetic pulse that would emanate from the centre of the Milky Way.

As for the failed predictions, well, they didn't find the Lost Books then, nor were the disasters as frequent as they are now.

 

The Apocalypse as Interpreted

by Hollywood

Despite the extremely morbid topic, there is this fascination with the End of It All.

We delight in watching movies that have cast extras getting swept away by great waves of water, have the heroes emerge unscathed as the world around them crashes down and then single-handedly save it at the end of 140 minutes, and we are endlessly predicting the end of the world.

Hollywood has been the producers of end-of-world movies for ages; the latest of this bunch being the recently-released '2012' (see our writer Aris's review of it in this issue).

The long list of DoomsDay movies include the 1973 classic, Soylent Green (which is now hailed as one of the greatest movie quotes of all time: 'Soylent Green... is people!), Independence Day (1994) Armageddon (1998), Deep Impact (1998), The Day the after Tomorrow (2004) and I Am Legend (2007). One can find a whole bunch more on Doomsday.com.

In Soylent Green, the anti-utopian world is overpopulated and there is no longer enough food to feed the people, and soon, supplement pills called Soylent Green is used to replace food.

The movie was hailed as way ahead of its time in predicting the end of humanity as we know it: overpopulation was seen as a huge problem and continues to be a problem in countries like China.

Soylent Green, unfortunately, was made of human corpses.

In Armageddon, a team of deep-core drillers was sent up to space to deflect and detonate a huge meteor that would crash into Earth and cause epic destruction.

In I Am Legend, a deadly mutation of the cure for cancer becomes an airborne virus that turns human beings into bloodthirsty zombies/vampires, and Will Smith (plus Dog), of course, is the last man standing.

And The Day After Tomorrow pretty much details every natural disaster that can befall mankind from their consistent abuse of Mother Earth. Even the Koreans have hopped on board - Tsunami (released last month) was a movie about being wiped out by crashing waves of water.

And now, '2012' shows the various predictions of 21/12/2012 in live-action motion, in continuing the trend of our obsession with foretelling our own end, our own death, and our own 'bye-bye' time.

 

Prophecy or No Prophecy:

The World WILL End

In the end, no matter which fence you sit on, there are very real threats interlaced within these prophecies, and oddly enough, Hollywood may have gotten it right too.

Global warming will eventually lead to the complete meltdown of the North Pole and lead to nations vanishing beneath the water. As it is, temperatures on Earth have risen by 0.2 degrees Celcius per decade for the last three decades, with estimates that the Earth could be at four degrees higher by 2055. This is frightening, because a mere three degrees in increase could already lead to the loss of life and resources, the complete flooding of the surface of Earth - complete obliteration.

Starvation, disease, poverty, war and conflict are still ongoing threats to human life; whether or not a great galactic alignment will cause everything to just go 'ka-boom' in 2012. Oil is depleting slowly and so are our natural resources. Meteors could crash into Earth, and tectonic plates will continue moving.

These are things that were repeatedly mentioned in 'Nostradamus 2012'; all Nostradamus did was confirm it, and perhaps set a date on it - to warn us of the impending doom.

And the doom, it seems, is two years away. Are you ready for it? Or will you scoff and ignore it?