The World Ends… Again? Meh.

You have to hand it to the end-of-the-world doomsayers: they certainly are persistent. After a long and rich history of always getting it wrong, such as with the much-hyped Mayan Prophecy from December 2012, these seers and prophets just keep coming back for more. Case in point: apparently, this past September 23rd, the world was supposed to end… again. But don’t take it from me, take it straight from the prophets themselves:

Beware September 2015! A Great Deception is Brewing! I Know What is Going to Happen and it is Not What You Think!

The Mystery Of September 23: Why Does 9/23 Keep Popping Up All Over the Place?

And the Internet is full of a whole bunch of other “September 23rd” doomsday sites. I swear every year or two these things pop up like roaches; with the true believers, it’s like a game of perpetual whack-a-mole, because no matter how many times these predictions are wrong (which is EVERY TIME), they just keep coming back for more.

Our skeptical friends over at Skeptoid do a nice take down of this latest doomsday prediction:

Skeptoid: The September 23rd Apocalypse

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Let’s start with what’s being predicted for September 23, 2015 – and for September 2015 in general. According to various conspiracy, prophecy, and prepping websites, the following things will happen on the date itself:

• Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement.

• President Barack Obama is scheduled to meet with Pope Francis at the White House. Of note is that Francis is the 266th Pope, September 23 is the 266th day of the year, and the average length of human gestation is 266 days.

• The Autumnal Equinox.

• The First day of the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha, also known as “the Feast of the Sacrifice.”

If you add in days either just before or just after 9/23/15, you also get a number of apocalyptic events:

• A range of dates that Comet 67P is scheduled to make an extremely close passage of Earth, September 15-28.

• The September restart of the CERN Large Hadron Collider will open a portal to another dimension.

• The end of Jade Helm 15 on September 15.

• The September 25th launch of a new UN initiative, Agenda 2030, which signals the end stage of Agenda 21 implementation.

• The date of the last of the “Four Blood Moons” heralding the End Times, on September 28.

• The approximate date of predicted economic collapse.

• The end of a Shemitah year in the Jewish Calendar, the last year of the seven year agricultural cycle, that traditionally brings with it great tribulation.

All of these events have been prophesied to form a combination that will bring on the End Times. What are the sources of these predictions?

• The obvious confluence of the three major world religions on September 23.

• Biblical prophecy, specifically the “Four Blood Moons” prophecy.

• The End Times prophecy of Sir Isaac Newton.

• A dire warning from French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who claimed on May 13, 2014 that we have “500 days to avoid climate chaos.” 500 days after May 13, 2014 is September 24, 2015.

• Prophetic dreams and visions by people attuned to such things.

• Predictive programming in Hollywood entertainment – specifically, many uses of the numbers “9” and “23” in films and TV.

Hmm, that’s quite a lot of scary End Times stuff, isn’t it? Except that the End didn’t come. But that won’t stop the apocalyptic fanatics from continuing to make their doomsday predictions; indeed, a quick Google search for “the coming apocalypse” will yield a mountain of Internet fodder to feed all the Bible-thumping, paranoia-inducing, hide-in-your-basement, conspiracy-mongering that you could ever want regarding future end-of-the-world predictions.

Here’s a prediction that you can take to the bank: the next apocalyptic prediction will pan out like all the previous ones… it will be dead, flat wrong.

2012 Isn’t Seen as End-of-the-World by Real Mayans

Unless you’ve been living underneath a rock for the last year or so, you no doubt have heard all manner of New Age silliness regarding the supposed end-of-the-world on Dec. 21, 2012. The idea has gotten so much traction in the popular consciousness that the master of cheesy doomsday movies, Roland Emmerich, has a big movie named – you guessed it – “2012” coming out next month.

So what’s the big damn deal with all of this 2012 hysteria?  Supposedly it has to do with the Mayan calendar, specifically one version called the Long Count calendar, which is set to end and reset on Dec. 12, 2012 on the Western calendar (much like how our Western calendar resets from Dec. 31 to Jan. 1 every year).  And for this reason, a number of nutty New Agers are going crazy about “cosmic alignments” and how this will result in all manner of horrendous things for humanity… you know, the typical doomsday junk.

But what makes all of this truly hilarious is what actual Mayans (yes, there are still some around) say when you ask them about all of this 2012 nonsense:

2012 isn’t the end of the world, Mayans insist

Apolinario Chile Pixtun is tired of being bombarded with frantic questions about the Mayan calendar supposedly “running out” on Dec. 21, 2012. After all, it’s not the end of the world.

Or is it?

Definitely not, the Mayan Indian elder insists. “I came back from England last year and, man, they had me fed up with this stuff.”

It can only get worse for him. Next month Hollywood’s “2012” opens in cinemas, featuring earthquakes, meteor showers and a tsunami dumping an aircraft carrier on the White House.

At Cornell University, Ann Martin, who runs the “Curious? Ask an Astronomer” Web site, says people are scared.

“It’s too bad that we’re getting e-mails from fourth-graders who are saying that they’re too young to die,” Martin said. “We had a mother of two young children who was afraid she wouldn’t live to see them grow up.”

Chile Pixtun, a Guatemalan, says the doomsday theories spring from Western, not Mayan ideas.