Tess Pennington, 33, is a mother of three children, and lives in the sprawling outskirts of Houston, Texas. But she is not taking the happy safety of her suburban existence lightly.

Like a growing army of fellow Americans, Pennington is learning how to grow her own food, has stored emergency rations in her home and is taking courses on treating sickness with medicinal herbs.

“I feel safe and more secure. I have taken personal responsibility for the safety of myself and of my family,” Pennington said. “We have decided to be prepared. There all kinds of disasters that can happen, natural and man-made.”

Pennington is a “prepper”, a growing social movement that has been dubbed Survivalism Lite. Preppers believe that it is better to be safe than sorry and that preparing for disaster — be it a hurricane or the end of civilisation – makes sense.

Unlike the 1990s survivalists, preppers come from all backgrounds and live all over America. They are just as likely to be found in a suburb or downtown loft as a remote ranch in the mountains. Prepping networks, which have sprung up all over the country in the past few years, provide advice on how to prepare food reserves, how to grow crops in your garden, how to hunt and how to defend yourself. There are prepping books, online shops, radio shows, countless blogs, prepping courses and prepping conferences.

Read More: Guardian

A white dwarf 3,260 light-years from Earth — mere walking distance in cosmic terms — looks like it could go supernova. And that stellar explosion would have dire consequences for our planet, not to mention our possible descendants.

Located in the binary system T Pyxidis, the white dwarf in question was originally thought to be far more distant from our solar system. Although three thousand light-years might sound like a fairly safe distance away from a potential supernova, it really is quite close by astronomical standards. To put it in some perspective, the diameter of the Milky Way, at roughly 100,000 light-years wide, is multiple orders of magnitude greater than what we’re talking about here.

The huge white dwarf in the T Pyxidis system is known as a recurrent nova because it undergoes relatively minor eruptions at regular intervals. Small nova explosions have been observed every twenty years for over a century, although the last recorded nova burst was in 1967. Astronomers are unsure why the star is overdue.

Read More on io9.com

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Thought about becoming an end-of-the-world prophet? It’s not the make-or-break enterprise you might think, as much as your gut feeling may be that mobs of angry parishioners await the fortune-teller who talks them into making room on the calendar for the final trumpets, the Rapture, World War III, the return of Jesus, global computer meltdowns, or post-game shows on life hosted by great messiahs stepping out of the pages of history — only for the poor dupes to find themselves paying bills the next week.

Time and again, it hasn’t worked that way. The beauty of blown prophecies is that failure is the beginning of success. That is, if you adopt the techniques of history’s most successful faulty prophets. Through time-tested rebranding methods, they’ve reinvented failure as proof that they were righter than anyone could have imagined.

The very glue holding your congregation together can be a mistaken prediction and what you’ve invested in it. Thousands of apostles of Shaini Goodwin of Tacoma, Washington, known to admirers as the “Dove of Oneness” and to the Tacoma News Tribune as a “cybercult queen,” hold out for a Judgment Day that will justify all of her bad guesses.

Every year is supposed to be the year it happens: the revelation of NESARA (the National Economic Security and Reformation Act), a secret bill purportedly signed by President Bill Clinton. We are just a hair’s breadth away. When the gag order is lifted, NESARA will free the world from debt, stop the Iraq War, and — according to one Utah group of adherents, filmed in the documentary Waiting for NESARA — unmask Republicans as space aliens masquerading as fiscal conservatives.

For other bad prophets, it turns out it’s the thought that counts. Maybe the seer was on the right track but just jumped the gun, the sense is, and interest heightens in the original questions he raised. Just consider theologian William Miller. His followers believed his prediction — based on calculations he derived from the Book of Daniel — that Jesus would return between March 21, 1843, and March 21, 1844. This misfire was soon followed by the Great Disappointment of 1844, when a crowd of 100,000 people, many of them sober, respectable reformers and abolitionists, assembled to see the end-times that Samuel S. Snow, a Millerite (that is, a follower of Miller), had marked down for the 22nd of October. Supposedly using a more precise version of Miller’s formula, Snow had worked out the exact day, and after some initial hesitancy Miller enthusiastically endorsed this specific prediction. As the clock ticked and everyone waited awkwardly for Christ, someone pointed out that the Holy Land had a seven-hour time difference. The sting of failure was worse for all the mockery they took from the townspeople: “What, not gone up yet?”

No, they were still here. For now. And yet Miller’s bad guesses, far from leaving a foul taste in everyone’s mouth, made them newly anxious about the great return they’d prepared themselves for. It even inspired the creation of new denominations, including the Seventh Day Adventists and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, a church that has since slated Jesus’ return for 1874, 1914, 1918, 1941, 1954, and 1975. And Miller awakened the fascination with the Rapture that today drives sales of Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind books, which sell in the tens of millions, several years after the year 2000 failed to deliver on the millennial holocaust of non-Christians wished for by many Americans.

