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Opinion | Be prepared for the world's end

Alice Ladrick, ladricae@muohio.edu

As we all know, the world is ending in the next few years. Some say it will end in 2012 because of an ancient Aztec calendar that ends in 2012. My personal theory is that it will end in 2013, because well, 13 is an unlucky number and that's a pretty good reason for the world to end, right? Anyway, it's ending, and I've got evidence.

Oppressive governments are being overthrown all over the place! This is the sort of thing that has never happened before, and is surely a sign that the world as we know it is shifting towards its end. Sure, there have been revolutions before, like the American Revolution, which allowed the United States of America to come into existence. And shortly after that there was the French Revolution, which ousted the corrupt and out of touch monarchy. There have also been revolutions in most of both Central and Southern America, as well as almost every country that once fell under the umbrella of European colonialism. We are having our own mini-revolutions in some of our own states right now, like Wisconsin. And boy is it terrifying. Fighting for bargaining rights of union workers is almost exactly the same thing as protesters being shot by their own government for having a dissenting opinion. Exercising your freedom of speech and calling your opponents totalitarian dictators is essentially the same as your opponents actually being totalitarian dictators. It just makes you wonder what our world is coming to. (The answer is: its end.)

Another piece of evidence is the slew of natural disasters that have been happening worldwide. According to MSNBC, "earthquakes, heat waves, floods, volcanoes, super typhoons, blizzards, landslides and droughts killed at least a quarter million people in 2010 — the deadliest year in more than a generation." From earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, flooding and heat waves in Pakistan and Russia, to volcanic eruptions currently occurring all around the "ring of fire," the past year and a half have been full of the world "fighting back" against our destructive practices. Japan is a perfect example of this. The earthquake and subsequent tsunami that hit Japan last week destroyed plants thousands of Japanese citizens. We are antagonizing nature with our anti-eco-friendly ways, just like the dinosaurs did before that big meteor killed them.

Sure, the Earth has cycles and every couple million years the magnetic poles shift and change position. Yes, there have been ice ages and climate changes and moves in tectonic plates since the beginning of Earth's existence. None of them have caused the Earth itself to cease to exist. But that is clearly not what is happening now. The things happening in the world around us right now are obviously only related to our individual lives and how good of people we are. If we continue to be selfish and not eco-friendly, the world will end probably within the next year. Because that's how quickly things change on a global scale. Not over hundreds or thousands or even millions of years, but drastically from one year to the next. Panic is our only option. Forget about planning for the future, or trying to turn around our wasteful ways, we should just panic because it's the end of days. Maybe someone should start building an ark.