World's End in 2012?

So, with all this intense speculation on whether or not the world will end on December 21st, 2012, I thought I'd post some details to explain this...

First off, the Mesoamerican, aka Mayan, Calendar. Everyone's probably heard of this one by now; the Mayans created a calendar that predicted with flawless accuracy every moon phase, every eclipse, etc etc. This calendar, that has shown us what's to come with ease simply has no more information after 21st Dec, 2012. Now, that in itself isn't neccessarily frightening. For instance, the Gregorian Calendar we all follow ends every year on December 31st, but nobody (sane) frets about the end of the world every new year's eve. For all we know, the astronomers and scientists of the Mayan days got tired of predicating day after day for something that was, at the time, hundreds of years away. Or, maybe, they were in the middle of working out what was going to happen on the 22nd when the Spanish showed up and killed them?

Regardless, we move to the next point of interest, the planetary allignment. Now, this is one that not many seem to be aware of, but on December 21st, 2012, with the way that our planets are moving, and the speed they're each moving at, we'll see something most have probably seen in some horror flick or other; Planetary Allignment ("Tomorrow, the planets allign! I will rule the world by standing in -this- spot and gaining god-like powers!" or something like that.... I digress). We're expected to all line up perfectly with a spot in the milky way, which is believed to be a black hole. So, who knows? Maybe we'll all get sucked in because of the weird gravity the allignment might cause, or something. I'm sticking with "something". I've never really believed in the whole "power of the allignment" stuff.

Next point, Chinese I Ching. I Ching is a method of fortune telling popular with the chinese, and it involves flipping three coins to aid in constructing a diagram of text. It's kind of difficult to explain, but if you want details, read wiki ( [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Ching#Structure]Link[/url] ) for how it works. But, basically, the I Ching issue is that a man set out to use this foretelling to essentially "read the world's fortune". He read the fortune of the world for each year, but once he reached 2012, the pattern the telling made had no sense behind it. It's been described as something similar to a child spouting random words (house! frog! paper! jump! flower!). The tellers can't make sense of what the fortune is predicting/saying about the future after 2012.

Last point, from my awareness, is Nostradamus. The well-known philosopher predicted, in some interpretations, that the two brothers would fall. Meanwhile this interpretation is disputable, it is clear that he predicted a peace would fall across the earth soon after this event. If you believe that the prediction means the fall of two brothers, and if you interpret this as the two towers that were crumbled a few years back, then it would certainly seem that Nossie predicted something that has either just happened, or will happen very soon. Consider that Peace can mean a few things; peace as in lack of war, or peace as in peace and quiet, as in lack of sound, as in lack of things making sound (read: no more people!).

I know there have been more points, more things scaring people into believing the world is coming to an end, such as the potential sunspot, the photon energy, etc etc, and I apologize that I wasn't able to include them. I don't know everything that's got people up in arms about the coming 2012, and the stuff I do know, other than what I've listed, is all hearsay, and mostly crazy talk. I stuck with topics I understood and have been able to research. Of course, I'm sure some people would argue that everything listed thus far is crazy talk, and maybe it is. Maybe this will be another Y2K, where nothing really happens, but four different famously used predictions all lead to a possible change for humanity, whether good or bad.

As for my opinion? I honestly couldn't tell you that I believe the world will end. I think there's a chance it MAY end Dec 22nd, 2012, but I also believe there's a chance it could end tomorrow, or next week, or a month from now. What I really think is that if the world is going to end, there's nothing we can do about it. Wearing tinfoil caps, covering ourselves in vaseline, and hiding out in bomb shelters isn't going to change what may or may not happen. I think the most important thing for everyone to remember is to live each day, each hour, each second, like it could be your last. That way, if for some reason 2012 is the last year humanity has, at least there'll be no regrets when comes the final judgment.