Dear Doomsayers, I’m sorry I ever doubted you.

If indeed the world ends on December 21^st  this will be my last post, so I apologise unreservedly to all those who warned us this day would come. To them I say; I’m sorry. I thought you were frauds and idiots. So let me declare publicly: you were right and I was wrong.

But please understand; Everyone who has preached Apocalypse has ALWAYS BEEN WRONG while the scholars and experts who dismissed them as cranks have ALWAYS BEEN RIGHT. Can you blame me for seeing a pattern here?

Not one of the dozens of claims made in my lifetime turned out to be true. The Moonies predicted The End in the year 2000 and three other sects, five ancient texts, a dozen psychics and most of the world’s computer programmers (Y2K) agreed with them. And yet, nothing. Remember all the comets that signalled the end? In 2011 Comet Elenin was going to deliver the deathblow that Comets Hale-Bopp, Halley and Kohoutek were supposed to in 1997, 1986 and 1973. Remember all those asteroids, rogue planets and axial shifts that were going to kill us… but didn’t?

Of course, this Apocalypse business has been going on for a very, very long time. The Romans expected it in 634BCE and Christians have geared up for it on every major anniversary of The Crucifixion, with particular fervour in the years 100, 500 and 1000, that last date coming from the Pope himself. And guess what? Wrong. Every. Single. Time.

When the Large Hadron Collider powered up on March 30, 2010, people in tin-foil hats warned it would swallow the Earth. The scientists said they were wrong. The scientists were right.

Jehovah’s Witnesses had The Rapture figured for 1975, but had to bump it back to 1984… and then 1999. Other religious groups picked up the idea, with their best guesses being 2000, 2001, 2006, 2007, 2010 and 2011. One more guess and they would have been on the money.

And who’d have thought the Mayans would be the ones to get it right? After all, weren’t they ones who completely failed to foresee the collapse of their own civilization?

I can only imagine how all those doomsayers will feel when the moment comes. Will they enjoy a momentary thrill of vindication or will they feel like The Boy Who Cried Apocalypse, frustrated that millennia of false endings had lead people to miss the Real One?

Unless of course, they’re wrong again, in which case I invite them to do as I have done here: to issue a full retraction and apology, promising never to fall for and/or spread this kind of nonsense ever again.

So whether it’s them or me, I guess by December 22^nd someone should be feeling pretty stupid.