Countdown To Doom Minus 18

December 21, 2012 or 12-21-12 will mark the end-date of a 5125-year-long cycle in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar. Positive New Agers are expecting a transition to the new era of enlightenment, while the fundamentalist are predicting a doomsday collision with an unseen planet called Nibiru drawn to our Earth by the Grand Planet Alignment. This gloomy forecast was based on Mayan scholar Michael Coe writing in his 1966 book THE MAYA, "there is a suggestion ... that Armageddon would overtake the degenerate peoples of the world and all creation on the final day of the 13th [b'ak'tun]. Thus ... our present universe be annihilated in December 2012, when the Great Cycle of the Long Count reaches completion." Annihilation? Only 18 days away? NASA and none of the other space agencies have announced impending doom, although that silence may be keeping with the classic line in disaster movie by the leader of the Free World, "We don't want the people to panic." Panic. The world is in a throes of a major economic depression. Wars are fought across the globe. Weather patterns are shifting to challenge the coastal populations with floods and the interiors with drought. But those in control of the world are afraid of panic. If we are not panicking now, we never will, then again I favor the renewal of the world spirit rather than a planet-ending calamity. Peace will rule the world.