How can your sect rebound from failed prophecy in better shape than ever? According to one school of science, the answer starts with understanding the principle of cognitive dissonance.

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Read the entire article and many others in the Disinformation anthology Everything You Know About God Is Wrong: The Disinformation Guide to Religion, edited by Russ Kick, available on Amazon and in all good bookstores.

About The Author: John Gorenfeld is a writer living in San Francisco. His work has appeared on Salon.com, the Guardian and other publications, and he has appeared on NPR, ABC News and CSPAN. In 2004 Gorenfeld made national news after exposing a secret Capitol Hill party for a cult leader, and then wrote a book about it.

• Is Doomsday Coming? Perhaps, but Not in 2012 [1]
• Survey: Nearly half of adults don’t plan to get H1N1 vaccine
• Fort Hood attack likely Islamist terrorism, Cornyn and Lieberman say Al-Qaeda still biggest threat to British security, says Gordon Brown
• Al-Qaeda terrorists being trained in Pak: British PM
• Governments are now lifting the restrictions and allowing their citizens to buy gold.
• Backwardation in Gold & Silver – Tuesday 17th November 2009, Silver and mining stocks urge caution, but backwardation says gold’s run could continue…Gold Traders currently have their eye on two non-confirmations that so far have refused to “answer” gold’s push to new all time nominal highs, writes Gene Arensberg in his Got Gold report from Houston for the Gold Newsletter.

The following will help you understand what’s really going on:

Backwardation is The Powers That Be (TPTB) downward manipulating the precious metals and at the same time keeping investors from being wealthy when everyone else is out of work, out of hope and living in tent cities: This is a Neutral Sign. [2]

When TPTP can no longer keep the precious metals from taking off and the dollar from landing at zero, look out, Mad Max and the breakdown of society is around the corner.

As of November 2009, Google Trends confirms the nuclear war hysteria had just about fallen off the radar screen.

For example, Pakalert “Escalation Scenarios: The Third World War and Its Aftermath” and Dr. Strangelove articles were everywhere until the beginning of October…when they faded into the background and the swine flu returned with a vengeance:

“President Barack Obama declared the swine flu outbreak a national emergency, giving his health chief the power to let hospitals move emergency rooms offsite to speed treatment and protect non-infected patients.” Washington (October 25, 2009)

Swine flu instead of a nuclear war?

If TPTB have abandoned a nuclear strategy and returned to the FLU this is an Ominous and Not A Particularly Good Sign.

A World War III that involves most or all nuclear powers, was a BLUFF.

Environmental Damage And Pollution Are The Goal And Not The Unintended Consequence Of Our Consumer Society

TPTB, armed with the lost knowledge from the ancient world, Atlantis are in a metaphysical struggle to use humans to weaken the earth with environmental damage and pollution. [3]

Sometime between October of 2008 and October 2009, TPTB determined they had LOST the struggle with Mother-Earth and were forced to BLUFF with the threat of a nuclear event. TPTB don’t want World War III because it would make planet uninhabitable.

The Book of Revelation in the Bible describes what happens when TPTB defeat the Earth and there is no nuclear war at Armageddon in the valley of Megiddo:

This great slaughter of the Antichrist and his armies will take place in and around the valley of Megiddo near Haifa in Israel. It will mark the end of man’s cruel rule on earth (the cruel rule responsible for the American Dream, a nightmare for the planet), as Jesus, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and His Heavenly forces (TPTB) forcibly take over the World to rule and reign and run it the way it should have been run if man had not disobeyed God (lived in disharmony with the earth) and gone his own selfish way!

Should their plan succeed, TPTB believe they will attain immortality in a period known as the New World Order (Millennium), a thousand years of peace and plenty and paradise on Earth for The House of Rothschild, Bilderbergers, CFR and the other secret societies (Global elite, TPTB).

The Anti-Islamic rhetoric, headlines about Al-Qaeda and terrorism “alerts” confirm Albert Pike’s vision: The Third World War is a depopulation event, not a nuclear holocaust when someone blows up the Dome of the Rock.

Albert Pike received a vision, which he described in a letter he wrote to Mazzini, allegedly dated August 15, 1871. The letter graphically outlined plans for three world wars that were seen as necessary to bring about the One World Order: [4]

Although there is controversy regarding the actual date the letter was written, it could not have been written after World War II and therefore the contents are prophetic:

The Third World War must be fomented by taking advantage of the differences caused by the “agentur” of the “Illuminati” between the political Zionists and the leaders of Islamic World. The war must be conducted in such a way that Islam (the Moslem Arabic World) and political Zionism (the State of Israel) mutually destroy each other. Meanwhile the other nations, once more divided on this issue will be constrained to fight to the point of complete physical, moral, spiritual and economical exhaustion…We shall unleash the Nihilists and the atheists, and we shall provoke a formidable social cataclysm … Then everywhere, the citizens, obliged to defend themselves against the world minority of revolutionaries, will exterminate those destroyers of civilization, and the multitude, disillusioned with Christianity, whose deistic spirits will from that moment be without compass or direction, anxious for an ideal, but without knowing where to render its adoration, will receive the true light through the universal manifestation of the pure doctrine of Lucifer, brought finally out in the public view.

