The Little Book of the End of the World (26 page)

However, Sitchin’s 2007 book,
The End of Days
, suggested that Nibiru would not cross paths with Earth’s orbit until the year
AD
2900, thus distancing himself and his theories from the far more immediate Planet X.

2017: THE SWORD OF GOD BROTHERHOOD

After the not-at-all-near-miss of 2012, many news sources reported that the date for the Apocalypse had been revised to 1 January 2017. Rumours were that this date had been revealed to the mysterious Sword of God Brotherhood by the Angel Gabriel himself.

Now comes the tricky part: there are no reputable sources proving the existence of the Sword of God Brotherhood, or even where these reports of 2017 came from.

Some sources suggest that this organisation is an offshoot of The Covenant, The Sword and the Arm of the Lord, a survivalist movement shut down in the 1980s, and there is a striking similarity in the names of both organisations but, beyond that, the Sword of God Brotherhood remains an enigma.

2035: ALIEN ANGELS

Nibiru and Planet X are not the only potential Apocalypses to face us that involve extraterrestrials: the UFO religion Raëlism suggests that a second coming will take place in 2035, but that this will not be a coming of gods but rather a race of aliens called Elohim.

The Elohim are somewhat like angels and Raëlians are quick to point out that they should not be treated as gods: rather, they will return to welcome humanity into the wider universal community. The Elohim have already made their presence and mission known to various prophets – namely the religious leaders of the last few thousand years.

The arrival of the Elohim will mark a significant shift in civilisation: perhaps it won’t be the End of the World, but it will be the end of the world as we know it.

2050: TECHNOLOGICAL SINGULARITY

While no specific date is given for humanity to achieve technological singularity, most futurists and writers agree that this is likely to occur in the middle of the twenty-first century, and various parts of the entertainment media have jumped on that bandwagon.

This isn’t just some random date: these writers have looked at the developments of technology over the last few decades and traced its potential growth and progress into the future.

Put very simply, technological singularity is the ultimate
Terminator
scenario, but movie fans will be disappointed to hear that it hopefully doesn’t involve time travel or a naked Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Instead, singularity is the creation of a computerised intelligence that exceeds that of humanity. While the aforementioned
Terminator
implies that this technology might turn on humanity, writers suggest that technological singularity will simply trigger a shift in society that will significantly change civilisation. Unfortunately, there are no real predictions as to just what we’ll do when we’re armed with hyper-intelligent computers.

2100: MALTHUSIAN CATASTROPHE

In 1798, economist and cleric Thomas Malthus wrote that the Earth was having difficulty keeping up with population demands. Malthus foresaw a time when the planet would no longer be able to provide for its substantial human population, and throughout the twentieth century it looked as if this Malthusian Catastrophe was imminent, with the population expected to reach 8 billion in the early twenty-first century.

However, these concerns appear to be somewhat unfounded, as countries around the world gradually go through a ‘demographic transition’, finding a balance between high and low birth rates, quality and length of life and access to contraception.

As population levels stabilise, some economists expect that they will actually start to decline before humanity reaches a size where it is too large to support itself. Whether the planet’s natural resources continue to support us that long remains to be seen.

600 MILLION – 4.5 BILLION: SOLAR DEATH

The sun is currently about halfway through its life cycle, and still capable of supporting life on this planet for another couple of million years. That’s certainly long enough for you and your family to survive for the next couple of generations.

But as with all balls of flaming chemicals, there’s a chance it will turn on us. And that time is likely to come in around 600 million years.

As this time approaches, the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere will change dramatically – it’s changing right now, but in subtle ways that probably won’t affect us during our lifetimes. Eventually, the Earth’s atmosphere will contain too much carbon dioxide to effectively support plant life, that important thing at the very bottom of the food chain, and we could end up going the same way as the dinosaurs.

After a further billion years, the surface temperature of the Earth will have increased significantly to affect the oceans, leading approximately half of the world’s water to evaporate into the atmosphere and turning the planet’s surface into a dry, desert wasteland.

By 8 billion years’ time, the sun will have expanded and probably swallowed Mercury and Venus, with Earth next in the firing line. There are different theories as to how badly Earth will be affected by this: some physicists and astronomers suggest that the Earth will be just outside of the sun’s gravitational pull and will survive in some form, while others reckon that the Earth will be swallowed just like the other planets.

Regardless of the planet’s fate, the best-case scenario is that the surface will be reduced to seas of molten lava. But we can draw some comfort in knowing that, by this period, all life will be long extinct

3 BILLION YEARS: GALACTIC COLLISION

Earth, the solar system and most of the stars that we look at each night currently exist in the Milky Way galaxy, with our nearest neighbour being the Andromeda galaxy. Scientists have suspected that both galaxies are drawing together and will eventually merge: in 2012, after years of studying both galaxies’ interactions through the Hubble telescope, we were finally given proof.

The Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxies are moving closer together at a rate of approximately 120km a second. In about 3 billion years, the two galaxies will collide and merge into a super-galaxy.

There are no clear theories on just how this will affect a planet as small as Earth, especially since we’ll all be long-dead by then anyway. But it’s likely that any galactic collision will massively affect gravity throughout both galaxies, and therefore the placement of the sun and any of its remaining surrounding planets.

10 TRILLION YEARS: THE BIG FREEZE AND THE BIG CRUNCH

There are currently two different theories about the ultimate fate of the universe, and both depend on what will happen as the universe continues to expand.

If there is no force to resist the ongoing expansion, the universe will continue to expand unhindered and, in around 10 trillion years’ time, the fundamentals of the universe will have started to decay as they move so far apart that they can no longer interact: matter and gravity will fail until the universe gets progressively emptier.

However, if there is an external force operating on our universe, or if the conditions are just right, the universe could start to contract, pushing all remaining matter closer together, and significantly increasing all of the gravitational forces at work. As matter is forced together, multiple black holes will form, which will then compress into a massive black hole. Again, if the conditions are right, this could trigger a massive build-up of energy, causing another Big Bang and resulting in a reboot of the universe.

Perhaps the world itself could be resurrected from the dead and survive another day, before the next universe’s version of Earth and its inhabitants go through it all over again.

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First published in 2014

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© Ken Mooney, 2014

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