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COLLATERAL DAMAGE

Maybe the most frightening apocalypse scenario of all is what’s happening in space. Talk about change being unthinkable. I mean, besides a few asteroids here and there, space is just there, right? It doesn’t change. Well, the whole Solar System is becoming increasingly agitated because we are moving into an interstellar energy cloud, according to an emerging Russian school of planetary geophysics. These scientists, who base their findings on decades of analyzing satellite data, have found that all the planets’ atmospheres, including the Earth’s, are beginning to show the effects of this massive input, both directly from the energy cloud and indirectly from the disturbances being created within the Sun from its encounter with the energy cloud.

Not to worry. The Earth’s atmosphere will protect us, right? Maybe in the old days it would have, but now Harvard and NASA scientists are reporting that California-sized cracks have inexplicably opened up in the Earth’s magnetic field, our essential shield against solar radiation and the deadly cancers and climatic disturbances that come with it. Some scientists are even predicting that a pole reversal, in which the North and South magnetic poles switch places, is imminent. That’s a several-thousand-year process in which multiple magnetic pole sites pop up around the globe, confusing and sometimes extinguishing the thousands of species of birds, fish, and mammals that depend upon magnetism for their sense of direction. During the confusion, the Earth’s magnetic protection drops to near zero, the cosmic equivalent of a very pale person getting caught on a beach in Miami with no hat, no shade, no sunblock, and an imperfect ass in a teeny Speedo.

One source of protection from excess solar radiation comes from another way the world might end. The sky could fill up with ray-absorbent ash, but that’s about the only good news I could find in a BBC documentary reporting that Yellowstone, probably the largest supervolcano in the world, is preparing to erupt. The last time Yellowstone erupted, 600,000 years ago, it vomited enough dust to cover the North American continent several feet deep. Today such an eruption would lead to a nuclear-winter-type scenario that would savage global agriculture and economy, killing hundreds of millions.

And the biggest reason to worry about the end of life is the prediction in Nature, perhaps the world’s most respected science journal, that at least three-quarters of the Earth’s species are wiped out every 62 to 65 million years. It has been 65 million years since the Cretaceous-Tertiary disaster extinguished the dinosaurs, meaning that we are now overdue for a cataclysm that will without doubt reduce our population by at least half, smash our infrastructure to smithereens, and drive most of whatever is left of our civilization underground.

If Yellowstone blows or the Sun’s acne festers into boils, ecological problems like ozone holes and global warming will be fondly lamented, the way we started out the 1980s worrying about herpes simplex and ended up with the scourge of AIDS. But the good news, as the irrepressible Admiral Hyman Rickover liked to point out, is that, whatever happens, “a new and wiser species will evolve.”

DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE

Firm dates are hard to come by in the disaster prediction game, and about the only thing scientists seemed to agree upon is that whatever was happening now, as we approached the solar minimum, would pale in comparison to the unprecedented turbulence projected for the next solar maximum, expected in 2012.

On impulse, I googled “2012” and promptly fell down the rabbit hole into a thriving apocalypse subculture. Blogs, books, music, and art from every continent prophesied doom for that year. Exponents of a bewildering array of ideologies and philosophies, from indigenous cultures, the Bible, the I Ching, point to 2012 as the time of Apocalypse. Could it be just a coincidence? Or is it more reasonable to assume that divinely inspired traditions would, after all, reach congruent conclusions about the fate of humanity?

“Twenty twelve! That’s when, you know, it’s all supposed to happen. Big time!” exclaimed our nanny, Erica, when I mentioned my discovery the next morning. A bowl of popcorn would have emptied fast as Erica, a late-night net surfer and talk-radio devotee, burbled with dire predictions and assurances that 2012 is the real Y2K. She seemed to see it all as kind of an ongoing reality show, of the horror variety. Several of her friends were into this doomsday 2012 thing as well, and she gaily recounted some of their suggestions for what to do as The End draws near: “Pass the bong. Build a spaceship. Move underground. Have lots of sex. Commit suicide. See the world. Go about your business. Stop taking your medication. Start taking someone else’s. Write that novel. Euthanize your family. Hit Vegas. Praise Allah. Take revenge. Take a crash course in astral projection. Be sure to get a good seat for the ultimate fireworks display.”