Armageddon And The Flu Could Eliminate One-Third Of The Masses

Let’s say one of those radical Christian or Jewish groups plotting to blow up the Dome of the Rock, that magnificent golden domed mosque built on the site of Solomon’s Temple, is successful. Islam’s third holiest shrine stands directly over the most holy Jewish place and is preventing the Messiah from returning to Earth.

According to biblical prophecy, the temple must be rebuilt and sacrifice reinstated before Jesus can come back to earth; the first time for the Jews, the second time for the Christians. No temple = no Messiah.

What would happen if the Dome were to be demolished?

Well, for the first time in history, thanks to Saddam Hussein who drained 60 percent of the wetlands, 200 million people could cross the Euphrates for a holy war in Jerusalem, also known as Armageddon. [5]

Revelation 9:16 describes a hand-to-hand combat not a nuclear event because a Nuclear World War III would make too much of the planet uninhabitable for the One World governors and the 500 million useless eaters they need for slaves when they take over the world. [6]

Do Not Take a Swine Flu Vaccine, It Could Kill You! [7]

Remember the last Bird (now Swine) Flu hoax, where the public stampeded to get their worthless dose of Tamiflu and were convinced it was a scare tactic to make Rumsfeld millions?

Well, at the first sign of an epidemic, even without the forced immunization clause in the Patriot Act, the fools will still rush down to get their shot.

Immunization will be based on genome sequencing–a biotechnology that allows doctors to tailor medical treatments to an individual’s genetic profile:

“Here for your shot?”

“Worried about the Bird Flu? Oh of course sit here, roll up your sleeve. Oops, sorry you died.”

“Well I guess it was too late for you; next time, get here sooner!”

Either of these events would get us started on a slow, but orderly road to a population of slaves.

Note: The game is not over, we need figure out what we did before that worked and resume that behavior to help the Earth overcome TPTB!

And yes, it’s related (according to me) to me “The Most Important Issue in the History of the Universe.” [8]

I know not what course others may take, but as for me if it’s a choice between Nuclear Strategy, Mad Max and the Swine Flu Shot give me Death.

Footnotes:

[1] The end of the world is not 2012. Is Jesus Christ Coming Back to Earth in XX (2000) XX (20) III (3) = 2023?, Robert Singer.

[2] Silver, But no Silver Lining, Robert Singer

[3] The Powers That Be, the Illuminati (successors to the Knights Templar) possess the lost knowledge of the ancient world Atlantis and could see a future where consumerism would weaken Mother-Earth (Gaea). The origins of the secret societies go back to Solomon’s Temple, the Great Pyramid and Atlantis, have been associated with the Ark of the Covenant, the Holy Grail, a secret fleet that sailed the oceans, and an awe-inspiring self-confidence and known today as the preservers of knowledge and sacred objects. The Amazing Knights Templar By David Hatcher Childress http://www.newdawnmagazine.info/Article/The_Amazing_Knights_Templar.html Freemasons, Priory of Sion, Illuminati, Templars and Other Groups Explained by Jotter Scalems in Organizations, May 21, 2008

Atlantis Between 3113 BC and 1198 BC, there were the pass-by and eventual impact of the cometary object (called Proto-Encke) which destroyed the legendary island of Atlantis, located approximately 250 miles west of the Straits of Gibraltar. The Destruction of Atlantis, and Survivors of Atlantis, Frank Joseph

In his dialogues, Critias and Timaeus, Plato states that Atlantis sank beneath the waters following a great cataclysm 9000 years before his time. Until recently, the notion of a sunken island in the Atlantic was considered preposterous however recent geological, oceanographic, climatological and biological studies have conclusively shown that numerous islands did indeed exist in the Atlantic and other parts of the world in Paleolithic and Neolithic times. Sacred Geography in Ancient Europe, Martin Gray 2006, http://www.knowth.com/sacred-geography-1.htm

According to the Egyptian priests that Plato’s informant had spoken with, Atlantis had a prosperous and sophisticated civilization before its demise. Advanced in science, it was also in possession of knowledge concerning both the geography and geomancy of the entire earth.

[4] Cmdr. William Guy Carr: Quoted in Satan: Prince of This World, Albert Pike received a vision, which he described in a letter that he wrote to Mazzini, dated August 15, 1871. http://www.threeworldwars.com/albert-pike2.htm

“Readers who argue that the terms Nazism and Zionism were not known in 1871 should remember that the Illuminati invented both these movements. In addition, Communism as an ideology, and as a coined phrase, originates in France during the Revolution. In 1785, Restif coined the phrase four years before revolution broke out. Restif and Babeuf, in turn, were influenced by Rousseau – as was the most famous conspirator of them all, Adam Weishaupt.”

