By Jessica Wind (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: November 7, 2012
Most of us have lived through enough ends-of-the-world that the impending doom of the Mayan calendar doesn’t pose much of a threat – at least it didn’t. In less than a week, a record breaking earthquake shook the coast of Haida Gwaii, the naturally-flowing hot springs of Haida Gwaii have mysteriously dried up, the West Coast and parts of Hawaii prepared for a tsunami, hurricane Sandy ravaged Manhattan and most of the East Coast, and AfterMath is facing closure. If I was keeping score, and I am, it sounds like we’re gearing up for a full-scale apocalypse worthy of a John Cusack film.
The earthquake here in BC clocked in at 7.7 with aftershock quakes reported at over six. The effects of the shift were felt as far inland as Prince George and some in Kamloops even reported feeling a rumble. Since the event on October 27, the famous hot springs of Haida Gwaii are no longer hot, an anomaly that investigators have yet to find a scientific reason for. Because of the earthquake, tsunami warnings were sent out along the West coast, from Oregon to Alaska, and even Hawaiians began evacuating the lowlands.
If that wasn’t enough, we were all inundated with live tweet coverage of the mess that hurricane Sandy was creating. It seems some powerful force is doing its best to swallow North America.
Don’t get me wrong, I have never bought into any of the doomsday prophecies we’ve been privileged to over the years. Countless religious sects have been telling us that we are all going to hell for centuries. The majority of us survived the Hale-Bop comet in 1997; the Y2K scare amounted to nothing, and of course we all sat idly by while rapture came and went in 2011. It seemed that the end of the Mayan calendar was going to go the way of the other predictions when news broke that they hadn’t accounted for leap years. The assertion was that the calendar was off and we all should have been dead sometime last year.
But, what if they were right? Species die out – science tells us that, and we haven’t exactly been spending the majority of our time on earth trying to figure out ways to stay here. Sure, environmental movements are happening, and we are wising up, but is it too little too late? Just take a minute and think about the trends that have swept the news recently – natural disasters destroying everything, people behaving akin to zombies, Mitt Romney . . . End of the Mayan calendar or not, there is something seriously funky in the water.
So whether or not you believe that this is it, you have eight weeks (yes, that’s all) to decide. Regardless of if you think you will wake up on January 1, 2013, in the middle of an apocalyptic nightmare, maybe consider buying an extra can or 10 of beans at the grocery store; I hear Costco sells bottled water by the crate. In the event that people do survive and money becomes worthless, batteries will become the new currency, so stock up.
Or, you know, winter is coming and food, water and batteries are always good things to have on hand when the snow hits.
Whatever your reasoning, do it now, because you don’t want to be that person looting the grocery store and fighting off your neighbours. If Hollywood has taught us anything about how to survive an apocalypse, it’s that those last minute looters never live.
