The new Columbia Pictures disaster epic, 2012, proposes what many New Age folk believe is inevitable. The Roland Emmerich movie looks ahead to December 21, 2012 as the end of the world because the Mayan Calendar cycle ends on that day.So, the cinematic seas rise, and the ground shakes -- sending scores of mid-range stars scrambling for their lives. Syfy previews both the movie and its long-held cataclysm theory on a new special, 2012: Startling New Secrets. Premiering Sunday, November 8 at 9 p.m., the two-hour show "delves into the Mayan Mystery surrounding 2012."
I'm going out on a limb here and predicting the show will fail to ask the obvious question: If the Mayans were so adept at looking centuries into the future to predict the end of the world, why weren't they clairvoyant enough to foresee the end of their long-extinct civilization and prevent its collapse?
No doubt Syfy assembled 2012 experts (including the conspiracy-crazed, former scientist Richard Hoagland) will divulge some prized information on why human beings seem to need a little gloom and doom in their lives to make daily existence interesting.
Remember how all civilization would collapse because of 2000 Millennium Bug? We're all going to die of Swine Flu -- which is sad because we were tough enough to make it through Bird Flu and SARS. We'll toss 2012 on the pile in a couple years.
For now, we'll wait and see if this new movie is better than Emmerich's last preachy train wreck, The Day After Tomorrow. Perhaps the Mayans also looked ahead to an age when massive, loud CGI blockbusters would lose all sense of proportion and narrative effectiveness. Now, that would be impressive prophecy.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
10-24-2009 @ 9:16PM
Sir Yuck-Yuck said...
could it be the MAYANS just got up one day and said
" F%$# this calendar making" let's go do some stuff LOL though if the world has to end, I'd prefer it be when its Summer here not Winter.
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10-24-2009 @ 9:20PM
Sir Yuck-Yuck said...
P.S. it would be nice if my Skunk pic would upload as my avatar pic here :| and :/
10-24-2009 @ 9:18PM
Michael Byng said...
Wow...a special about the Mayan Calender...I love how original Syfy is.
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10-25-2009 @ 12:10AM
ch said...
That movie sucks and this show is dumb.
2012 is a long way away and well prob. nuke each other.
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10-25-2009 @ 10:18AM
Crystal Beth said...
This date is noted before the Myan's as well. In ancient Egypt as well as the bible. It is a fact that every 25 thousand years there are major astronomic changes. How can anyone say nothing will happen, were they there the last time? The sun will align with the milky way, which we now know has a black hole. How can anyone predict what will or will not occur. The moon has profound effects on our tides, and that is just a benign rock. To minimize what could occur, even just slightly, due to special effects in a movie, is ignorant.
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10-25-2009 @ 3:28PM
LC said...
Actually your entire post is ignorant. The moon has an effect on our tides because of it's size and relative position to the Earth. The sun aligning with the Milky Way is in no way going to cause a gravity shift when those stars are light years away.
Show me any reputable scientific group that believes any of this nonsense.
For people to stress out, or even alter their way of living, because a civilization ended their calendar on a certain date, is just sad.
10-25-2009 @ 3:39PM
SomeRandomGuy said...
Ask the Mayans of today if the world will end in 2012. They'll just stare blankly at you. 2012 is Y2K v2.0, period, and all it will ever be (and already is) is yet another scenario for the conspiracy theorists and entertainment industry to stuff their faces with cash while feeding off the fears and gullibility of those around them.
http://news.aol.com/article/world-wont-end-in-2012-mayans-insist/713074
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10-25-2009 @ 3:41PM
Si said...
Please watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJjQMwEjC1I
I belive him more than some quack with a website you found on Google.
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10-27-2009 @ 2:26PM
sbfields said...
It's just a movie.
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11-08-2009 @ 10:07AM
Dr Chronos said...
You know when I came hee I wanted to know a little bit about what the show was not an editorial. I thought this was something that it isn't.
Doc
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11-09-2009 @ 12:42AM
Mayu said...
1. The Mayans did NOT predict the end of the world as they were not prophets. They did not predict their own demise... they again, were not prophets. They didn't care about the future, what interested them was cosmic events, the alignment of the stars, natural disasters, planetary stuff. The Mayan pictorials/hieroglyphics are not yet completely understood even by experts.
2. the bible does NOT predict 2012. In fact, in several places it is mentioned that no one knows the time of the end, not the angels, not even Christ, only God knows. You cannot prepare for the end of the world by observing world events and using them to interpret the Bible.
there are some biblical scholars who believe the date of the end is predicted via the bible code is 2060ish.
3. lots of people bring up Nostradamus. Nosty didn't predict the end of the world for 2012 (nor did he predict Y2K, nor did he predict 9/11) if you believe in Nostradamus's predictions, rest assure, you won't be alive when the end comes because Nostradamus predicts it for the year 3797 (which some believe translates to 2209) it's a code thing.
Y2K was the end of the world, 2001 was the true millenium so that was the end of the world, 6-6-06 was a bad day... when that didn't pan out 9-9-09 was suppose to be the actual 6-6-06.
There are over 200 "end of world" predictions since the beginning of time.
The Mayans believed quite litterally, that there were 3 worlds before the world we live in now, all previous worlds destroyed and recreated. Scientific proof of life even before they Mayan's age, proves otherwise.
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