It’s the end of the world as we know it

Life is short, and according to the Mayan calendar (or slightly suspicious interpretations of the Mayan calendar) the world will perish on Dec. 21, 2012.

Stock up on freeze-dried space food and charge all your electronics, because you’re going to want to tweet about surviving the end times if you make it through.

The end of the Mayan calendar is the most recent of the doomsday theories, ending on Dec. 21, 2012 — or, as it is written on the Mayan calendar, 13.0.0.0.0. Clearly this means the end of the world.

Although most scholars don’t agree with this theory, there are still believers who feel that shit’s going to go down.

The end of the Mayan calendar has been misinterpreted as the end of world, when all it means is the end of the thirteenth b’ak’tun, a set time period of 144,000 days, and all that will happen is the calendar will re-start as of Dec. 22, 2012. Pretty terrifying, huh?

The truth of the calendar may not be as exciting as the end of the world, but if the Mayans really could predict the end of the world they probably should have been able to predict the end of their civilization.

The end of the Mayan calendar is not the first apocalyptic theory that tells us the day we shall all perish.

Almost every religion talks about the End Times. There have also been prophecies from others who claimed to know the exact date of the world’s demise.

The most recent “scare” came from an American radio host, Harold Camping, who stated he used the Bible and some whacky math to come up with May 21, 2011, as the actual Judgment Day and, well, we all know how that turned out.

Camping later claimed that the real end of the world would actually happen later in that same year. “Thus, we must realize that Oct. 21, 2011 will be the final day of this earth’s existence,” he said.

Yet we woke up on Oct. 22 with no apocalypse to be found. Great guessing, Mr. Camping.

There are many who truly believe in the end of the world; they are usually referred to as “preppers.”

Many prepping organizations have popped up all over the world, including Canada’s own The Canadian Preppers Network blog, run by a middle-aged woman who calls herself antipreciouspearl.

These sites are there to help you know how to make paracord bracelets, store and preserve food and even make homemade deodorant — for when you break a sweat fighting off hordes of zombies, or whatever else is going to show up.

The idea that the world will end sooner rather than later seems to be a popular theme in the media as well, with reality TV shows featuring preppers and the fictional shows such as Revolution and The Walking Dead.

People seem to be fascinated with the end of the world in the recent years and it is starting to feel a lot like Y2K all over again.

The chances of the doomsday actually happening are about as high as getting a second Tim Hortons on campus any time soon. The only thing we can safely predict is that many of people will wake up on Dec. 22 with one hell of a hangover.