Apocalypse
2012 on CNBC - CBC 1 of 5
December 21, 2012 - disaster will strike the
planet. The world, as we know it, will end. That
is what many people, millions of web sites and
international doomsday entrepreneurs predict.
Written, produced and directed by award-winning
documentarian Cynthia Banks, Apocalypse 2012
presents the leaders, chroniclers, debunkers
and the businessmen of this wide-spread certainty
of a global cataclysm.
Apocalypse 2012 follows people trying to protect
themselves and others from what they believe
is coming. Sure we've seen a lot of this before.
But what's different and fascinating about all
these predictions is that doomsday fear is moving
into the mainstream culture at a remarkable scary
pace. Apocalypse 2012 examines why this particular
doomsday has become so significant.
Developer Larry Hall is converting an Atlas
F missile base in Kansas into a heavily-guarded,
fully-furnished underground luxury condominium
shelter. Half a floor goes for $900,00 (US).
Belgian author Patrick Geryl thinks anyone underground
will be destroyed so he is building his community's
dwellings on the highest mountain in Spain. Dennis
McClung, founder of the world's largest 2012
supply web-site, rejects the notion that he is
a fear-monger preferring to see himself as a
supplier of the tools of self-reliance. Visitors
from the U.S., India, Australia and Canada can
cause McCung's site to spike at 150,000 hits
per day. George Noory is the host of Coast to
Coast, the most popular late night radio show
in North America, He focuses on 2012 regularly
and to an increasingly receptive audience. With
the motto: be prepared, not scared, Noory promises
to be live on-air on the fateful night. Coast
to Coast is carried by stations in 50 American
states and five Canadian provinces.
The ancient Mayan Long Count Calendar is the
source of the doomsday prophecy but it is our
current environment of perceived deadly threats
of solar disruption, coupled with almost instant
international communications that feeds the movement.
According to psychologists, archaeologists and
scientists, the idea of an apocalypse reflects
and magnifies the turmoil and distress of our
uncertain times.
Joyce Newberry & Marnix Wells (British couple)
pray with Maya elder Hunbatz Men at Coba, Mexico
At the NASA Space Agency, Dr. David Morrison
replies to daily emails from people suffering
anxiety about December, 2012. What will happen?
The mythical planet called Nibiru will crash
into earth. Or, solar flares will scorch the
earth. Or, the magnetic poles will flip or switch.
Worried survivalists are convinced that resulting
landslides, volcanoes and tidal waves will cut
off power and threaten the food supply. Morrison
dismisses these theories but not the people who
believe them. Lorne Dawson, Professor of Sociology
and Religious Studies at the University of Waterloo,
says, 'we live in a very apocalyptic culture
because (people) want the cathartic experience
of watching the few heroic figures struggle to
survive the circumstance.
