Díaz analyzes “mini-apocalypses,” in particular, the Haitian earthquake, which was certainly apocalyptic for the country of Haiti. He seizes upon the definition of apocalypse as a revelation. When things fall apart, he argues, the aspects of society that we normally try to hide are exposed. What comes to light are inequalities, injustices, patterns of corruption. An apocalypse can thus be a cleansing, transformative event, if allowed. “In a dark time, the eye begins to see.” Becoming “ruin-readers,” as Díaz calls this process, may save our lives.

Hurricane Katrina, another mini-apocalypse, revealed America’s Third World. The Haitian earthquake revealed a place desperate beyond imagining. Yet what the apocalypse reveals, we naturally seek to evade. We blame the disaster on God or nature or the victims themselves. Díaz argues that natural disasters are often actually social disasters. When our actions devastate the natural world, we significantly reduce our protection from such natural disasters as tsunamis and hurricanes. Are we transforming our planet into Haiti? Both Díaz and I fear that we are.

Díaz hopes that it will not take many more such mini-apocalypses for us to see and then, more crucially, to act. I don’t feel so optimistic. Haiti, like Katrina and the Asian tsunami, has largely disappeared from the public discourse. Many powerful and ordinary people alike refuse to acknowledge that climate change is real, it is caused by human activity, and it has the potential to be the greatest social natural disaster of all. Let’s hope that our situation is not fiction come to fruition: that those who finally see are a small band of survivors after it’s far too late to do anything to avert or mitigate the catastrophe.

Visit Exit Mundi.

For all those who were disappointed when Judgment Day did not come last Saturday, Harold Camping – the 89-year-old Christian-radio broadcaster who has predicted for years that May 21, 2011, was the exact date that the rapture would occur — has come out of hiding seclusion to let us all know that it was not a literal Judgement Day, just a spiritual one. We are all being judged now, apparently, and God will destroy the world on schedule, on August 21. I’m just grateful we’ll still get to have our beach wienie roasts before the Apocalypse.

I suspect that when August 21 comes and goes without incident, we will be told that it was an invisible apocalypse, that the world no longer exists except in our minds, and we’re all living in Hell. Which, given the television networks’ new fall season, will likely be indistinguishable from the reality we’re accustomed to.

Read: Harold Camping Insists That Judgment Day Did Actually Happen on Saturday via Daily Intel. Bonus: a timeline of past apocalyptic predictions that turned out to be wrong.

Perhaps it is best to keep in mind what the Bible actually states about the end of everything: “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”(Mt. 24:36)

Image via Wikipedia

The word apocalypse means “lifting of the veil.” It is intended to refer to a revelation or disclosure of something hidden from the majority of mankind. The Book of Revelation is also referred to as the apocalypse of John; it describes the prophet John’s vision of the future, specifically of the end of the present age, the Christian God’s ultimate purpose and the judgment of humankind. In the Book of Revelation, apocalypse refers to the revelation of Jesus Christ as the Messiah at the end of the present age, not to the end event itself. But over time, it has come to also mean the actual end events.

(via the Wikipedia entry on apocalypse)

A site called Pick a Year is particularly entertaining and informative. It gathers many end-of-the-world predictions in one handy place. Just pick a year to see how the end is (or was) supposed to happen that time. A nice resource!

Image via Wikipedia

A recent re-watching of the movie 2012 left me wanting to delve more into this propitious date. Next year — specifically December 21, 2012 — has been named as the next date of the apocalypse, or perhaps a worldwide spiritual awakening. NASA and CERN have both stated that the world definitely won’t end in 2012, but what do they know?

The source of this particular apocalyptic prophecy is the ancient Mayans. On December 21, 2012, the 5,125-year-long cycle in the Mayan calendar known as the Long Count comes to a close. The Mayans used a cyclic calendar, like we do. When it comes to the end of a cycle, the calendar flips over and begins again. It doesn’t stop, and archaeologists can find no evidence suggesting that the Mayans believed the world would end on that date, or that anything at all momentous would happen.

But modern-day spiritualists, prophesiers and doomsayers have latched onto the end of the Mayan’s calendar cycle as significant, imbuing the Mayans with greater predictive and scientific powers than they possessed. The ancient Mayan civilization, which reached its height between 25AD and 900AD, was a highly advanced one, though. It had the only known written language of the pre-Columbian Americas and had made significant achievements in art, architecture, mathematics and astronomy.

The Mayan civilization eventually collapsed, although it did not disappear; there are Mayans living in Central America and Mexico today. However, the Maya had abandoned their great cities by the 10th century. There is no universally accepted theory for why this collapse happened, although the cause is likely environmental, such as a decades-long drought or other climate change. Other factors, such as foreign invasion or internal revolt, may have played a part. The last independent Mayan city-state was conquered by the Spanish in 1697. If only the Mayans had been able to predict their own collapse or the Spanish colonization, that would have been much more relevant to their world than what may happen centuries in the future.

We humans routinely assign doomsday to a specific date. The turning of the millennium always invites such predictions, and most of us can remember the hype that built up around Y2K. Similar dire predictions were made when the year 1000 was reached. Other dates have also taken on significance for one reason or another, but so far, doomsday hasn’t come.

This time, the predictions focus on several unlikely scenarios. The Earth may collide with a passing planet or black hole. The planets in the solar system may align, causing a shift in the Earth’s polar axis. Or unusual solar activity may cause worldwide havoc. Simple astronomical observation can (and has) refute all of these predictions.

