by Kris K ’11
There are around 6 billion people living on Earth at this moment. Many people believe that in a mere three years the world’s population, all six billion people, will be wiped off the face of the Earth. There are a number of different prophecies and theories that all end with “The End.” The end of the world, that is.
People have always been predicting the Earth’s last year, month, day or even hour however, obviously, none of them have ever come true. June 6th, 2006 was apparently going to be the end of the world because of its symbolic date, 666. And a little over three years a later the Earth still stands. Before that we had the Y2K scare. Violent, planet-wide death was supposed to come with the turn of the millennium.
Unlike many previous so-called dates of the apocalypse many different theories exist that point towards December 21, 2012 as mankind’s final day. The most well known is based on the Mayan calender, which ends on that day. Below are a few things various prophecies and individuals have predicted will happen on that day:
Natural Disasters: These events are uncontrollable, and for the most part the public is unaware of when one will take place. Climatologists can sometimes predict storms, earthquakes, or even volcano eruptions, but there is a limit to the accuracy of modern technology. Hurricane Katrina was of course under estimated, and it wiped out 80% of New Orleans. To this day, people are just now recouping, and getting their families back on their feet. Imagine a storm like Katrina, but on a much larger scale; 80 percent of the world compared to 80 percent of a city. One of the unfortunate predictions for the end of the world comes from a popular tourist site in Wyoming. While people are still amazed by America’s Old Faithful, they will become even more appalled when it is the reason for the destruction of our planet. Little do people know that under geysers, there is a super-volcano on the verge of exploding. It is overdo by about 40,000 years because it’s on a 600,000-year exploding cycle. The magma chamber underneath the surface is about 125 miles deep, carrying enough magma to completely destroy the earth.
Nuclear Warfare: On August 6th 1945, the first ever-atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Hiroshima, in Japan. Everybody within one mile of the initial blast was dead. Weeks later, even more people died from radiation poisoning, and all who were there for the dropping had difficulty living their lives because of various after-effects. Even today, some areas of the city are prohibited because of the radiation in the air. The effects of only one bomb was devastating. Imagine 10, or maybe even 100. There are about 40,000 known nuclear weapons held by various countries. According to the UN, this is enough to not only to destroy our world once, but many times over. If a World War III is started, it might in fact be the last war on Earth. After nuclear war is initiated, the planet will be completely uninhabitable. Clouds of radiation will hover for years, and ashes will be piled up like snow.
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