Scott's Stuff: The End of the World

I grew up believing that the end of the world (as we know it) was imminent. In fact, I was raised to believe that it would be foolish to pursue a higher education, or to try to create anything that would last. The reasoning was that it would all be gone soon, anyway.

Doomsday thinking is not new; it has been around for millennia. Societies (religious, political, scientific) use it to keep people focused on common goals. Such thinking stifles pursuit of goals outside the society...regardless of whether or not those pursuits would be beneficial.

When it was common to believe that natural phenomena were caused by angry gods, some believed that wars between gods (or between God and humans) would bring about the end of the world.

In fact we have the description of a global God-given flood that was used to cleanse the entire earth of wickedness.

The Bible describes a flood whose waters "rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered." (NIV) At one time I bought the fundamentalist explanation that the mountains must have been much lower at that time; that pressure from the flood waters must have caused the mountains to rise. The undeniable geologic facts say otherwise.

The Bible also says that "every living thing that moved on land perished—birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind." (NIV) Once upon a time, I accepted that all the diversity that exists on land today had to spring from one single ark-load of DNA that was preserved less than 5,000 years ago. Today, I do not believe there is a shred of evidence to support that claim.

Right now a lot of attention is being given to the Mayan Mesoamerican Long Count calendar. Why? Because unlike our Gregorian calendar, which is based on a very short cycle (one solar year), the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar is based on a much longer astronomical cycle, which will end December 21, 2012. That Gregorian calendar date falls at the end of a Mayan "great cycle" of thirteen b'ak'tuns, which are each a little over 394 years long. (To be very specific, a b'ak'tun is exactly 144,000 days. Now, that intrigues me...but just a little.) Some people look at the Mayan calendar and see the "end of the world". The Mayans simply saw the ending of one "great cycle", and the beginning of the next...just as you and I see December 31 and January 1, every single year.

Today (as always) there are plenty of doomsday prophets. Among other things, they point out threats from nuclear war, climate change, and meteor impact.

Imagine this scenario:

The world has become very violent. For many, every single day from birth to death is a fight for survival.

However, even worse than the danger to individuals, there is a much greater threat to the inhabitants as a whole:

An undetected asteroid is on a collision course with Earth. When it strikes, millions are obliterated. But, the worst of the death toll happens over years as the debris from the impact causes extreme climate change. Many entire populations, whole species even, become extinct.

But...not humans.

Will this scenario happen to our Earth? Some intelligent people would say that it is likely. Others, equally intelligent, claim that it never will happen.

But...unless you simply choose to be ignorant, you must accept that what I have just described―a world far more violent than anything we have ever known, annihilated by the impact of one or more asteroids―is absolutely, 100% certain.

I said that humans aren't wiped out. That is because humans weren't there when all this happened...sixty-five million years ago.