Not Every Generation Gets to See the End of the World—Consider Yourself Fortunate

The History Channel has devoted this week to all the ways in which humankind could meet its demise in our lifetimes. (Christmas is over folks; it's time to get serious.) They call it Armageddon Week—"Are you gettin' it? Armageddon it!"—though I have yet to see any programming related to the hill in Israel whose name inspired a mediocre Michael Bay movie.

Last night's installment was about how December 21, 2012 is the end of a major cycle in the ancient Mayan calendar and thus the end of the world as we know it. The History Channel has been hyping the Mayan doomsday for years. Now, to add credence to idea that the world is doomed because of the length of an ancient culture's calendar cycles, History has turned to the Freemasons, a major alignment of heavenly bodies, and especially Nostradamus for supplementary evidence. (The program, Nostradamus 2012, airs again on Sunday at 4:00 CST if you want the details.)

As it were, Michael Bay has signed on to do a movie about a 2012 apocalypse. I'm not kidding.

Regarding Nostradamus, I grew up with the understanding that the sixteenth-century French prophet had predicted that a dictator in a blue turban would start World War III sometime in the late nineties or early this decade, ending life as we know it. Despite the best efforts of the outgoing administration, that didn't happen. Apparently (as I've learned from Armageddon Week), Nostradamus actually predicted that life as we know it will end early next decade as a result of global warming and/or cosmic radiation. He said it all in Quatrain 3,46:

Through clear signs and fixed stars,
That the time of its sudden change is approaching,
Neither for its good, nor for its evils.

See? It's obvious.

Tonight on History: The Last Days on Earth. Tune in. It should be fun.