Why the year 2012, specifically? The hubbub had nothing to do with that being the projected date of the next solar maximum in the sunspot cycle. In fact, there was little or no mention of the Sun, or for that matter science topics in general, among those prophesying doom. Galvanizing the movement was an utterly ancient prediction from Mayan mythology that Time will either end or begin on the winter solstice, December 21, 2012.

At that point I almost dropped the whole thing, because, how to put this … I am not New Agey. I am your basic Brooklyn wiseguy Beeming around Beverly Hills. Not that all that ancient oojie-boojie is necessarily invalid, just that most of it is lost on me.

THE MAYAN PROPHECIES

Ancient Mayan astronomy is anything but oojie-boojie. It is a staggering intellectual achievement, equivalent in magnitude to ancient Egyptian geometry or to Greek philosophy. Without telescopes or any other apparatus, Mayan astronomers calculated the length of the lunar month to be 29.53020 days, within 34 seconds of what we now know to be its actual length of 29.53059 days. Overall, the 2,000-year-old Mayan calendar is believed by many to be more accurate than the 500-year-old Gregorian calendar we use today.

The Maya were obsessed with time. Over the centuries, they devised at least twenty calendars, attuned to the cycles of everything from pregnancy to the harvest, from the Moon to Venus, whose orbit they calculated accurately to 1 day every 1,000 years. After centuries of observations, their astronomers came to the conclusion that on the winter solstice of 2012, 12/21/12, or 13.0.0.0.0 by what is known as their Long Count calendar, a new era in human history will commence. This 12/21/12 “stroke of midnight” begins a new age, just as the Earth’s completion of its orbit around the Sun brings a new year at the stroke of midnight every January 1. But so what? Aside from a change in date and a day off from work, there is no inherent, palpable difference between December 31 and January 1—it’s not as though we go from cold and dark one day to warm and sunny the next. For that matter, there is no inherent, palpable difference between one year and the next, unless such difference is externally ascribed: going from 1999 to 2000, Y2K was nothing but a transition from a digitally unremarkable number to a nice big round one. It proved to be about as spiritually resonant as an odometer change.

The date 12/21/12 has significance beyond numerical happenstance. It is the annual winter solstice, when the Northern Hemisphere is farthest away from the Sun, and when therefore there is the least daylight and the longest night. On that date our Solar System will eclipse—interpose itself so as to block the view from Earth—the center of the Milky Way. The dark hole at the center of the galaxy spiral was considered the Milky Way’s womb by the ancients and now also by contemporary astronomers, who believe that that’s the spot where our galaxy’s stars are created. Indeed, there’s a vast black hole right at the center, making for a nice navel motif.

The Mayan ancients held that 12/21/12 would begin a new age, in vital fact as well as calendar technicality. The date thus portends a most sacred, propitious, and dangerous moment in our history, destined, they believed, to bring both catastrophe and revelation. The years leading up to it presage this awesome potential in terrible and wonderful ways.

I went to Guatemala to evaluate the beliefs and predictions attached to 12/21/12 and concluded, in a nutshell, that the Maya have a track record that is impossible to ignore. Always give genius the benefit of the doubt, and the ancient Mayan astronomers were indeed geniuses. The Mayan prophecies concerning 2012 seem therefore to contain wisdom not necessarily beyond science, but most likely beyond anything contemporary scientific methodology could prove, or disprove, in the short time remaining before the apocalypse deadline.

What possessed the Maya to devote so much exquisite work to astronomy, while never even getting around, for example, to inventing the wheel or even simple metal tools, I cannot say. But simply to ignore their fundamental conclusion that December 21, 2012, is a pivotal date in human history—especially given the profoundly disturbing set of concurrences regarding the 2012 deadline in fields ranging from solar physics to Eastern philosophy—would be foolish in the extreme.

DISCLAIMERS

Some disclaimers are in order here:

I represent no religious or political ideology nor have I, to the very best of my knowledge, fallen under the influence of any individual or group with views relating to 2012. Unlike many of those concerned with end-times, Apocalypse, or Armageddon, I have had no divine revelations, no instructions from alien intelligence, no channelings from ancient sages, no numerological epiphanies.

