It's 2012. Time to get your survival bunker ready.

I was talking to my brother a while ago, don't really remember what we were talking about, but the subject of 2012 came up.  He asks me "Aren't you worried about the end of the world?".  My response: "If the world is going to end, I won't be able to do anything to stop it." 


There are apparently many different ideas as to what 2012 is going to mean.  Firstly, this is all based off of the Mayan calender, which, allegedly, (I love that word) only went up to 2012, meaning that whatever High Priest, or High Priest's administrative assistant set the calendar up, didn't have any engagements scheduled for 2013 or later.  I'm not a Mayanologist, nor do I play one on TV, but if the History Channel has done a show on the subject, I'm going to have to take it with an ocean full of salt.

That being said, lets take a look at a few of the possible ways we'll be saying "adios" to Life, the Universe, and Everything:


Nibiru
This one was a favorite of a former coworker of mine.  It's actually one of the least crazy things I heard him say.  Also known as Planet X, Nibiru will collide with Earth, obviously causing a few scratches to Earth's finish.  The only problem is that no reputable science agency has proven the existence of a previously unknown planet on a collision course with us.  Yeah, I could see that the governments of the world might know of the existence of Nibiru, and they're just hiding it from us so that there won't be any more rioting in the streets than there already is.  But there are plenty of amateur astronomers out there, and if the Internet serves one purpose (other than posting pictures of cats) it's to post things the government doesn't want you to know.  Now I'm no exoplanetologist, nor do I play one on TV, but I'm sure that if you can see Jupiter with the naked eye we would all be able to see Nibiru by now.  Or it could be that the Nibiru has been behind the sun all this time, which I found - after a quick Google search - is a theory.


Alien Invasion
Ah yes.  The old "Aliens are coming for our *blank*" theory.  They're usually after human slave labor a la Transformers 3, or our yummy mineral resources a la every other alien invasion movie.  Or maybe they just want to hunt us like in the last Predators movie.  Never saw any of those movies.  Anyhow,  I'm no alienologist, nor do I play one on TV,  but if a race of beings was advanced enough to travel thousands-if not millions-of light years to visit earth, wouldn't they be above such human pursuits?  Now where's that picture of the Ancient Aliens guy?

Here it is.

A sudden reversal of the magnetic poles of the Earth

What the big brain scientists call a geomagnetic shift, it is a reversal of the north and south magnetic poles.  It has happened in the past, so it's not completely out of the realm of possibility.  On the other hand the only proof we have that the poles have shifted in the past are rocks that are magnetized backwards.  How they figure that out, I don't know.  I'm not a magnetologist, nor do I play one on TV.  Anyway, the danger in all this is maybe birds and whales will start migrating backwards, and it would probably mess up a lot of our technology.  At the very least we would have to relabel all of our compasses.  Are "how do magnets work" jokes out of style yet?

Supervolcano

Despite the name, supervolcanoes can't fly, can't become invisible, or shoot lasers out of their eyes.  Instead they just blow shit up.  It's happened before, most recently in 1815 when the the volcano Mount Tambora exploded.  The eruption was so large that the following year was called the "Year Without a Summer" because the ash and gas that was ejected into the atmosphere caused global temperatures to drop.  It is blamed for causing famines and outbreaks of epidemics in the following years.  Even better is the Lake Toba eruption 74,000 years ago.  This supervolcano is believed to have killed most of the humans living at the time and causing a population bottleneck.  I'm not a supervulcanologist, not do I play one on TV, but with at least 6 potential supervolcanoes in the world it, I think it seems the most plausible.

Singularity
A singularity (or THE singularity, when talking about 2012) is both an end and a beginning.  The most basic idea is that humankind will hit some sort of threshold, either spiritually or technologically (although we are talking 2012 so spiritual is the way to go), and move on to a new level that will benefit everyone.  It could be something like a vaccine for malaria; or everyone realizes that all gods are one; or the 1% say "Hey, the 99% have a point".  Not bloody likely.

Well, good luck surviving the year.  Get out your calendar and mark December 21, 2012 as the end of the world and start stocking up on food and water.  Whatever happens I'll probably be either sleeping or working through it.