Not the End of the World

 Until I started reading (mostly for research, but I'm enjoying it) Apocalypse: A History of the End of Time by John Michael Greer, I had forgotten that the world was supposed to end in a mighty cosmic collision on the 21st of December, 2012. This could apparently be inferred from the ever reliable Mayan calendar (or one reading of one version thereof – these matters are never simple), and the event was confidently expected by various New Age crackpots, who descended in their thousands on the blameless village of Bugarach in the Aude department of France, much to the annoyance of the locals. The New Agers believed that the nearby peak, the Pic du Bugarach, contained a kind of UFO hangar, from which, at the appointed time, aliens would emerge in their spaceships and rescue all bystanders, even as the world fell into ruin around them.
 By the time the apocalyptic hour arrived, the gendarmerie had blocked access to the peak, leaving only a handful of believers, a small army of international journalists and a few pranksters in tinfoil hats in attendance. Of course nothing happened, but, had the world ended on time, the sole survivors would have been journalists, New Age nutjobs and disgruntled French villagers – who would have been even more disgruntled at being whisked off in an alien spacecraft. Not the ideal cross-section of humanity.