Mayan Calendar: 12-21-12 Doomesday

12-21-12.  Not quite a palindrome.   December 21, 2012 has been long awaited because it marks the end of one of the Mayan calendars.  The popular TV shows, the X Files marked its alien take over based on 12-21-12.  People around the world are collecting food in survivalist mode.

The Russian government has supposedly assured all the Russians that there is no asteroid of planet out there with a direct course towards earth.  As they work to quell the end of the world panic in their country, I expect vodka sales are booming.

Supposedly from the New York Times:

Last week, Russia’s government decided to put an end to the doomsday talk. Its
minister of emergency situations said Friday that he had access to “methods of
monitoring what is occurring on the planet Earth,” and that he could say with
confidence that the world was not going to end in December. He acknowledged,
however, that Russians were still vulnerable to “blizzards, ice storms,
tornadoes, floods, trouble with transportation and food supply, breakdowns in
heat, electricity and water supply.”

So what should Americans do?  Probably nothing.  Life just isn’t that predictable.  We don’t usually get advanced warning years, centuries in advance, even in a world with Nostradamus freaks.  I haven’t been able to find out what X File creator Chris Carter predicts.  I bet he is counting on an ordinary day, just like all the others.

If you have been packing machetes, guns and food away for the event, you probably won’t need it.  If, on the other hand, I  am wrong, the 12-21-12 survivalists are going to be laughing at the rest of us chumps who will be oozing on off into some other dimension.  Bars everywhere  are having parties to mark the end of the long count, 5,125 years.  According to patch.com:

Dec. 21, 2012, essentially is the end of a cycle, like when you  change the calendar in your kitchen on Jan. 1.  But for those who take  the most dramatic interpretation of the day, it  has spurred fears of  apocalypse, solar storms, meteors, polar  realignments, UFOs and other  doomsday predictions.

While conspiracy theorists are stocking up on supplies and survival gear and true believers are panicking, most will recognize that the day is Winter Solstice and the shortest day of the year.

How do you plan to celebrate?  I plan to re-watch Oliver Stone’s Untold History.  The fact that I made it through the 50’s seems to be a miracle, if Stone is to be believed.