Page 13 - 201311 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - November 2012

Will The World Really End On 2012.21.12? Will the world end on December 21, 2012? The unsettling evidence behind ancient astrologers' claim and the film they inspired. Mail Online (Originally Published October 2009) A tidal wave engulfs the Himalayas. A tsunami scoops up a warship and dumps it on the White House. The Great Wall of China crumbles and thousands of screaming tourists plummet to their deaths. woman who said her only friend was her cat. we now know to be its actual length. Soon the horrors reach British shores. A ‘She wanted to know if she should have him put They also accurately forecast the massive earthquake sends Big Ben crashing to down before 2012 so that he wouldn’t suffer.’ movements of planets including Jupiter and the ground and destroys the newly-built Morrison has posted a list of 20 Mars, and the occurrence of both solar and lunar Olympic stadium, great surges in our rivers questions and answers on NASA’s website to eclipses for many centuries to come. drown millions up and down the country, and address people’s worries. Given these very precise predictions, plunging asteroids turn our towns and cities into But fascination with our apparently Doomsday theorists are alarmed that the Mayan smoking ruins. looming annihilation continues to grow — with ‘Long Count’ Calendar, as it is known, appears Those who survive the initial onslaught more than 175 books about it advertised on the to end abruptly on a date they recorded as flee in terror, but to run is futile for this is the Amazon website alone, and some ghoulish 13.0.0.0. ultimate catastrophe — the end of the world, as entrepreneurs even offering 2012 survival kits. On the Gregorian calendar which we use predicted by the Hollywood disaster movie So, what has led to such alarm about today, this corresponds to December 21, 2012. 2012, which opens next month. 21/12/2012, a date causing panic not seen since The only clue as to what the Mayans Starring John Cusack and Thandie fears about the Millennium computer bug in the thought might happen on that day comes from Newton, 2012 is directed by Roland Emmerich, year 2000? an ancient stone tablet, discovered during whose previous films, Independence Day and Is it all nonsense or could we really be roadworks in Mexico back in the Sixties. The Day After Tomorrow, have conjured up only three years away from Doomsday? Carved upon it are hieroglyphics that similarly apocalyptic visions — with Earth This belief in our imminent demise is refer to the year 2012 and an event that will invaded by hostile aliens, or threatened with the based on a calendar produced by the ancient involve Bolon Yokte, the Mayan god of war and sudden onset of a new Ice Age. Mayan civilisation, which flourished in the creation. While these have been dismissed as steamy rainforests of central America for nearly Weathering and a crack in the stone have entertaining bunkum, Emmerich’s latest effort 2,000 years until its mysterious collapse around made the last part of the inscription illegible, is causing rather more of a stir. AD900. but Mexican archaeologists have interpreted it Its plot revolves around a real-life Today its abandoned temples and as saying: ‘He will descend from the sky.’ prediction that the world will end on December palaces have been engulfed by the lush green Might this be a warning of impending 21, 2012, and many doomsayers claim there is vegetation of the jungle, their rooms inhabited divine wrath? evidence to suggest that this prophecy will only by wild animals and birds — yet this was Those who believe so include journalist come true. once one of the sophisticated societies of its day. Michael Drosnin, author of the best-selling In America, they include Richard Without wheels or metal tools to help book The Bible Code, which describes the work Heene, the Colorado father who created a them, the Mayans built many splendid stone of three Israeli mathematicians who analysed worldwide frenzy when he claimed, falsely, that buildings, including intricately designed the Book of Genesis using a computer. his six-year-old son Falcon had floated off in a observatories in which they developed a highly They supposedly discovered coded home-made helium balloon shaped like a UFO. advanced understanding of astronomy. references to the names of 66 legendary rabbis It has since emerged that Heene planned Scanning the heavens for many who lived and died many centuries after to build an underground bunker to protect his centuries and noting any association between Genesis was written. family in the event of the sun exploding in 2012. the movement of the celestial bodies and events The text was also said to contain hidden Whether his strange craft was part of his on Earth, they produced complicated almanacs details of the rabbis’ birth and death dates, and escape plan has yet to be established, but Heene full of horrifying imagery. of the towns and cities in which they would live. is far from alone in his fear of this imminent The rising of the planet Venus in the Continuing this analysis, Drosnin Armageddon. morning, a sign believed to augur Mayan claimed to have found encoded descriptions of Far-fetched though it sounds, rumours success in war, was represented by pictures of the Earth being pounded by comets in the year about what might happen in 2012 are fuelling so decapitated heads, while the lunar eclipses were 2012. much hysteria that NASA has had to intervene symbolised by drawings of a dead goddess with Others have suggested that, on the day to allay public fears. a rope around her neck. in question, the winter solstice, the sun will be ‘Two years ago, I got a question each Eclipses were thought to be a time of in exact alignment with the centre of our galaxy. week about 2012,’ says David Morrison, great danger for women, and a period when According to Lawrence Joseph, author director of NASA’s Lunar Science Institute in many children would be born deaf or blind. of a book called Apocalypse 2012, unspecified California. For all their gruesome illustrations, gravitational and energy forces may be acting ‘Now I’m getting a dozen a day and these almanacs were remarkably accurate in on us from the centre of the milky way — and, people are really worried. their astronomical calculations. if disrupted, he speculates they would throw our ‘A couple of teenagers over here have With neither telescopes nor other bodies and our planet out of kilter, resulting in told me they were contemplating suicide rather equipment at their disposal, the Mayans catastrophe. than facing the end of the world and I’ve also managed to calculate that a lunar month — the had quite a few questions from England. period between successive new moons — lasted ‘One of the saddest inquiries was from a 29.5305 days, just 34 seconds away from what (Continued on Page 14)