Dubai - The countdown is over, the calendar has expired, the end has come. It’s December 21, and if you are reading this, one of three things has happened. One, you are one of the lucky few to have survived the end of the world and some how figured out how to restore power. Two, even dead, you cannot get enough of the Gulf News iPad app and decided to see what kind of edition we would publish in the afterlife. Or three, and most likely, the final day has come like most others, uneventfully and with a hint of boredom. While many might scoff, roll their eyes and say the attention lavished on the 2012 Mayan Calendar/Doomsday phenomenon was over done and a waste of time, there are many others who truly did believe the end was nigh. Reactions from believers around the world varied from illogical extremism, believing aliens would flee their hideaway deep inside France’s mountain Pic de Bugarach, to irrational extremism, as with some citizens who flocked to their local markets to buy up every candle, match, and grain of sugar and drop of kerosene they could get their hands on. According to a Reuters-Ipsos poll conducted in March, about 15 per cent of 16,262 people polled from over 20 countries thought the world would end in their lifetime and 10 per cent believed the end would happen in 2012. Countries such as China, with 20 per cent and Russia and Turkey, with 13 per cent had the highest number of people who agreed that the Mayan calendar marked the end of the world. These figures were reflected by the number of people who panicked in Russia and caused a shortage of items, such as kerosene and sugar as they rushed to the market to stock up. However, the most popular and sought after item of the apocalypse seemed to be candles. Store owners in both Russia and China couldn’t keep the waxy light source on the shelves as citizens believed the 21st would trigger a blackout that would last for several days. An impending blackout was only one of several calamities people believed would occur the day the world came to an end. Two men in China, believing the end of the world would bring flood waters, dedicated their life savings to building vessels to help them and their families survive until the waters receded. In November, fmnnow.com, a Chinese news website, featured a piece about a report by China News Service describing how Lu Zhenghai, of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in northwest China, had already spent over 1 million yuan (Dh 583,789) since 2010, building what will be a 65 foot, 80 tonne wood and steel boat once completed. At the time of the article’s publication in November the boat had not been completed due to lack of funds and no updates on it being finished had been reported by December 20. Liu Qiyuan, a farmer from Qiantum, China, went into debt constructing seven spherical, fiber glass “emergency” pods, each of which cost around $48,000 (Dh 176,261) to build. Other doomsday believers opted to go to ground to survive the apocalypse. Huffington Post ran an article in December quoting a report by Italian newspaper Corriere Del Veneto, about a lawyer in Padua who had a 645 square foot bunker built under his villa, complete with electric generator and solar panels and capable of resisting earthquakes and explosions. The Italian paper had also interviewed the bunker’s contractor who stated he had also constructed about ten other bunkers in northern Italy. While there are many who have mocked believers for the lengths to which they went to prepare for the possibility the world might end, the fact remains that for some, an apocalypse of some kind was a real possibility, caused real stress and real fear and resulted in at least one very real death. The stress and hopelessness of an impending nuclear meltdown which would end civilization forced a girl from Wiltshire in the UK to take her life in September 2011. After extensively researching doomsday scenarios online the 16 year old girl had become convinced the world would end in 2012, leading to her tragic decision. This is not the first case of such a severe reaction to an end of the world prediction. The prediction by Harold Camping, of the Christian radio station Family Radio, who first predicted the end of the world in 1994 and later changed it to May 21, 2011, saw some people sell their homes, quit their jobs and give away all their belongings. Fear and belief are easily bred, and the more time a prediction has to root itself, the more fear and belief will grow. Today many will be smiling and joking that they survived yet another end to the world, but there are many others who will not. For those who saw an end to life as they knew it a sense of loss, confusion and even possibly a fear that the end could still come, may be a real possibility. So, if you have survived, perhaps a little compassion is called for; if you are reading this in the after life, take your I-told-you-so medicine with grace; and remember that we all believe the unbelievable once in a while; it’s what makes us human.