Neither am I one of those skeptical balloon-puncturers who deflate every notion not 100 percent supported by available physical evidence. Lord save us from the dearth of artistry and creativity that would inevitably result were those killjoys ever to gain the power that they think logic dictates should be theirs.

Nor am I a catastrophe buff. I am proud to report that I expended not one cent or one minute defending against the possibility of the Y2K computer bug. Neither have I ever prepared myself nor my household for nuclear holocaust, comet impact, harmonic convergence gone haywire, or any other such donnybrook. Living in the earthquake zone of Southern California, I do however keep a flashlight by the bed and an extra jug of water in the closet. And for the record, I do not hope, advocate, agitate, or pray for any catastrophe, 2012-related or otherwise, regardless of how uplifting the outcome is purported to be.

My conclusions concerning the potentially cataclysmic nature of 2012 are based on approximately fifteen months of research, conducted with the expertise gained from more than twenty years as an author of nonfiction books and as a journalist covering science, nature, religion, and politics for a variety of publications, most frequently the New York Times.

Is writing this book an irresponsible thing to do, for fear of the panic it might cause? The public’s right to know is not absolute, but neither is it contingent upon the paternalistic assessments of the global oligarchy. I can only have faith in the overall process wherein the powers-that-be, using their best judgment, attempt to control information that might cause social instability, and also where passionate individuals, groups, and organizations work to bring vital facts to light. Ultimately, the best solutions come from a spirited interchange between truth-seeking individuals and the power structures created to protect us.

THE MARK OF DESTINY

Will the world end in 2012? Will all hell break loose, on the order of an all-out, World War III-scale nuclear holocaust or a meteoric impact like the one believed to have extinguished the dinosaurs? I do not believe so, though that may be partly a reflection of my emotional limitations—as the father of two young, wonderful children, I am simply not capable of such a conviction. Not capable of confronting the possibility that everyone and everything that anyone has ever held dear could be destroyed.

What I am capable of doing is gathering the facts and presenting the evidence necessary to ferret out the reality of 2012. I have found that the prospect of an apocalypse in 2012 should be treated with respect and fear.

This book will demonstrate what I consider the middle-case scenario, namely that 2012 is destined to be a year of unprecedented turmoil and upheaval. Whether the birth agony of a New Age or simply the death throes of our current era, a disturbing confluence of scientific, religious, and historical trends indicates that an onslaught of disasters and revelations, man-made, natural, and quite possibly supernatural, will culminate tumultuously.

The year 2012 has the mark of destiny upon it. Judging from the facts gathered for this book, there is at least an even chance of some massive tragedy and/or great awakening occurring or commencing in that year. The question ultimately is not if but when, not so much the exact date as whether or not this transformational event will occur within our own or our loved ones’ lifetime. The value of the 2012 deadline is that, being so close, it forces us to confront the myriad possibilities for global catastrophe, to gauge their likelihood and destructive potential, and to examine how prepared we are to respond to them, individually and as a civilization.

Everyone responds to deadlines, constructively or otherwise. Especially if there’s pressure. It’s human nature. The last two minutes of each half of a football game, together less than 7 percent of the total playing time, yield at least half the action. I need deadlines. Most of us do. With the unlikely exception of Y2K, that silly dress rehearsal, the 2012 deadline is the first in modern history when so much is on the line for so many.

The blessing of a deadline is the advance notice that goes with it, to get body, mind, and soul together, to take some sensible precautions for oneself and one’s family. In some sense, not necessarily including physical survival, we’ve all got a chance like never before to come together and rise to our collective higher Self. That’s the invigorating challenge of 2012. It forces us to find a common purpose. And having a purpose in life is about the surest way I know to stave off demise.

GUILTY OF APOCALYPSE: THE CASE AGAINST 2012

The thesis of this book is that the year 2012 will be pivotal, perhaps catastrophic, possibly revelatory, to a degree unmatched in human history.

1. Ancient Mayan prophecies based on two millennia of meticulous astronomical observations indicate that 12/21/12 will mark the birth of a new age, accompanied, as all births are, by blood and agony as well as hope and promise.

2. Since the 1940s, and particularly since 2003, the Sun has behaved more tumultuously than any time since the rapid global warming that accompanied the melting of the last Ice Age 11,000 years ago. Solar physicists concur that solar activity will next peak, at record-setting levels, in 2012.

