For more than a month, Russians around the country have been buying up candles and matches, salt and torches in an effort to outsmart the apocalypse some believe will come when the Mayan calendar runs out on Friday.
In the coalmining town of Novokuznetsk, shelves nearly emptied of salt stocks last month as the city's residents prepared to ride through the end of the world. "60 tonnes were bought in one week," Yelena Zuyeva, a city official, said last week in comments carried on the local administration's website. "Today all trade companies are working and are ready for any level for consumer activity."
Online forums have been buzzing with people exchanging tips on what to eat after the entire human population is wiped out on Friday. "If I'm not mistaken, Russia makes all sorts of dehydrated products that are rich in all kinds of vitamins," a user named Yelena Portnenkova wrote on a forum called "How to live? What to eat?" on VKontakte, the Russian version of Facebook. "Yet filling a garage with stocks of food is not just pointless, but dangerous. If the apocalypse comes, then crowds of hungry, angry, terrified and horrified people will sweep into your garage just because they suspect they might find something edible."
Government officials have been called upon to calm fears. Vladimir Puchkov, Russia's emergency situations minister, urged Russians to call his ministry's hotline if they had any fears. His deputy, Sergei Anikeyev, added: "We don't believe in the 'end of the world' fable," adding hastily: "But we're ready to help people with any emergency situation."
With the end of the world just days away, Russians have moved from buying stocks to thinking long and hard about where to be when the lights go off. In Moscow, an underground bunker built during the second world war for the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin has offered its services: "We invite you to survive the apocalypse on 21 December in Bunker-42 on Taganka at 65 metres underground!" a note written in ominous red on its website cheerily reads.
Wow, and here I thought Americans had more than their fair share of undereducated morons.
You know you would think with so MANY predictions of an apocalypse or destruction of the earth, which NEVER pan out, that people would sort of take the hint that these predictions are simply a bunch of poppycock.
Oh well, I guess it gives the little brains among us something to do with their spare time.
However perhaps we could help out our Russian brothers and sisters by proving them with a dose of Neil deGrassee Tyson.
Frankly, I'd say the Russians are more civilized than we are: they stockpile salt, which at least useful for perserving food, and maybe helping someone else. Survivalist Americans stockpile guns, so if they find someone with food, they can just kill him for it. Yeah, we are certainly 'exceptional.' Exceptionally greedy, paranoid, and stupid.
ReplyDeleteI suspect that only a small minority of the Russian population is taking this nonsense at all seriously (in a country of 148 million, even a small minority can do things like buying up tons of salt, assuming that story is even true) and that the media are hyping it the way ours did with Harold Camping and his herd of nutjobs. On the whole the Russians seem to be a more rational people than we are -- the rate of church attendance is among the lowest in the nominally-Christian world, for example.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, what kind of idiot thinks that things like salt and candles would do them any good if the world came to an end?
like he said - these folks didn't take science classes so a planet knocked off its orbital axis is apparently one that is still livable but dark and in need of preservation.
DeleteCalling all rational thinkers....take two minutes to participate in the Atheist Census because numbers do matter!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.atheistcensus.com/
@ Anon 6:39, I call myself a Rationalist first and foremost, but all the other labels work as well.
DeleteThanks for the link.
cool! Thanks!
DeleteI passed it on also too
I am counted now as well. Thanks for the link.
DeleteI saw an ecard that said if you made it to the 22nd, you should run outside and yell, "we made it! , The Doctor did it. He saved us!". (Dr. Who, i e.)
ReplyDeleteSo Gryph, you're saying I should go ahead and clean my house? ;)
ReplyDeleteDrat!
Great idea. If that's the plan then I'm not going to do laundry until Saturday, just in case.
DeleteYou know that the baggers that actually believe that Friday, Dec 21st is the end of civilization were in front all of the lines to shop at 5:00 am on Black Friday to get all of the great money-saving deals. Idiots.
My house really needs cleaning but I am going to open windows on 12/21 so that when the earth spins off it's axis the dirt and dust will just be sucked outside.
DeleteI should have thought of this two weeks ago before I paid the housekeeper.
Courtesy of Juanita Jean -
ReplyDeletehttp://juanitajean.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/44649_4361381625669_896875310_n.jpg
LOL Thanks for that.
DeleteWhat, pray tell, does salt do?
ReplyDeleteThese people are retarded.
I hope the world does end actually. How much stupidity can the cosmos take?
Preserves food smarty pants :)
DeleteI happen to use salt all the time for preserves.
No shit it preserves food.
DeleteWhat good does it do if there is no food to preserve? No people to preserve it for?
