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Apocalypse 2012: A Scientific Investigation into Civilization's End

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Overview

Don't look up

It won't help. You can't get out of the way, you can't dig a hole deep enough to hide. The end is coming, and there's nothing you can do about it.

So why read this book?
Because you can't look away when not just the religious fanatics are saying we're all going to be destroyed but the scientists are in on the act too. Here's what they're saying:

We're a million years over due for a mass extinction.

The sun at radiation minimum is acting much worse than at solar maximum, and one misdirected spewing of plasma could fry us in an instant.

The magnetic field--which shields us from harmful radiation--is developing a mysterious crack.

Our solar system is entering an energetically hostile part of the galaxy.

The Yellowstone supervolcano is getting ready to blow, and if it does, we can look forward to nuclear winter and 90 percent annihilation.

The Maya, the world's greatest timekeepers ever, say it's all going to stop on December 21, 2012.


So, see? There's nothing you can do, but you might as well sit back and enjoy the show.

You'll get a good chuckle.
That's why you should read this book.

Dear Reader,

If there were a chance that opening this book could set off a chain of events that would lead to Apocalypse, to the end of Life as we know it, would you be tempted? Finger poised uncertainly above the flashing red button? How about if the Apocalypse promised to result in a new age of enlightenment, a Heaven on Earth like never before?

Personally, I'll take the security of my cozy life over a chance at nirvana. But status quo may no longer be an option, for any of us. This book will convince you that there is a nonnegligible chance that the year 2012 will be more tumultuous, catastrophic, and, quite possibly, revelatory, than any other year in human history.

Parts of this book are best read with a bowl of popcorn: looking into the jaws of a great white shark in search of the meaning of death; touring a picturesque Guatemalan town with Mayan shaman just weeks before it is utterly destroyed. Other sections go better with a tranquilizer, such as the impending eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano, or the mass extinction headed our way--on the scale of the great collision that destroyed the dinosaurs and 70 percent of all other species, our best scientists contend that it's now overdue. Nail-biters should beware the fact that the next peak in the sunspot cycle, due in 2012, is widely expected to set records for the number and intensity of solar storms pummeling the Earth with radiation and igniting natural calamities such as earthquakes, volcanoes, and Katrina-sized hurricanes. And that our entire solar system appears to be moving into a dangerous interstellar energy cloud.

Is it a coincidence that the burgeoning war between Christianity and Islam seems hell-bent for Armageddon? Or that numerous other religions, philosophies, and cultural traditions are signaling that the end is near, with 2012 emerging as the consensus target date? A new era is about to be born, with all the pain and blood and joy and release that birth naturally entails.

Facing oblivion, or at least mega-metamorphosis, is something that few of us are emotionally prepared to do. Thus my excuse for the gallows humor that pervades this story. In a memorable Mary Tyler Moore episode, Mary cracks up laughing at the funeral of Chuckles the Clown who, dressed as a peanut while marching in a parade, was shucked to death by an elephant. If Mary can giggle in the face of death, so can we.

With kind regards,
Lawrence E. Joseph

Editorial Reviews

In New Age circles, the idea that some sort of world-spanning cataclysmic event will take place in December 2012 has been gaining traction for years, thanks largely to the calculations of ancient Mayan astronomers who pegged that moment as the end of a cycle of eons. Joseph uses that prophecy as a starting point, but claims that his interest lies in more substantial scientific threats to the planet-including cracks in Earth's magnetic field, the eruption of supervolcanoes and flareups of sunspot radiation. On the other hand, he also gives credence to planetary alignments and The Bible Code before veering into a rant about how the real problem is Christian fundamentalists who want to manipulate the Middle East into Armageddon. When he sticks to science journalism, Joseph is a lively tour guide, introducing readers to Mayan shamans and Russian scientists with equal aplomb. But when he encourages readers to start praying they survive the coming apocalypse, he comes off as exactly the sort of crackpot he claims to eschew. Still, there's less kookery than in other 2012 books, making Joseph a reasonably straightforward guide to the theory. (Jan. 23) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Author Information

Bio of Lawrence E. Joseph

Lawrence E. Joseph is chairman of the board of New Mexicoýbased Aerospace Consulting Corporation. He is the author of several books and has written for a a number of major newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, Salon.com, Family Circle, Audubon, and Discover.