[5] In 1994, 60 percent of the wetlands were destroyed by Saddam Hussein’s regime. They were drained to permit military access and greater political control of the native Marsh Arabs. The number 200 million is mentioned in Revelation 9:16. This number is expressed in the Greek as ‘two myriads of myriads’ or in numeric form, ‘two 10,000 of 10,000′. The 200 million is a number applied to the number of horsemen which cross the Euphrates.

[6] The Powers That Be believe Revelation 20:4-7 applies to them (if they are successful) and not the huddled masses.

…and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection.

[7] Do Note Take a Swine Flu Vaccine!, Patricia A. Doyle, The Market Oracle April 27, 2009.

“Several world-acclaimed Microbiologists researchers specializing in DNA (Genome) sequencing have been found dead or have gone missing.” The Very Mysterious Deaths Of Five Microbiologists, Ian Gurney, December 20, 2001

[8] When I am asked to pick the “Most Question Issue in the History of the Universe” for those of us who are out in the world trying to wake up the huddled masses, I answer: What caused the Twin Towers to collapse

Why?

Because if you don’t know why the twin towers collapsed, how can you be sure you are waking up the masses from the right dream. The Most Important Issue in the History of the Universe, Robert Singer

Roland Emmerich’s 2012 is jammed with every cliche and trope ever found in a Hollywood disaster movie, while giving the Earth an over-the-top pummeling. It’s a reasonably fun flick at times, if you don’t think about it … at all.

It seems that once Roland Emmerich was done assembling all the CG components for destroying the world and gathering a full complement of “Hey, it’s that guy!” actors, he realized 2012 had no script, and decided to cull characters and situations from every other disaster movie ever made. Despite its massive scale of destruction, 2012 will be familiar to anyone whose seen any movie about an earthquake, volcano, aquatic disaster, or celestial body striking the Earth.

2012 follows the parallel stories of several characters at the end of the world. John Cusack plays the sort of fellow John Cusack always plays, though this time he’s also a struggling writer whose only novel sold roughly 400 copies. And Amanda Peet plays his Amanda Peet-esque ex-wife, who is dating a plastic surgeon named Gordon. Gordon is all kinds of perfect, adores Amanda, and is great with her kids, but of course she’s only with him because she can’t be with John Cusack. Oh, and John and Amanda (or Jackson and Kate Curtis as they’ve been named for the sake of the film) have perfectly generic children. There’s the requisite daughter with a quirk (she’s overly fond of hats) and the son who’s mad at his father (and insists on calling him by his first name).

More on io9.com

To help sort out the information, Gary Baddeley, the writer/producer of 2012: Science or Superstition and president of The Disinformation Company will present the current schools of thought and answer questions from a public not certain if they should prepare for survival or something else entirely.

On the day that Roland Emmerich’s mega-budget disaster film 2012 opens nationally, discover the truth about the “End of Days” and the 2012 phenomenon with the video conference “Everything You Wanted to Know About 2012 But Were Afraid to Ask”, presented by The Disinformation Company, producer to the bestselling documentary 2012: Science or Superstition and it’s companion book. The video conference will be hosted by Justin.tv on Friday, November 13th, from 2 to 3 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. If you didn’t have a chance to join the chat, here’s the first part below:

The rest of the Justin.tv chat is here, here and here.

Gary discussed the documentary he wrote and produced, 2012: Science or Superstition, the mega-Hollywood motion picture 2012, and all things 2012-related. If you couldn’t make the event, feel free to submit a question by comment below. Here’s the trailer for 2012: Science or Superstition:

To help sort out the information, Gary Baddeley, the writer/producer of 2012: Science or Superstition and president of The Disinformation Company will present the current schools of thought and answer questions from a public not certain if they should prepare for survival or something else entirely.

On the day that Roland Emmerich’s mega-budget disaster film 2012 opens nationally, discover the truth about the “End of Days” and the 2012 phenomenon with the video conference “Everything You Wanted to Know About 2012 But Were Afraid to Ask”, presented by The Disinformation Company, producer to the bestselling documentary 2012: Science or Superstition and it’s companion book. The video conference will be hosted by Justin.TV on Friday, November 13th, from 2 to 3 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. To participate on that day go to this link, or follow the conversation on Twitter.

Here’s the trailer for 2012: Science or Superstition, we’re looking forward to your questions and hope you can join the conversation. If you can’t make the conference, feel free to submit a question by comment below and we will try to answer as many as possible.

