A Brief History of the End of the World

Can you believe it's already been ten years since the world came to an end? Remember all the planes falling from the sky? Remember cars stopping dead on America's interstates? Remember the entire planet turning completely dark? And all just because a bunch of computer nerds never anticipated that one day the first two digits of a four-digit year would ever be anything other than "19." Dumbasses!

For those of us lucky enough to have survived that Stephen King-like disaster, the decade has swiftly flown by and we humans still live and breathe. But don't get too comfortable, my friends, because another big bullet is headed our way and this one is gonna be even tougher to dodge.

Yep, three years from now we're all gonna be dead-at least that's what Mayan prophecy says. And we all know those Mayans are great at seeing the future...aside from not predicting their own demise more than a thousand years ago.

Not that the prospect of all of us going bye-bye on December 21, 2012 is such a bad thing for everybody. Hollywood profited well by giving us the film 2012-another one of those dumb disaster flicks where we're supposed to care about a handful of characters while everyone else on the planet is obliterated. And fundamentalist Christians have to be pretty goddamn happy about it too. After all, their own fairytale tells them they'll all get to unite with the Lord while the rest of us burn in Hell for eternity.

But should we really be worried? After all, end-of-the-world predictions have been made ever since Grog stepped out of his cave and witnessed the first thunder storm. "Holy crap!" the poor caveman exclaimed. "Water gods pissed. We all die!" But of course, the storm ended, the sun came out, and Grog became the laughing stock of his village.

But Grog hasn't been the only village idiot. Even people who have supposedly evolved far beyond caveman status have been shouting, "Last call!" for years and years.

For instance, FOX News Channel nutcase, Glenn Beck, whose brain has never recovered from heavy drug use, told his lemmings back in 2006 while working for CNN that August 22 of that year "might" be the day Israel is "wiped off the map" bringing on Armageddon. If memory serves, that didn't happen and Beck easily backtracked thanks to his judicious use of the word "might" rather than "will." Of course Glenn doesn't claim to be a prophet-he was merely repeating the same mouthful of crap a so-called "scholar" friend of his had spewed. And speaking of nutcases...

Televangelist Pat Robertson guaranteed his 700 Club minions that there would be "a judgment on the world" by the end of 1982. Twenty-eight years later, it seems safe to say the only judgment one could make is that Robertson is an idiot. And speaking of idiots...

The religious cult known as Heaven's Gate predicted doomsday was near when the comet Hale-Bopp made its appearance in 1997. These goofballs believed an alien spacecraft was following the comet and so they all went out, bought some black Nikes, drank poison and died in their beds hoping to join the aliens in pursuit of the comet. If any of that makes sense to you, Hale-Bopp is due to make its next appearance around the year 4385. That gives you plenty of time to save up for a bitchin' pair of Nikes. And speaking of goofballs...

Self-proclaimed "end-time prophet of God," Ron Weinland, of something called "God's Church" predicted that by the end of 2006 "hundreds of millions" would die and by the end of 2008 the United States would no longer be a world power. God is now taking applications for a new "end-time prophet."

Even the patron saint of people who believe in this silly crap, Nostradamus, was off the mark. His crazy ramblings were interpreted by many of his dimwitted admirers to say doomsday would arrive in August of 1999. It turned out that month brought us something far worse than Armageddon: The debut of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? with Regis Philbin.

And that's just a small sample of failed predictions by those who claim to know not only what will happen, but when it will happen. Will the Mayan's join this list? Who knows? But based on the success rate of all the other "prophets" who've made the same kind of predictions in the past, it looks like three years from now we'll probably still be around watching bad TV, playing games on our cell phones, and doing all the other brainless crap humans do.

Not that the cycle of human life is endless. No, it's gonna happen. Some day humans will disappear from this floating orb. This planet existed for millions of years without us and it'll happily do it again until some other skuzzy life form mutates and inhabits the Earth determined to create the ultimate iPhone.

But sorry folks, there is no great plan and there is no preordained date for the prophetic to uncover. It's just gonna happen, so be prepared.

Buy some black Nikes.

Reference: Live Science