3. Storms on the Sun are related to storms on the Earth. The great wave of 2005 hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma coincided with one of the stormiest weeks in the recorded history of the Sun.

4. The Earth’s magnetic field, our primary defense against harmful solar radiation, has begun to dwindle, with California-sized cracks opening up randomly. A pole shift, in which such protection falls nearly to zero as the North and South magnetic poles reverse position, may well be under way.

5. Russian geophysicists believe that the Solar System has entered an interstellar energy cloud. This cloud is energizing and destabilizing the Sun and all the planets’ atmospheres. Their predictions for catastrophe resulting from the Earth’s encounter with this energy cloud range from 2010 to 2020.

6. Physicists at UC Berkeley, who discovered that the dinosaurs and 70 percent of all other species on Earth were extinguished by the impact of a comet or asteroid 65 million years ago, maintain with 99 percent certainty that we are now overdue for another such megacatastrophe.

7. The Yellowstone supervolcano, which erupts catastrophically every 600,000 to 700,000 years, is preparing to blow. The most recent eruption of comparable magnitude, at Lake Toba, Indonesia, 74,000 years ago, led to the death of more than 90 percent of the world’s population at the time.

8. Eastern philosophies, such as the I Ching, the Chinese Book of Changes, and Hindu theology, have been plausibly interpreted as supporting the 2012 end date, as have a range of indigenous belief systems.

9. At least one scholarly interpretation of the Bible predicts that the Earth will be annihilated in 2012. The burgeoning Armageddonist movement of Muslims, Christians, and Jews actively seeks to precipitate the final end-times battle.

10. Have a nice day.

SECTION I TIME

That the Rastafarian cabdriver sang reggae prayers to the Almighty Jah all the way to the airport, bowing his head right down to the steering wheel at least fifty times while shooting the rapids of 1405, the busiest freeway in Southern California, did not in itself disturb me. The man was an excellent driver, very smooth. No problem either with the interior of his taxi being plastered with 8 × 10 glossies of snarling lions covered with religious messages about love, death, and the Lion of Judah. I am originally from New York City, where crazy cabbies spice the day. What did give pause, however, was the flawless way in which, when his cell phone rang, Rasta Cabbie would become James Earl Jones saying, “West Side Transportation, may I help you?” After wrapping up his office business, it was back to Jah and the lions and the bowing and the prayers.

I was headed to Guatemala, to meet with Mayan shamans who would explain the prophecies of 2012. When I mentioned this to Elia, my housekeeper, who is from El Salvador, she shouted, “No te vayas! Gangas! Think of your children. What if you don’t come back?” and ran out of the room. Maybe Rasta Cabbie’s prayer dance was some sort of tripped-out empathic blessing for a safe trip. Praise … Jah.

We pulled into LAX and on impulse I asked Rasta Cabbie if he’d ever heard about 2012.

“Educate me,” he replied, as he hoisted my luggage out of the trunk.

“Well, people say big things are going to happen in 2012. Maybe, you know, the End.”

“They always sayin’ that. I was waitin’ for that to happen in year 2000,” he said, shaking his head sadly. But it was tip time, and Rasta Cabbie wanted to end on a positive note. “We keep workin’ on things, and your year could be the one.”

1 WHY 2012, EXACTLY?

Two hours’ tromp through the tarantula/crocodile jungle where a recent Survivor series was set, past an ancient Mayan ball court where both losers and winners were sacrificed (that certainly would have boosted Survivor’s ratings) and then a steamy clamber up the hundred steep and crumbling steps of the 1,800-year-old ruin known as the Great Pyramid, the centerpiece of Mundo Perdido (Lost World), the oldest section of the Tikal ruins, was rewarded with the following: “The problem has got to be with your server. Call tech support and tell them to reconfigure …,” explained one twenty-something to the other.

Rip out their beating hearts, toss their lifeless carcasses down the stone steps, and chalk it all up as a human sacrifice to Bill Gates. Deep in the Guatemalan jungle, atop an ancient sacred temple, and these geeks still couldn’t get their minds out of their computers.