This is pretty funny, in the 2012 movie the “U.S.-run Institute for Human Continuity” saves the day. Hooray for USA! Robert Lamb writes on Discovery News:

If you’ve seen the trailer for the fall blockbuster-bound 2012, then you pretty much know the entire plot: Earth’s crust collapses like a failed souffle, deadly meteor showers chase John Cusack’s van and ancient Mayans scoff that they totally called it.

In just 157 minutes of screen time, civilization collapses and the U.S.-run Institute for Human Continuity somehow overcomes partisan politics and begin loading survivors onto ships to ride out doomsday.

The “2012″ viral marketing campaign managed to stir legitimate concerns over humanity’s ability to survive a possible extinction event. There’s no such thing as the Institute for Human Continuity, but that doesn’t mean real scientists haven’t thought long and hard about the survival of the human race.

We’re about to fly through five scientific takes on doomsday survival and the plans they entail, so hold on to that steering wheel. (More on Discovery News)

Meredith Woerner writes on io9.com:

Just seconds after telling us that he makes disaster movies because he hates sequels, director Roland Emmerich spilled all about his new ABC TV series 2013, that picks up after the waves part. It sounds epic. Spoiler warning.

At the end of 2012 the cast members who have survived the massive floods and volcanic destruction on Earth head over to Africa, the new center of the world. What happens next has just been picked up by ABC as a television series that Emmerich is helping out with. We got the chance to find out more about his post-post-apocalypse series at the 2012 press day. (More on io9.com)

Here’s the 2012 trailer, yeah, I’d want to be alive after this happens…

Unlike a regular black hole, which traps light using the gravitational pull of the dead star at its core, this simple metal disc uses the geometry of 60 concentric rings of metamaterials to lock up light…bending beams into the center of the disc, and trapping them in the etched maze-like grooves.

The belief in a coming end of the world as we know it may seem understandable to people living in the first decade of the twenty-first century, but a look at history shows that it has been part of Western psychology from the beginning.

The central figure of Western religion, Jesus Christ, told his followers that the end was nigh, and most people who accepted Jesus believed that the cosmic last call would come in their lifetime. Yet Jesus worked within an age-old Jewish tradition that looked to the coming of the Messiah, a religious and political leader who would set the world to rights and, incidentally, free the Chosen People from whomever it was who had conquered them at the time. As Jesus didn’t free the Jews from the Romans—nor seemed able to free himself from them either—the Jews who denied him seem justified in their disbelief. To them, and to the Romans, the Christians who preached a coming Day of Judgment were rather like the urban oracles who inhabit most major cities today, ranting on street corners and pestering passersby to repent.

Post-Jesus, the Jews didn’t give up their anticipation of a Messiah. They merely pushed back the date of his arrival, a tactic the Christians soon adopted as well when it became clear that Jesus’ Second Coming—after his crucifixion and resurrection—was delayed. The last major claimant to Messiahdom was the Turkish Jew Sabbatai Zevi, who, after gathering a huge following, ignominiously abandoned his call in 1666 when threatened with impalement by Sultan Mehmet IV. As did later students of eschatology (the study of the end times), the early Christian theorists were adept in cooking the books and explaining why their own final curtain hadn’t yet fallen. Nevertheless, against all the evidence, the belief in some once-and-for-all denouement remained strong. In 156 AD, for example, a Phrygian named Montanus declared that he was the incarnation of the Holy Spirit and that, in accordance with the Fourth Gospel, he would reveal “things to come,” such as the imminent arrival of Christ’s kingdom, which would physically descend from the heavens and transform Phrygia into a land of saints. Understandably, thousands of Christians flocked to Phrygia to await the Second Coming. Yet again, the expected kingdom’s failure to arrive did little to dampen the belief that it would eventually show up. After Montanus, there were several other false alarms, all of which ended in the same way.

Ironically, the Church itself soon became a strong inhibitor of apocalyptic thought. By the time it became the official religion of the Roman Empire, with the emperor Constantine in the early fourth century, the idea of a coming apocalypse was more of a threat than a promise. The Church was the second most powerful organization in the empire, and that it would lose this status because of the end of the world wasn’t appealing. Drawing on the work of the third-century theologian Origen, it shifted the emphasis from a historical apocalypse to a spiritual one and developed an eschatology of the individual soul. This idea caught on with the more educated and socially well-situated Christians, but the more spectacular theme of a “real-life” apocalypse remained part of the common people’s worldview and has been so ever since, as anyone aware of the enormous popularity of the Left Behind series of apocalyptic novels, based on a selective reading of the Book of Revelations, knows. Titles like The Rapture, Tribulation Force, and The Mark don’t show up on the New York Times bestseller list, but millions of readers with a taste for Christian fundamentalism buy and read these books—well—religiously, as page-turning guides to the coming end times. The overarching theme of Left Behind is the fate of those who are not right with the Lord and who face a gory retribution come the last days. A gateway to paradise for the faithful few, for the disbelieving many, the millennium is their worst nightmare.

