719x.com : Conquer The World

Every 15-30 years this country falls into an apocalypse hoax because of their own self-centered world view that the apocalypse will happen during their lifetime. The apocalypse myth in turn motivates people to spend money and enjoy their lives while they can, which is a good thing overall – so I make no effort to stop it, and for the record, I really hope the world does end in 2012. At least give me my Arizona Bay, if nothing else.

The following is a list of previous apocalypse myths dating back to over 300 years ago from present day. Naturally, all of them were false (or I wouldn’t be writing this).

In 1692-3 during the Salem Witchcraft events a hoax began that due to witchcraft, the world would end in 1711. The world, of course, did not end there.

In 1739 another Apocalypse panic started due to the “First Great Awakening” – the belief that God would be coming to purify the world as stated in “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” by Jonathan Edwards. The world kept turning.This ‘end is near’ phase lasted indefinitely, and was particularly heated during 1745, 1763, 1776 and 1789.

In 1819 the financial crisis caused by depression, unemployment, inflation and other monetary woes caused the “Panic of 1819″, which lead to rumors that (can you guess?) the world would end in 1832.

The aforementioned years would repeat themselves again in 1830 (Second Great Awakening) and 1837 (Panic of 1837). These in turn lead to apocalypse myths for the years 1851, 1869, 1884, and 1909.

In 1917, we decided that we didn’t have enough “Acts of God” apocalypse theories, so we started creating manmade ones with the First Red Scare and the Second Red Scare. Between 1917 and 1920 and 1947 and 1957 we had a total of 13 years of constant fear of a man-made apocalypse via atomic warfare.

The great depression of 1929 helped to further incite apocalypse theories of its own and to substantiate the baseless claims that the world would end, creating hoaxes in 1933 and 1940.

In 1949 George Orwell wrote the book 1984 which perpetuated further fear and anxiety amongst conspiracy theorists and gullible people that the world would really end in 1984 (I’ll come back to this).

Between 1961 and 1965, the events that were taking place, specifically the Vietnam War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassination of John F. Kennedy and subsequently the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. created apocalypse myths for 1969 and 1974.

In 1979 the Three Mile Nuclear accident created myths for 1984 (again), 1989, and 1991.

In 1982 the first signs of ‘millennium fever’ began to appear publicly, in the form of the (artist formerly known as a symbol) Prince song and album “1999″. These ideas of ‘aeons’ and the ‘end of the Mayan calendar cycle’ had been floating around in the underground for a while but began to publicly surface throughout 1983, 1984 and 1985, creating the modern myths for 1999 and 2000 and the basis for the myth of 2012.

In 1984, nothing happened.

In 1999, nothing happened.

In 2000, a few computers that were still running Windows for Workgroups had to be updated, or else. All 3 of them were fixed before the deadline.

During the years of the recent recession, the apocalypse myth has been revived.

Lets take a look at the common themes that lead to apocalypse myths, all of which are present throughout the aforementioned years:

1. War/Threat of War

2. Religious Panic/Acts of God

3. Poor financial conditions/depression/recession

4. War ends, recession ends, acts of God temporarily cease

5. Cycle repeats

The current turn of events has placed us in yet another situation where we are being guided by fear and byproducts of our other financial struggles. History is repeating itself yet again, and so following precedent is the best way to go. We will get out of this depression/recession and our economy will improve. We probably won’t see any major storms or earthquakes for another 30 years.

Either way, the world isn’t going to end in 2012. If you would like to make a wager on it, I am willing to stake the full sum of one million US dollars on the world NOT ending in 2012. After all, what have I got to lose if I’m wrong?

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