There are scattered reports of unusual behavior from across Russia’s nine time zones. Inmates in a women’s prison near the Chinese border are said to have experienced a “collective mass psychosis” so intense that their wardens summoned a priest to calm them. In a factory town east of Moscow, panicked citizens stripped shelves of matches, kerosene, sugar and candles. A huge Mayan-style archway is being built — out of ice — on Karl Marx Street in Chelyabinsk in the south. For those not schooled in New Age prophecy, there are rumors the world will end on Dec. 21, 2012, when a 5,125-year cycle known as the Long Count in the Mayan calendar supposedly comes to a close. Russia, a nation with a penchant for mystical thinking, has taken notice.
Not to worry, however. The director of the Russian Government’s Ministry of Emergency Situations was quoted as saying that he had “‘methods of monitoring what is occurring on the planet Earth,’” and that he could state with confidence that the world was not going to end in December. But this is the head of Russia’s equivalent of FEMA. Should we believe him?
The Patriarch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has taken a more ambiguous position. He issued a statement “assuring the faithful that ‘doomsday is sure to come’, but that it will be provoked by the moral decline of mankind, not the ‘so-called parade of planets or the end of the Mayan calendar.’” Thanks for the reassurance, Patriarch.
Of course, the French too are acting up: “In France, the authorities plan to bar access to
Bugarach Mountain in the south to keep out a flood of visitors who believe it is a sacred place that will protect a lucky few from the end of the world.” It may or may not be significant that Bugarach Mountain is not far from
Montsegur, the home of the
Cathars, who in 1243-44 were annihilated by the Catholic Church.
The story gets really interesting with reports coming out of Ulaan-Ude, in Buryatia, part of Russia just north of Mongolia (I visited Ulaan-Ude many times when I was living in Irkutsk, on the other side of Lake Baikal):
In Ulan-Ude [sic], the capital of the Buryatia region, citizens have reportedly been hoarding food and candles to survive a period without light, following instructions from a Tibetan Monk Called The Oracle Of Shambhala, who has been described on some Russian Television Broadcasts.
I have not, however, heard anything here in Mongolia about this new Oracle of Shambhala apparently living near
Mount Kailash in Tibet, nor have I heard about any hoarding. Of course there is still nineteen days to go . . . I myself am not worried. I have
Stockpiled Fifteen Kilos Of Puerh Tea and am thus prepared for any eventuality.