As the historian Norman Cohn argues in The Pursuit of the Millennium, millenarian scenarios share some basic ideas. Salvation is collective, involving everyone, although not everyone will be saved; it is to be experienced here on Earth, not in some afterlife; it is on its way and will arrive suddenly; it will be total, effecting a complete transformation of life as we know it; and it is to be achieved through supernatural forces. As Cohn argues, by the Middle Ages, grassroots expectation of the millennium was rampant. With a corrupt Church, the common folk sought salvation through a cleansing apocalypse. This led to some remarkable developments, like the Brethren of the Free Spirit, a loose community of radical Christians circa 1200 who, because of the coming end times, believed they had become free of sin and acted accordingly. Wandering from village to village, they rejected private property—which meant they took whatever they wanted—and devoted themselves to hedonistic pleasures, including “free love” and drunkenness, rather like medieval hippies. Less driven by theology, this and other millenarian sects sought to escape the deprivations of their lives by envisioning a coming cosmic reversal that would set the righteous lowly at the head of the table, with the worldly powerful at best receiving scraps.

The motivation for many of these sects isn’t difficult to grasp. Socially and economically disenfranchised, they resented the generally fine living many monks and priests enjoyed, and understandably wanted some for themselves. If it took an apocalypse to bring this about, so be it. This aspect of millenarianism informed the secular varieties familiar to the modern period, and while the French and Russian revolutions lacked the supernatural forces common to most millenarian movements, they both shared the other criteria admirably. The storming of the Bastille inaugurated the Age of Reason, and the Bolshevik murder of the Romanovs announced the dictatorship of the proletariat. Hitler’s National Socialism was perhaps the most millenarian modern movement of them all, celebrating a Third Reich that would, it claimed, last a thousand years. (Thankfully, all it managed was twelve.) Yet just as the Church did, the leaders of these secular apocalypses soon clamped down on any who felt these events weren’t quite apocalyptic enough; and in all three cases, for many the end times only brought new oppression. Another example of secular millenarian belief was the hoopla in Europe that accompanied the outbreak of the First World War. Many believed that by the end of the nineteenth century Western civilization had become rotten, and they looked to war as a way of clearing away the old world in preparation for the new. It was not until the reality of trench warfare took hold that those expectations dimmed and the war was seen as yet another example of the very thing it was supposed to eliminate.

While I’ve been lucky enough to have missed anything like the French or Russian revolution and the First World War, my own lifetime has been peppered with quite a few millennial expectations. Growing up in the 1960s, through the media I was aware of the modern Brethren of the Free Spirit in places like Greenwich Village and Haight-Ashbury. I was also aware that something called the Age of Aquarius either was on its way or had already arrived (the jury is still out on this). Linked to this was the idea that the fabled lost continent of Atlantis-—which I read about in comic books and fantasy paperbacks—was due to surface sometime in 1969. Both were heralds of a coming golden age, when “peace will guide the planets and love will steer the stars.” By the early seventies such anticipations had fizzled, but in 1974 they were briefly revived when comet Kohoutek sparked new interest in apocalyptic beliefs. A Christian group called the Children of God—who, incidentally, advocated “revolutionary lovemaking” (read: promiscuity)—distributed leaflets announcing doomsday for January of that year, which my friends and I read with interest. Predictably, Kohoutek fizzled as well. That same year, the science writers John Gribbin and Stephen Plagemann published The Jupiter Effect, a bestseller predicting the devastating results (earthquakes, tidal waves, etc.) of a curious alignment of the planets on one side of the sun. When the alignment took place and nothing happened, they wrote a second book, The Jupiter Effect Reconsidered, explaining what went wrong. Not surprisingly, this sequel didn’t sell as well.

There were other millennial dates too. Remember the solar eclipse of 1999 and Y2K, the millennium bug? But the most significant millennial date so far in my lifetime surely was 1987, the year of the Harmonic Convergence—another planetary alignment—which was seen as the kickoff for the most anticipated apocalyptic event in recent years, the year 2012. For those unaware, proponents of 2012 argue that an ancient Mayan calendar—combined with permutations of the I Ching—predicts that tremendous changes will take place in that year and that, as one advocate expresses it, a “singularity,” an event of unprecedented ontological character, will take place and, as the saying goes, transform life as we know it. Recalling Norman Cohn’s criteria for millenarian belief, from everything I’ve heard about 2012, it fits the bill nicely.

I first heard of the Harmonic Convergence in 1987 when I was working at a well-known New Age bookshop in Los Angeles. Although items like crystals and other spiritual accessories were already big sellers, I was intrigued by the flood of people gathering metaphysical paraphernalia in preparation for some major event. I was informed that like Kohoutek, Atlantis, and the Aquarian Age, the Harmonic Convergence marked the end of the old world and the beginning of the new. There would be some disturbance, yes, the Harmonic Convergers I spoke with informed me; the shift into the new time would not be smooth, but I shouldn’t worry. Apparently, the bookshop was one of the safest places on the planet and I would be protected. This was, I admit, a relief, and as my apartment was just a block away from the shop, I wondered just how far the protection would reach.