I had gone to Tikal, where some of the most ancient Mayan prophecies originated, to get a feel for what, up until then, was just a mass of factoids—for example, that in the Mayan calendar the current age, known as the Fourth Age, began on August 13, 3114 BCE, which in the Mayan calendar is represented as 0.0.0.0.1 (Day One) and will end on December 21, 2012 CE, or 13.0.0.0.0 (Day Last). I could repeat that fact and many others accurately enough but, like twelfth-grade calculus (the derivative of n cubed is 3n squared, but what is a derivative, exactly?), I didn’t really understand what I was saying.

The problem was calendars, to me a blah staple of contemporary existence. Navigating life without them would of course be unthinkable, but that’s not going to happen, so why think about it? Apparently there once was a dispute between popes about how many days February and August should have, but that’s all been settled for half a millennium. And at the stroke of midnight beginning 2006, the official atomic clock-keeper somewhere added a second for the first time since 1999 because the Earth’s rotation is being slowed by the moon’s increasing gravitational pull, which might be an interesting development if we had enough time in our busy lives to figure out why.

Fundamentalists insist that it’s all in whatever their holy book might happen to be, but my visit to Mayan Guatemala was the first time I’ve ever been told that it’s all not in their book but in their calendar, which is all I would ever need. The Maya love their calendars, see them as visual depictions of the passage of time, which is how life unfolds. They charted this unfolding with not one but twenty calendars, only fifteen of which have been released to the modern world; the remaining five are still kept secret by Mayan elders. Mayan calendars are pegged to the movements of the Sun, the Moon, and the visible planets, to harvest and insect cycles, and range in length from 260 days to 5,200 years and beyond.

In the Cholqij, the 260-day calendar that represents a woman’s pregnancy cycle, and also the number of days that the planet Venus rises in the morning each year, each day is represented by one of 20 symbols representing spiritual guides or deities, called Ajau. The number 20 is sacred to the Mayans because a person has 20 digits—10 fingers to reach to the sky and 10 toes to grasp the ground. They regard the number 10, so significant to our mathematics, as half a loaf at best.

According to Gerardo Kanek Barrios and Mercedes Barrios Longfellow in The Maya Cholqij: Gateway to Aligning with the Energies of the Earth, 2005, thirteen forces influence the 20 Ajau deities. The number 13 is derived from the fact that there are 13 major joints (1 neck, 2 shoulders, 2 elbows, 2 wrists, 2 hips, 2 knees and 2 ankles), which serve as nodal points of bodily and cosmic energy. Thirteen forces times 20 deities equals 260 uniquely specified days.

The Mayan prophecies for 2012 are the province of the Long Count calendar, also known as Winaq May Kin, which covers approximately 5,200 solar years, a period the Mayans call a Sun. In the curious Mayan reckoning, a “year” has 360 days; the remaining 5.25 days (4 × .25 accounting for the leap day) are considered “out of time” and traditionally devoted to thanksgiving for the previous year and celebration of the year to come. Thus 5,200 of these Mayan solar years translate to approximately 5,125 of our conventional Gregorian years. Since human civilization arose, we have passed fully through three Suns, and are now completing the fourth Sun, which will end on 12/21/12.

The Mayan counting system is primarily vigesimal, meaning that it relies on powers of 20, rather than 10. In this system the first placeholder (the one farthest to the right) is reserved for units of one day; the second for units of 20 days; the third for units of 360 days, or one Mayan solar year; the fourth for units of 7,200 days, or 20 Mayan solar years; and the fifth for units of 144,000 days, or 400 Mayan solar years. Interestingly, the number 144,000 figures prominently in Revelation, though it refers to the number of people who will go out and teach God’s word during the Tribulation, the period of tumult that precedes the Second Coming of Christ.

In 13.0.0.0.0, the Mayan way of expressing the 12/21/12 date, the number 13 refers to the number of “baktuns”, periods of 400 Mayan solar years/144,000-day periods. The number 13, as noted, is sacred in their cosmology. One Sun works out to be 13 times 144,000 days, or 1,872,000 days long, 5,200 of the 360-day Mayan solar years. On the day after a Sun is completed, the Long Count calendar starts all over. Thus, December 22, 2012, the day after apocalypse, if such a day does come, will once again be the Mayan date, 0.0.0.0.1.