There are only 17 shopping days remaining before Christmas and, if interpretations of an ancient Mesoamerican calendar are correct about a pending apocalypse scheduled for this month, there are plenty of worse gifts you could pick up for a loved one than a copy of Bob Robertsons new book: Mayan Horror: How to Survive the End of the World in 2012.
Robertson, co-creator of the long-running CBC radio and TV comedy series Double Exposure with his wife Linda Cullen, has penned a decidedly tongue-in-cheek guidebook on what to do after the world comes screeching to a halt.
He said he wrote the book, published by Vancouver's Anvil Press, out of growing frustration with the widespread attention being paid to doomsday prophecies simply because the Mesoamerican Long Count Calendar, which measured time by 144,000 day units called the b'ak'tun, is set to conclude on Dec. 21 (at 3:11 a.m. local time, in case youre wondering).
I was just tired of all these various nutbars predicting the world would end on such and such a date, Robertson told the Courier. First it was Y2K and then we had Pastor [Harold] Camping last year who announced the world would end not once but twice.
While serious scholars note the Mayan calendar does not in fact predict any sort of world-ending disaster, many people believe otherwise. Robertson said he realized it was more than the lunatic fringe who were buying into the notion the end is nigh after reading an article online about Vancouver-born comedian Seth Rogen.
He was talking about a recent meeting he had with George Lucas, they were talking about making a movie together or something, and somehow in the middle of the discussion dates came up. George Lucas started going on about the world ending when the Mayan calendar stops in December 2012, and he eventually realized Lucas wasn't kidding. I thought, well, if like George Lucas is sucked in by this, there must be a goodly number of other people out there who are buying this, too.
Mayan Horror covers a variety of worst-case scenarios and how best to deal with them. Since nobody knows how the world will end specifically, Robertson offers a variety of scenarios ranging from earthquakes to floods, nuclear war, polar shifts and plagues of frogs. It also offers tips on launching new businesses after the apocalypse, how to create new forms of government, and the 10 safest places in Canada to be when things get ugly.
The best and closest spot for Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»residents, according to Robertson, is at the Roundhouse Lodge on Whistler Mountain.
If you want to escape the carnage on the ground or the seas and have a spectacular view of the apocalypse, then you'll want to be 6,069 feet above ground. Besides being safe and sound on top of a magnificent pile of metamorphic rock, the Roundhouse cafeteria is renowned for its steamed dumplings in a light miso broth. You could do a lot worse while the planet is exploding.
Mayan Horror: How to Survive the End of the World in 2012 is available (for now at least) at most major bookstores, as well as online at anvilpress.com.
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