The sources about the coming event were José Argüelles’s The Mayan Factor and, later, Terence McKenna’s writings on his “time wave” theory in The Archaic Revival and other books. I read Argüelles but wasn’t impressed, and when a later book, Surfers of the Zuvuya, appeared, it just seemed silly. I was also not taken with his apparent adoption of the role of avatar, an identity other proponents of 2012 seem to embrace easily. (I did, however, find an earlier book, The Transformative Vision, to be a profitable study in cultural philosophy.) I found McKenna more interesting and a better writer, but I still wasn’t sold on the idea. I heard McKenna speak, and without doubt the man had kissed the Blarney Stone, but after an entertaining ninety minutes I left the lecture no more convinced than when I arrived. The fact that he banked a great deal on a liberal indulgence in hallucinogens also made me question his seriousness. I had had my own experiences with psychedelics, and while some were interesting, for the most part they seemed more a distraction than anything else.

Much has been written about 2012, pointing out both the value and the flaws in Argüelles’s and McKenna’s interpretations. I don’t intend to repeat those here. The strangeness of the ideas did not repel me. At the time that I came across them, I was reading Rudolf Steiner, who had his own prophecies concerning the third millennium, which, to be honest, were rather vague. I had also already spent some years in the Gurdjieff “work,” so odd ideas were not a threat. What troubled me then and today is what I call the “apocalyptic gesture,” a point I raised recently on the Reality Sandwich website, much of which is dedicated to the 2012 scenario. The desire for some once-and-for-all break with the given conditions of life seems, to me at least, to be embedded in our psyche and is a form of historical or evolutionary impatience. Social, political, or cultural conditions may trigger it, but in essence it’s the same reaction as losing patience with some annoying, mundane business and, in frustration, knocking it aside with the intent to make a “clean start.” While in our personal lives this may result in nothing more than a string of false beginnings and a lack of staying power, on the broader social and political scale it can mean something far more serious.

In essays like “The Destructive Character,” “Critique of Violence,” and “Theologico-Political Fragment,” the German-Jewish cultural thinker Walter Benjamin, who combined an idiosyncratic Marxism with an equally eccentric understanding of the Kabbalah, argued for the need for apocalyptic violence in order to bring about the Messianic Age. Whether it was the class war or Jehovah’s righteous wrath, Benjamin believed in the necessity for some final conclusive event that would restore the fallen world to paradise. The violence of divine intervention and a sudden eschatological change informed Benjamin’s view of history, which he famously saw as a “single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage.” This hunger for some decisive action to clear away the detritus of the postlapsarian world informed Benjamin’s personal life too, and in 1940, trying to escape from the Nazis, he committed suicide, enacting upon himself an apocalyptic violence he had long contemplated.

In mentioning Benjamin, I’m not suggesting that believers in 2012 advocate violence. I am saying that the anticipation of a singularity associated with 2012 is a manifestation of what may very well be a Jungian archetype, the archetype of the apocalypse. And while violence may not be part of the prophecy, it can easily become part of the anticlimax when the apocalypse doesn’t arrive and disappointment sets in. Recent history suggests this. The “Summer of Love” in 1967—which by many accounts wasn’t as groovy as believed—quickly became the year of “Street Fighting Man” in 1968, when the “generation gap” promised to turn into something like revolution, and dangerous slogans like “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem” promoted a simplistic us-or-them scenario. Yet by 1969 the hopes of an Aquarian Age had been severely battered by the gruesome Charles Manson murders and the Rolling Stones’ disastrous concert at Altamont, when Hell’s Angels murdered one man and terrorized hundreds of others, including the Stones themselves. (I tell the story in Turn Off Your Mind: The Mystic Sixties and the Dark Side of the Age of Aquarius.) Exorbitantly high hopes can often lead to very deep depressions, and in a microcosmic popular sense, within a few years the peace and love unreservedly embraced by the flower generation became the “no future” of the punks. Cynicism, jadedness, and pessimism often constitute the hangover from the intoxication of excessively high expectations. No one rejects ideals more vigorously than a bruised romantic.

Again, in mentioning this I’m not saying that the many crises that lead some to look to 2012 as a solution are not real. Clearly they are. We all know them, and it would be tedious for me to roll off a list. But anticipating an apocalypse or singularity is only one response to crises. There are others. And a radical shift in the nature of things is only one possibility.

