THE world will end on 12 December 2012. The argument seemed so overwhelmingly convincing to me last Wednesday that I spent the entire day in my underpants and dressing gown, many bowls of half-eaten Cheerios beside me, listening to death-metal, scrolling through hundreds of apocalyptic conspiracy theory websites.
Well, not total destruction. One third of the global population will have a chance of survival, the rest will be killed by earthquakes, tsunamis, meteor storms and starvation, as our planet shifts on its axis and goes through pole-reversal, the equa
tor becoming the ice caps and vice versa. Oh, and I forgot to mention, this is all because a planet the size of Jupiter has a 3,600-year elliptical orbit round our sun and every time it comes back it gives us a very close shave and screws royally with the celestial order of things. A planet that the ancient Sumerians knew about and called Nibiru and that people are now calling Planet X.
The best thing about all conspiracy theories is that any time there's a lack of evidence the conspiracy theorists can say: "Ah, yes, but Nasa know all about it and they're keeping it hush-hush." Apparently, there's secret research into locating Planet X taking place, right now, in an observatory on Antarctica, although this may have been a CIA plot spawned to spread disinformation that will later be discredited.
Such was the weight of missing information, that in my apocalyptic-dressing-gown day, I was utterly convinced that a global cover-up was at work. I even had palpitations and had to go back to bed (although my dreams were filled with – you guessed it, meteors, tsunamis, the choice of where to drive, run, hide or commit suicide). Were there not even economic facts to back up this global power-secret? Was America not printing money like there was no tomorrow, precisely because there was… you guessed it!
I don't quite know what shook me out of it. Perhaps it was the dawning realisation that there has been absolutely no scientific evidence to prove the existence of Planet X. Or that Egyptian civilisation seemed to have survived it's cataclysmic event 3,600 years ago, without even noticing it.
Or perhaps at the end of the day, when I realised that I had watched maybe eight hours of footage of blurry objects in the sky and pictures from Mayan temples that looked like guys in space helmets, I realised the only orbiting crisis I really had to watch out for was precisely this: my once-a-year desire to drop out of society completely and relish the prospect of the end of the world.
It is funny the comfort that such ideas bring. In my apocalyptic mind-set all my daily troubles vanished. Since the world was about to end I saw no point in walking the dog, paying the electricity bill, doing my recycling, or laundry, washing-up, shaving or reading the news. Indeed, to hell with the news when it's just propaganda put there to stop us all rioting, looting and venting our frustrations against a world in which politics has become little more than a set of battles between corrupt accountants.
All of which makes me wonder what apocalypse I will be checking out on 13 December 2012, when I struggle to get out of my dressing gown and face the next of many days on planet earth.
The full article contains 593 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