In the 1970s-1990s, the end of the Mayan Long Count was actually predicted to be a positive event, a transition from one world age to another, and therefore a time for transformation and spiritual growth. I guess it all depends on whether your spiritual glass is half-empty or half-full. I predict that we’ll muddle on, much as we always have, and NASA backs me up on that.

Personally, I think the 2012 hoopla should have ended with Roland Emmerich’s highly improbable movie. No one else, not even a rogue planet or black hole, would destroy the Earth with such glee.

We have to keep in mind that calendars, as prophetic as they may seem, are merely human inventions. The universe is not obligated to live by them or provide an apocalypse on our timetable. Just as our calendar begins with a date that is culturally significant to us — the birth of Jesus Christ — so the Mayan calendar began with a significant date for them — the creation of the present world order. However, these dates are significant only to people, not to planets or the sun, for which 5,125 years is but a blip.

Here is a summary of the 2012 predictions and why they won’t come true from Sky & Telescope magazine (PDF).

Image via Wikipedia

I’m sorry it’s been so quiet around this blog lately. It feels downright post-apocalyptic around here (ha ha). I don’t get a lot of time in the day for researching and writing, and I’ve been spending that time on other projects lately. But I haven’t forgotten this lonely little blog, and I plan to put some more pieces up here soon. I hope I won’t be talking into the void.

To tide you over, I was flipping channels the other night and got stuck watching the end of 2012. I can only compare it to the urge to slow down when passing a wreck on the road — the biggest wreck EVER! Whatever you want to say about 2012, no movie destroys the earth with as much maniacal glee. In fact, the first time I saw it, I wrote a poem about it, which I will share with you now.

Oh world
How many ways can I destroy you?

1. Drop LA into a bottomless chasm.
2. Explode Yellowstone with a volcanic spasm.
3. Coat Vegas in a layer of ash.
4. Wipe out Washington with a big splash.
5. Decimate Europe so everyone must leave it.
6. Drown the Himalayas (though no one will believe it).

It’s my world and I’ll do what I want to,
And all I want to do is destroy you.

Stay tuned for more on 2012 (the year, not the movie) and other interesting topics of the post-apocalypse.

Cover of The Children Of Men

In doing research for this blog, I have noticed that two sub-genres frequently get confused: the dystopian story and the post-apocalyptic story. While these two areas of future storytelling may overlap, they don’t mean the same thing at all. So let’s define some terms, shall we?

We’ll begin with apocalypse. An apocalyptic story is one that depicts the end of modern human civilization as we know it, usually due to some cataclysmic event. A nuclear war, a meteor impacting the Earth, a zombie uprising, a 99 percent fatal epidemic — all of these things can usher in the apocalypse. A post-apocalyptic story concerns itself with what happens after that apocalyptic event, whether immediately following it or far, far in the future.

Often what happens is the rise of new societies. These societies may sometimes be dystopias. A dystopia is the opposite of a utopian society. Utopias are pretty much perfect, providing for the needs of all of their citizens. Dystopias, on the other hand, are usually oppressive, totalitarian and violent.

Utopian and dystopian societies do not have to arise out of an apocalyptic event, however. 1984 and Brave New World are both classics of the dystopian sub-genre that do not depict an apocalypse. Or take, for example, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, which is often mis-classified as post-apocalyptic. In that novel, a fundamentalist Christian group overthrows the current government and establishes a totalitarian society that enslaves women. Although environmental degradation has caused widespread infertility, no true apocalypse takes place. In fact, the primary point of view of the novel is of a future society looking back on this time in history.

Compare that with The Children of Men by P.D. James (or the movie based on it). In that case, although the apocalypse has not yet occurred, it is anticipated, because every person has lost the ability to reproduce and no children have been born in a generation. The novel could even be classified as pre-apocalyptic in that sense (see my previous post). This situation has directly created a dystopian government, which took power to enforce order on the growing chaos and anarchy occurring ahead of the apocalypse. So The Children of Men is an apocalyptic novel, whereas The Handmaid’s Tale is not, even though the subject matter is similar.

Sometimes the dystopian society is the cause of the apocalyptic event. This is the case in Margaret Atwood’s companion novels Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood. The futuristic society she depicts is overwhelmingly consumerist, with a huge gap between rich and poor. One character takes it upon himself to engineer a virus to wipe out humankind and start all over again from scratch.

While I enjoy dystopian novels of all kinds, I am most interested in those dystopias that directly arise from an apocalyptic event. There are numerous examples of these, which may be why the two terms are so often confused. One I recently finished reading was The Gate to Women’s Country by Sheri S. Tepper. After a devastating war, a society of walled cities based on ancient Greece arose. The cities are governed by women, while the men are forced to live outside the city walls as soldiers. Another good example is Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm, where the human survivors rely on cloning to reproduce. The cloned generations gradually change, losing their individuality and other essential human qualities, and oppressing anyone who differs from the norm.

Or if it’s a post-apocalyptic utopia you’re looking for, you might try Always Coming Home by Ursula K. Le Guin. Set in the far future California, it depicts an agrarian, idyllic society. Although they have access to technology — computer networks that survived the pre-apocalyptic civilization record their stories and occasionally provide information — they maintain an pre-Industrial Age way of life. Such an idealized lifestyle certainly seems unattainable without an apocalypse to first wipe the slate clean and allow us to start all over — and do it right this time.