The philosopher Jean Gebser, who argued very persuasively that we are experiencing what he called a breakdown in our “structure of consciousness,” likewise saw significant changes on the historical horizon. Gebser did not, however, tie himself to a deadline and didn’t anticipate a golden age. “The world will not become much better,” Gebser wrote, “merely a little different, and perhaps somewhat more appreciative of the things that really matter.” To those expecting some unprecedented alteration in the conditions of existence, this probably seems a bit tame. To me, it is more than enough of a goal to work toward, and if only a handful of people become “more appreciative of the things that really matter,” then the Life Force, evolution, or whatever you want to call it is getting the job done.

In his Study of History, an account of the rise and fall of civilizations, the historian Arnold Toynbee argues that there are two stereotypical responses to what he calls a “time of troubles,” the crisis points that make or break a civilization. One is the “archaist,” a desire to return to some previous happy time or golden age. The other is the “futurist,” an urge to accelerate time and leap into a dazzling future. That both offerings are embraced today is, I think, clear. The belief that a saving grace may come from indigenous non-Western people untouched by modernity’s sins is part of a very popular “archaic revival.” Likewise, the trans- or posthumanism that sees salvation in some form of technological marriage between man and computer is equally fashionable. The 2012 scenario seems to partake of both camps: It proposes a return to the beliefs of an ancient civilization in order to make a leap into an unimaginable future. What both strategies share, however, is a desire to escape the present. Given our own “time of troubles,” this seems understandable enough.

Toynbee also believed in what I call the “Goldilocks theory of history,” and to me it makes a lot of sense. If a challenge facing it is too great, he argued, a civilization smashes. If it isn’t great enough, the civilization overcomes it too easily, becomes decadent, and decays. But if the challenge is “just right”—not too great and not too small—it forces the civilization to make sufficient effort to advance creatively.

Sadly, most of the civilizations Toynbee studied either cracked or went soft. The verdict has yet to come in on our own, and as everyone knows, there are no guarantees. But I’m willing to make a bet. There are still a few years left, and, of course, things can change. But I’m willing to wager that with any luck, 2013 will show that we got it just right. If nothing else, trying to meet our challenges successfully will give us all something to do when the apocalypse doesn’t arrive.

Considering that nobody knows what’s going to happen in 2012, the end of the Mayan Calendar functions as a tremendously intriguing meme upon which we can project our hopes and fears, dreams and desires. Hollywood has now offered up a massive collective shadow projection in the form of a $250 million disaster epic that takes the aesthetics of annihilation to a new pitch of perfection.  Paradoxically, this doom-riddled blockbuster could create a great opening to offer an alternative vision of what 2012 could be for our planet. Potentially, 2012 could represent the coming-to-consciousness of the human species, in which we take responsibility for our role as agents of conscious evolution.

A rising grassroots movement now realizes we can no longer expect governments, corporations, or any outside authority to create the beautiful world we long to live in. We have to do it ourselves. This growing network of Evolvers, Burners, Bioneers, Transition Towners, and others are developing new cooperative networks that can help heal our planet while providing sustainable solutions to the disastrously unsustainable economic and political systems that disempower people, keeping them asleep.

For this month’s Spore, over thirty cities will host conversations on 2012 and the evolution of consciousness, including “counter-screenings” to Sony Pictures’ 2012 world-catastrophe film.

Spores may preview a portion of Mangusta Productions upcoming feature-length documentary 2012: Time for Change, directed by Joao Amorim and starring 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl author Daniel Pinchbeck, along with a section of the disinformation documentary 2012: Science our Superstition, produced by Gary Baddeley.

In addition, current bestselling 2012 Story author John Major Jenkins will give a short video presentation for those participating in the Spores. Afterward, we will discuss indigenous prophecies and global transformation, and how to prepare ourselves and our communities for rapid changes to come.

We sincerely hope you can attend the upcoming Spore: Click here to find the Spore near you, or email jonathan [at] evolver [dot] net to start your own.

The chances of the asteroid Apophis hitting Earth in 2036 are lower than we thought. But those worried about deep impacts should add a new entry to their calendar: 2068.

When Apophis was first spotted in 2004, the 250-metre-wide rock was briefly estimated to have a 2.7 per cent chance of hitting Earth in 2029. Further observations quickly showed that it will miss Earth that year – but should it pass through a 600-metre-wide “keyhole” in space, it will return to hit Earth in 2036.

For the past several years, the probability of such a collision has been considered to be 1 in 45,000. But new calculations suggest the chance of an impact in 2036 is far lower – about 1 in 250,000.

The revised estimate is in part a result of additional observations of the asteroid as well as refinements on the position of Apophis in older data…

But the highlight of the “Singularity Summit” conference was probably a question directed to the neuroengineering director at Tecnalia (Europe’s third largest private research organization). “An audience member asked if Randal would give the emulated brains a choice about whether or not they wanted to participate in the experiments they had been created for!”

Itamar Arel from the University of Tennessee (and co-founder of the Artificial General Intelligence Roadmap initiative) described a two-pronged approach to bring about A.I. in years instead of decades.

And of course, Ray Kurzweil spoke — twice.