... but it was ON SALE! How could I pass it up?
DeleteWe love Neil, please let there be more and more young people that grow up to be like him and Carl Sagan....we need them. He is such a class act and a powerful voice on reason.
ReplyDeleteAt this moment I miss the Anchorage Times, which died deservedly. A redeeming memory is the test headline used to measure the count for the screaming second-coming type it used on the front page:
ReplyDeleteWorld to End, Maybe
Think of it, it could actually be used had the Times reinvested in itself and its staff instead of squirreling all its profits away.
There's an incredible spiritual vacuum in Russia after so many years of state-enforced atheism. The Russian people (and those living in outlying countries like Ukraine, Latvia, and so on that were formerly part of the USSR) have a huge amount of spirituality, creativity, and passion that was largely CRUSHED after the Communists killed off so many of them and took control. It's a very "haunted" and special part of the world, too often still demonized by those of us living here in the West.
ReplyDeleteIn a place where there is such incredible yearning for spiritual understanding, for messages of hope, and even for messages of annihilation and destruction, you're going to find people latching on more readily to these end of the world type ideas. Ever spent any time in Kajikstan? The people there have "dead" eyes, the spirit has been totally beaten out of them over the last century. Some of them long for an end to their suffering, for an end of the world type scenario, because it's more attractive than the daily lives they're experiencing.
Anybody on the edges of mental illness, or anybody simply dealing with horrible stress, or anybody who is prone to having an interest in spiritual matters without actually being taught HOW to enter into spiritual energy in a powerful, creative, and grounded way, will often latch on to "End Times" programming and ideology.
The Mayans, who forced the important members of their society to ritualistically give blood each week at their religious services (not that different from drinking Jesus' blood and eating his flesh in Communion) were a bloody, nasty lot. Their calendar predicted the end of THEIR people, and this should be celebrated; their values were nasty and despotic and violent. Good riddance. Let's celebrate! :)
Jennifer aka Media Insider
Jennifer, you are so wrong about the Mayan Calendar and people. Are all Americans "a nasty bloody lot" because our government sends out drones to kill people? You really should do some research. Start with John Major Jenkins.
DeleteJennifer reads like one of those people NdeT was speaking about, not learning enough. In this instance, history.
DeleteYou know, this kind of nonsense makes my blood boil. This whole thing is nothing but trumped-up nonsense by the media and the movie industry, and I lay the blame for all this hysteria at their feet.
ReplyDeleteThe Mayan Calendar ends on Dec 21, 2012. So f**king what? The calendar on my wall ends on Dec 31, 2012! That doesn't mean the end of the world, it just means the end of the year. And the Mayan end date simply means the end of a cycle of time, as the Mayans count time. They have 17 different calendars, by the way. They counted years, days, Venus cycles, precessional and other cycles. All very simple....but nooooooooo! The money-makers had to grab this and lie about it, make movies by misquoting authorities on the subject, scare people, and laugh all the way to the bank. I spent time in the 90s studying all this with a Mayan Daykeeper (keeper of the calendars). I'm sure he's having a fit about all this media hype about now.
Point of logic: What mortal life form could ever expect to survive the destruction of that which keeps it alive?
ReplyDeleteThese "preppers" are lunatics.
Let me see if I understand this: the world may end December 21 so this folks need to stock pile food & salt? Huh?
ReplyDeleteTrying to understand may well drive YOU crazy, also, too! -:)
DeleteBe sure not to throw away that styrofoam cooler and dry ice they ship Omaha Steaks in. Oh shit, I just remembered I'm going to need a ton of charcoal to cook all of these rations I've stored. And a mechanical hand can opener. Or a new scout knife/multi-tool.
DeleteOh those poor people. Stalin killed off the people with the higher IQ's so he could "manage" his people better. This is what happens when you kill off your gene pool. Not too bright and easily pushed.
ReplyDeleteThey also sound like the Tea Party nut cases over here.
Stalin killed off the people with the higher IQ's
DeleteIn USA the RW has set out to destroy public schools and denigrate and destroy higher education. Religion is the opiate of the masses, what better way to control fearful sheep?
Neil is so cool! "...by people who (pause) didn't take enough science in school..."
ReplyDeleteAnd that's the core of the problem, they'll google 2012 and get what they already believe to be true, and are relieved there's so many others who believe the same thing.
I wonder how the Palins are preparing for 12/21/12?
ReplyDeleteI wonder what the Palins are doing to prep for the end of the earth?
ReplyDeleteThey must have a gigantic hoard of arsenal and ammo. Track is in charge. The good lord has probably told them where the safe bunker is and they will hide out.
Delete