Armageddon - 2012

Film is a powerful medium. Recently, I have begun to understand that I can watch too many films, so that the impact of them lessens as if I am full from eating wonderful restaurant food. It doesn't matter how good the food is, you will eventually become sated, and no longer able to consume more.

In some respects, the opposite can be equally problematic, you can consume a film, and its impact can be problematic.

Most of us will agree without thinking too hard that certain films will be damaging to a sensitive mind. But perhaps we don't think too much about the impact of films that are simply designed for our leisure. So called entertainment.

Recently I was lent a copy of 2012, one such film, the plot of which I will simply summarize as an End-Of-The-World as we know it scenario.

The director of the film is Roland Emmerich, someone that has become famous for his ability to work in this particular genre of film.

He is the Director that was behind films such as The Day After Tomorrow, in which climate change comes with a catastrophic impact upon the way in which the Earth's climate has been so taken for granted.
In the film 2012, the scenario is not unrelated to that of The Day After Tomorrow, except that there are some important differences.

The most important of these is the idea that the Mayan fascination with the solar calendar is based upon an understanding of solar events that are factually based, and that the fact that the Mayan calendar had been calculated to a specific date, and no further, had been because this was known by the Mayans to be the End Of The World. At least the world as we have come to take it for granted.

It wasn't until after I had seen this film that my friend that had lent it to me informed me that recently archaeologists have discovered that in fact the Mayan culture did foresee a calendar extending beyond this date in 2012, and that it did not represent an endpoint as such, but simply was the date to which their sophisticated solar calendar had as far as was known until recently been planned.

There is some particular interest in the date to which their calendar had been known to be planned until recently, as it is a date that is forthcoming. In fact, just a few months away.

The date concerned is one of those that for many people might seem to have a numerological significance, simply because it is the winter solstice of this current year. The 21st of December 2012.

Written as 12/12/12, it may seem to have that Kabbalistic ring to it of finality, and conspiracy theorists everywhere might see this as sufficient reason for it to be a date to be feared.

It certainly makes for an interesting date around which to fit an End Of The World film.

On this date, in the film scenario, several factors combine to make the earth's crust unstable, resulting in a catastrophic shifting of tectonic plates, so that the entire surface of the Earth becomes unstable, and resulting in the potential end of the human race.

Unless, of course, something is done by those nations powerful enough to afford to create some kind of means whereby enough of the population of the Earth could survive to commence a new beginning. In other words, repopulate the changed Earth after a catastrophic flood brought about by the tectonic changes that have taken place.

Needless to say, that the solution is the creation of a number of vessels that are comparable to the Noah's Ark from the Bible, giving this film scenario something of the mythological status of the Bible story.

Strangely, there is much truth woven into the fantastic scenario of the film.

For example, it is suggested that a substantive volcano will erupt in a location in the United States that is clearly identified as the location of an actual historic caldera, that has been shown by geologists to have an active cycle of around 600,000 years.

This is located in the Yellowstone National Park, and it is spookily true that this does seem to be founded in scientific fact. It is apparently true that about 600,000 years ago this was the location of a massive volcanic eruption, one that could have such an impact upon the earth's climate as to threaten all existing present day life.

It is also true that in recent years geologists have identified that the earth at this point has risen under magma pressure so that a lake at this point has been forced to run off into surrounding locations.

In other words, the scenario of the film has sufficient factual truth within it to give it a kind of credibility perhaps sufficient to make the credulous rather nervous.

And perhaps I must count myself amongst those that might be credulous enough for film to be rather scary, to say the least.

Let us just hope that we can get the Olympics out of the way before anything comes to pass to make this film seem to be an untimely warning that the world is really about to come to an end.