Over the last few months, I have been glued to the History Channel on Wednesday nights watching their series The Nostradamus Effect, depicting the intricate web of (supposedly) corroborating prophecies from multiple sources throughout history. While entertaining and informative, it has offered little actual predictive value in its own right, yet has done a great job of exploring the various predictions and those making them. The series does a good job of exploring the ambiguity of the question - highlighting the multiple, often contradictory predictions. Thus, it merely accentuates the lack of answers to the biggest question of all - what will we see when...
I have posted this same question 'what will we see when...' on several blog sites with varying results. I have also spent myriad hours on the web researching various sites and theories, and have simply asked a lot of people online and in person, what they think will happen. In short, nobody knows but there are a lot of theories.
Scenarios of 2012 are many and varied. Yet they seem to fall into a number of major categories:
- Natural disaster. This is the biggest, most powerful and probably the most entertaining (unless you are at ground zero) set of predictions. One proponent of this scenario, Richard C. Hoagland, is predicting glogal disaster as a result of some form of hyperdimensional energy shift. [I've been looking for a reference on this. So far, no luck]. Others have predicted pole shifts (physical shift of Earth's rotation, shift of magnetic field, shift of the planetary crust, etc), asteroid impacts, etc. The global disaster scenario is the one in which scientists have weighed in most heavilly on, generally skeptically.
- Human-created disaster: These generaly include nuclear war, coupled with economic collapse or some other massive societal breakdown. If a major cataclysm occurs in conjunction with 2012, I suspect a combination of these is the most likely.
- Sudden climate change - the "Day After Tomorrow" scenario: The biggest advocate for this is probably Whitley Strieber in his book with Art Bell, The Coming global Superstorm, in which he advocates that climate chage will be sudden, catastrophic and unexpected. In short, the result of global warming (whether natural or human-caused) could be an ice age. This may be nearly instantaneous and take society largely by surprise. Other examples of past civilizations collapsing because of climate change appear to be those of Easter Island, the Viking colony on Greenland, and the Mayan civilization in MesoAmerica.
- The arrival of Planet X (Nbiru) passing through our neighborhood raises all kinds of holy heck with our planet. This is a favorite of those who have followed Zacharia Sitchin's work. While it is not particularly compatible with what astronomers tell us of nearby planets (or the lack thereof), it still gives pause for thought.
- Political shift - this could be either gradual or sudden, peaceful or violent. In my view, this is likely, whether there is anything special about 2012 or not. My guess is that at the critical moment, this change could take a sudden, unexpected turn - for better or for worse.
- Global psychic/spiritual transformation: This is my favorite, a scenario in which somehow, the psychic interconnections of newly-awakened human beings reach critical mass. I describe this extensively in my book, The Cosmic Bridge. In a relatively short time some form of expansion occurs of the mass human consciousness. It's not clear to me what the effect of this would be on the individual at that moment. Would it be immediate or would it be gradual? Perhaps this is the core of my whole question - what would we see when...
- The singularity - current events, and the information they generate in the aggregate human communications grid, field consciousness, etc., will reach a mathematical singularity - suddeny going to infinity. What this means, I don't know - perhaps it will tie in to the previous item - consciousness transformation. Or maybe it results in a breakdown in the human communications grid.
- Extraterrestrial contact - This is the best-loved scenario of many UFOlogists. It would assume that the Cosmic Community has concluded that humanity is ready for contact. Whether this takes the form of fleets of UFOs appearing over one or more populated regions of the world, or whether it is more of a bottom-up strategy (as I suggest), it might just be an objective of the Visitor phenomeon. Whether 2012 is a critical milestone, I don't know. However, I suspect that if a 2012 transformation is a distinct event, then contact will tie into it - in some way...
- Disclosure of previously secret UFO-related knowledge, held within the most secretive governmental organizations - most noteably, the USA. What would be the impact of this? It will depend upon the information disclosed, of course. This seems to be a steady course of events throughout the world. Hopefully the USA will join the world in bringing its presumed vast collection of UFOlogical data/evidence into the public light.
- Historical transformation: Currents in history seem to shift in ways that are often not visible at the moment. Like the events at the start of Christianity (in Christian theology, the story of the empty tomb, found by the two Marys) or other similar key moments in history, few if any are aware of them at the key moment. Perhaps none present at some key event on 12/21/2012 would notice that their world had changed. It might take many years for such a change to take hold, yet the change will always be seen as occurring at that key instant.
- Absolutely nothing noticable occurs - In this scenario (the favorite of most skeptics), either nothing will happen at all (maybe there is absolutely nothing to 2012), or the change will not be apparent to the perception of the everyday person (see above). In either case, the morning of 12/23/2012 would dawn like every other morning in modern times.
So, which of these will happen? I certainly don't know, but I doubt the items on this list are mutually exclusive. I also doubt that I have identified all of the possibilities (indeed, the list has continued to grow as I write this article).
In addition, I believe that it is impossible to predict what will actually happen. In the words of one contemporary arch-skeptic, "prediction is difficult, especially about the future." If human thought and consciousness are quantum in nature (which I believe), then there is a random element to human thought and action. Thus, current events in human affairs, become inherently unpredictable. Given this quantum scenario, we can only speak of probabilities of events occurring, rather than events themselves.
Ultimately, I suspect that even with the key date fast approaching - two years or less by the time this article goes to press, the future is not cast in stone. I doubt if I will know until the date actually arrives, what will happen when...
