Who doesn’t love to sit in a crowded movie theater packed to the brim and sit through an hour and a half to two hours of good old fashioned wrecking ball madness? With all of this obsession over the end of the world, it raises the question, why do we have such a fascination with our society’s own demise? The answer is simple: Our society contains elements that we don’t approve of on a massive scale. Many desire a simpler way of life with fewer complications such as technology, complicated government, working ten hours a day, and having to fulfill social roles put on them by others. The average person likes to indulge in fantasies of adventure and survival where they are put at the forefront of a massive adventure that ultimately sheds light on what it means to be human.
But what would this world of tomorrow be like really? Since the first World War, global apocalyptic literature and media have been a longstanding genre in the top grossing entertainment of any given time. Even before that, with HG Welles’ still classic story “The War of the Worlds,” humans were pitted against an unconquerable force that they could not hope to contend with. Even biblical stories tell of massive floods that wipe out all life save for the few “chosen ones” who must rebuild society. Of course the idea generally holds that the rebuilt society will be vastly different from the one that was destroyed by disaster either natural or manmade. Of course this is one of the strongest pieces of evidence for the psychological needs inherent in apocalyptic literature. Simply put, if society falls change must follow.
With this in mind, the laws of successful apocalyptic literature seem to be those that are most conducive to change, adventure, and have an explosive fall of society that proves cathartic to the viewer as they see the deconstruction of social morays and revival of a society they find to be more acceptable. The most interesting part is, this scenario is one of the prominent theories of what may happen in 2012.
Dr. Paul Laviolette has suggested that in the days approaching 2012 a small beam of light may be seen in the northern and southern tips of the Earth expanding out into a sort of crown at the end of either hemisphere and able to be seen from and point on Earth. As the coronas intensify lethal Gamma radiation is released on the Earth’s surface baking everything and everyone as though a nuclear bomb has gone off. According to researchers this very thing happened no more than 15,000 years ago, and 2012 sounds like a likely day for a repeat. Will all mankind be destroyed? Almost definitely not. Given the lack of technology 15,000 years ago, humanity still managed to survive somehow and it seems likely that humans would find a way again if it happened. Additional evidence to support the theory of a massive catastrophe in our past is a study by Dr. Marcus Feldman of Stanford University who says all Y-chromosome variations can be traced back to no more than 2,000 individuals from which we are all descended. If this turns out to be true, those 2,000 may have had some incredible stories to tell the rest of the world.