Have an impressionable youngster in your home? A tween? A teen that has taken an interest in the Mayan calendar doomsday prophecies? With all the talk about the end of the world as we know it, a possible armageddon, or some apocalyptic event occurring on December 21, more and more information about the coming of the end is taking over the media, a lot of it due to various theories and myths that coincide with the end of the Maya calendar. One NASA scientist has become increasingly alarmed that the information is affecting impressionable minds, that all the talk of gloom and doom could be setting up true doomsdays on individual levels.

“I think it was about 4 years ago, early in 2008, I started getting 5 questions a day about 2012, and now it has increased,” David Morrison of the NASA Astrobiology Institute told ABCNews.com. “The most common question is, ‘Will the world end on December 21, 2012?’ I find that strange because the idea of the world ending is absurd. Do they really think, ‘The world is ending, but if I build a bomb shelter in my back yard, I’ll survive’?”

Although the astrobiologist admitted that most of the specific questions revolve around the existence of the planet Nibiru, a hidden planet theorized by Zecharia Sitchin that will return in its long elliptical orbit around the Sun to pass by the Earth sometime in the future (which is often conflated with Nancy Lieder’s Planet X collision/polar shift nonsense that was supposed to occur in 2003, didn’t, and was moved to 2012), he finds some messages from young enquirers that disturb him.

“I get 1-2 a month from a person who self-identifies as 11-12 years old, who is contemplating suicide,” Morrison said. “It happens often enough to disturb me … to hear that children are considering ending their lives.”

Much of it has to do with the Maya calendar, which has been translated to show that its last date is December 21, 2012. Add in religious overtones, the second coming of Christ, other end-times philosophies and religions, global warming, fears of financial collapses, world-wrecking war scenarios, plague and/or biological warfare catastrophes, EMP bursts from the Sun, pseudoscientific ideas about polar shifts, galactic alignment theories, and many other ideas and theories (used singly or in various combinations) and you have a lot of doomsday talk.

The problem is: Most of it is scientifically unsound, mischaracterized theories, and/or plain and simple modern mythology. Like Sitchin’s Nibiru, which he claims in his books on the subject to have derived from the Sumerian cuneiform tablets. Sitchin is credited with being one of the founders of the ancient alien theory that extraterrestrials once dwelt on or colonized Earth and/or aided humanity in its development.

The belief that the Maya calendar is a harbinger of doom is also a modern myth. The calendar, like most calendars, has an end date. The next day, a new calendar is needed to mark off the next period of time. It does not in any way indicate that time is actually coming to an end. In fact, as was explained nearly a year ago in an article at LiveScience, 2012 is just another year.

“It’s purely a fantasy,” the NASA scientist told ABC News. “It amazes me you can get so much … I sense that some of these people are into the conspiracy issues.”

Morrison once received a letter from a middle school teacher worried about a family who believed the end was coming on Dec. 21. The parents planned to kill their two children and themselves.

Most contacts are through emails, so Morrison attempts to assuage the fears of those who write to him through the simple conduit at hand. But, as he readily acknowledges, he’s not a psychiatrist.

NASA provided a video debunking several of the doomsday and apocalypse scenarios earlier this year.

The crux of the matter is this: You cannot stop people from believing what they want to believe or keep them from channeling certain information into reinforcing positions that result in unsubstantiated and/or non-empirically grounded theories or ideas. Hopefully, Morrison and NASA and others not caught up in all the doomsday drama (as factual reality) can forestall the delusional, the believers, and especially the young and impressionistic long enough to at least get to December 22. Some will certainly only shift gears and recalibrate another doomsday. The 11- and 12-year-olds will have time to rethink the end of time and a myriad other things. But at least they will be around to do the recalculations and the rethinking.

Article source: http://www.examiner.com/article/nasa-scientist-warns-doomsday-talk-and-fears-could-endanger-young-people