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Additional Info

Imprint

Broadway Books

Filesize

1.71 MB

Number of Pages

272

eBook ISBN

9780767927154

Excerpt from: Apocalypse 2012 by Lawrence E. Joseph

1
WHY 2012, EXACTLY?

Two hours' tromp through the tarantula/crocodile jungle where a recent Survivor series was set, past an ancient Mayan ball court where both losers and winners were sacrificed (that certainly would have boosted Survivor's ratings) and then a steamy clamber up the hundred steep and crumbling steps of the 1,800-year-old ruin known as the Great Pyramid, the centerpiece of Mundo Perdido (Lost World), the oldest section of the Tikal ruins, was rewarded with the following: "The problem has got to be with your server. Call tech support and tell them to reconfigure... ," explained one twenty-something to the other.

Rip out their beating hearts, toss their lifeless carcasses down the stone steps, and chalk it all up as a human sacrifice to Bill Gates. Deep in the Guatemalan jungle, atop an ancient sacred temple, and these geeks still couldn't get their minds out of their computers.

I had gone to Tikal, where some of the most ancient Mayan prophecies originated, to get a feel for what, up until then, was just a mass of factoids--for example, that in the Mayan calendar the current age, known as the Fourth Age, began on August 13, 3114 BCE, which in the Mayan calendar is represented as 0.0.0.0.1 (Day One) and will end on December 21, 2012 ce, or 13.0.0.0.0 (Day Last). I could repeat that fact and many others accurately enough but, like twelfth-grade calculus (the derivative of n cubed is 3n squared, but what is a derivative, exactly?), I didn't really understand what I was saying.

The problem was calendars, to me a blah staple of contemporary existence. Navigating life without them would of course be unthinkable, but that's not going to happen, so why think about it? Apparently there once was a dispute between popes about how many days February and August should have, but that's all been settled for half a millennium. And at the stroke of midnight beginning 2006, the official atomic clock-keeper somewhere added a second for the first time since 1999 because the Earth's rotation is being slowed by the moon's increasing gravitational pull, which might be an interesting development if we had enough time in our busy lives to figure out why.

Fundamentalists insist that it's all in whatever their holy book might happen to be, but my visit to Mayan Guatemala was the first time I've ever been told that it's all not in their book but in their calendar, which is all I would ever need. The Maya love their calendars, see them as visual depictions of the passage of time, which is how life unfolds. They charted this unfolding with not one but twenty calendars, only fifteen of which have been released to the modern world; the remaining five are still kept secret by Mayan elders. Mayan calendars are pegged to the movements of the Sun, the Moon, and the visible planets, to harvest and insect cycles, and range in length from 260 days to 5,200 years and beyond.

In the Cholqij, the 260-day calendar that represents a woman's pregnancy cycle, and also the number of days that the planet Venus rises in the morning each year, each day is represented by one of 20 symbols representing spiritual guides or deities, called Ajau. The number 20 is sacred to the Mayans because a person has 20 digits--10 fingers to reach to the sky and 10 toes to grasp the ground. They regard the number 10, so significant to our mathematics, as half a loaf at best.

According to Gerardo Kanek Barrios and Mercedes Barrios Longfellow in The Maya Cholqij: Gateway to Aligning with the Energies of the Earth, 2005, thirteen forces influence the 20 Ajau deities. The number 13 is derived from the fact that there are 13 major joints (1 neck, 2 shoulders, 2 elbows, 2 wrists, 2 hips, 2 knees and 2 ankles), which serve as nodal points of bodily and cosmic energy. Thirteen forces times 20 deities equals 260 uniquely specified days.