Extinction Notice
BY ALPER ÖZKAN (MSN/PhDII)
Ladies and gentlemen, I must inform you with great regret that this shall be my last column, for this December 21 marks the end of the current mahakalpa and Lord Shiva will soon dance the tandavanrtya to destroy the known universe, so that a new one may be created in its place. Since I am not, to my knowledge, a major Hindu god (even the minor ones are to be annihilated by the cataclysm) nor an avatar thereof, I am fairly sure that I will not be able to deliver my columns for reasons related to bodily disintegration and other such complications resulting from the cessation of my existence.
Wait, wrong apocalypse -- one mahakalpa is roughly 1.3 trillion years (Hindu mythology involves a lot of absurdly large metrics, including not only inconceivably long timespans but also distances greater than light years), so our mere 13 billion-year-old universe has quite some time remaining until Shiva has to wipe it clean.
Rather, this column shall be my last because this December 21 is the predicted date of Ragnarok: announced by the blow of Heimdall's horn, the twilight of the gods is when the Fenris wolf shall break its fetters to run free once more, the serpent Jörmungandr shall rise from the depths to poison the sky itself, the corpse-devourer Nidhoggr shall escape the netherworld alongside an army of restless dead, and men shall fall upon one another until all is in ruin. Since only two humans are expected to live through the whole ordeal, my (and hence my column's) prospects of survival seem rather grim, and even on the off chance that I end up alive, there isn't much of a reason to keep writing columns with only a single reader around (though I suspect a single reader is still one more than my current readership).
…No, that's not it either. Thanks to global warming, we haven't had a Fimbulwinter yet, and the Eddas are quite clear that no one's having any sort of Norse apocalypse until three winters come to pass without any summer in between. I guess Baldr will have to stay dead for a while longer.
Let's try again: This December 21, the celestial alignments of Fomalhaut and Betelgeuse will allow dread Cthulhu to rise from his sunken citadel R'lyeh and reclaim his dominion, the Old Ones breaking through of old to tread upon earth's fields once more and lead humanity into a mad revelry of chaos and violence, where every inhibition shall be destroyed. Our only hope is to be eaten first and preferably without noticing, for to gaze upon the shapeless and eldritch horrors that populate our vast and uncaring universe is to forfeit one's sanity…or perhaps not, since last time we saw Cthulhu, he was razed by a boat.
Is it the Second Impact? Nah, should've happened years ago. Skynet? Our technology is nowhere near advanced enough for that. Ice-nine? Already discovered, completely harmless. Tiberium is far too controllable to initiate a gray goo scenario, triffids pose so little danger by themselves that it took a conveniently placed magical meteor shower to allow their dominion, Martians and their tripods would be blasted back to their planet with our current arsenal of nuclear weapons…Galactus, perhaps? Not entirely unfeasible, handily explains the Fermi paradox, and a better way to go than many other alternatives: consider, for example, anything involving Zearth (another gigantic, life-force-devouring harbinger of extinction, but from a series so depressing that watching it is an exercise in masochism, even though the animated version is watered down to be more cheerful). Yeah, I'm all for a Galactus-mediated 2012 apocalypse.
Anyway, it's clear that some sort of apocalypse is afoot. Be on the watch for Tzitzimimeh, SCP-682, vampire Antediluvians, shady men called Louis Cypher, Mephisto Pheles, Neil A. Hoteph and the like (and speaking of Neil, take care around weird cults revering elder horrors from beyond the stars, too -- Cthulhu is not much of a threat, but Azathoth is something else entirely), the sun and the moon getting eaten by giant wolves, a massive black hole at the South Pole (well, not a black hole in the strict sense: Schwartzwelt can't be a genuine one, since an actual black hole would either vanish outright due to Hawking radiation or demolish Earth faster than anyone could worry about), four horsemen with funny names like Death and War, and other obvious portents like zombies, the Antichrist and honest politicians. And, most importantly, have fun! If we do get a proper apocalypse, it will most certainly be a once-in-a-lifetime event. I for one have high expectations and won't settle for anything less grand than the Great Dying (notably the only extinction event that did a number on insects, the true masters of our planet).
Also note that our next significant end-of-the-world phenomena are scheduled to occur in 2034 and 2060, both according to a certain conspiracy nut who based his predictions primarily on the Bible (and also revolutionized physics on the side, since the conspiracy nut in question was named Isaac Newton). In the unlikely event that the world doesn't end in the next couple of weeks, you can expect to see my columns until one of those dates.