Dubai - The countdown is over, the calendar has expired, the end has come. It’s December 21, and if you are reading this, one of three things has happened. One, you are one of the lucky few to have survived the end of the world and some how figured out how to restore power. Two, even dead, you cannot get enough of the Gulf News iPad app and decided to see what kind of edition we would publish in the afterlife. Or three, and most likely, the final day has come like most others, uneventfully and with a hint of boredom. While many might scoff, roll their eyes and say the attention lavished on the 2012 Mayan Calendar/Doomsday phenomenon was over done and a waste of time, there are many others who truly did believe the end was nigh. Reactions from believers around the world varied from illogical extremism, believing aliens would flee their hideaway deep inside France’s mountain Pic de Bugarach, to irrational extremism, as with some citizens who flocked to their local markets to buy up every candle, match, and grain of sugar and drop of kerosene they could get their hands on. According to a Reuters-Ipsos poll conducted in March, about 15 per cent of 16,262 people polled from over 20 countries thought the world would end in their lifetime and 10 per cent believed the end would happen in 2012. Countries such as China, with 20 per cent and Russia and Turkey, with 13 per cent had the highest number of people who agreed that the Mayan calendar marked the end of the world. These figures were reflected by the number of people who panicked in Russia and caused a shortage of items, such as kerosene and sugar as they rushed to the market to stock up. However, the most popular and sought after item of the apocalypse seemed to be candles. Store owners in both Russia and China couldn’t keep the waxy light source on the shelves as citizens believed the 21st would trigger a blackout that would last for several days. An impending blackout was only one of several calamities people believed would occur the day the world came to an end. Two men in China, believing the end of the world would bring flood waters, dedicated their life savings to building vessels to help them and their families survive until the waters receded. In November, fmnnow.com, a Chinese news website, featured a piece about a report by China News Service describing how Lu Zhenghai, of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in northwest China, had already spent over 1 million yuan (Dh 583,789) since 2010, building what will be a 65 foot, 80 tonne wood and steel boat once completed. At the time of the article’s publication in November the boat had not been completed due to lack of funds and no updates on it being finished had been reported by December 20. Liu Qiyuan, a farmer from Qiantum, China, went into debt constructing seven spherical, fiber glass “emergency” pods, each of which cost around $48,000 (Dh 176,261) to build. Other doomsday believers opted to go to ground to survive the apocalypse. Huffington Post ran an article in December quoting a report by Italian newspaper Corriere Del Veneto, about a lawyer in Padua who had a 645 square foot bunker built under his villa, complete with electric generator and solar panels and capable of resisting earthquakes and explosions. The Italian paper had also interviewed the bunker’s contractor who stated he had also constructed about ten other bunkers in northern Italy. While there are many who have mocked believers for the lengths to which they went to prepare for the possibility the world might end, the fact remains that for some, an apocalypse of some kind was a real possibility, caused real stress and real fear and resulted in at least one very real death. The stress and hopelessness of an impending nuclear meltdown which would end civilization forced a girl from Wiltshire in the UK to take her life in September 2011. After extensively researching doomsday scenarios online the 16 year old girl had become convinced the world would end in 2012, leading to her tragic decision. This is not the first case of such a severe reaction to an end of the world prediction. The prediction by Harold Camping, of the Christian radio station Family Radio, who first predicted the end of the world in 1994 and later changed it to May 21, 2011, saw some people sell their homes, quit their jobs and give away all their belongings. Fear and belief are easily bred, and the more time a prediction has to root itself, the more fear and belief will grow. Today many will be smiling and joking that they survived yet another end to the world, but there are many others who will not. For those who saw an end to life as they knew it a sense of loss, confusion and even possibly a fear that the end could still come, may be a real possibility. So, if you have survived, perhaps a little compassion is called for; if you are reading this in the after life, take your I-told-you-so medicine with grace; and remember that we all believe the unbelievable once in a while; it’s what makes us human.
