David Morrison is pissed. According to British newspaper, The Independent, Dr. Morrison, a respected astronomer in NASA’s Astrobiology Institute, admitted to receiving up to 1,000 enquiries and e-mails concerning the end of the world.

The fear epidemic surrounding these e-mails was a direct reaction to Columbia Pictures’ marketing campaign for their newest disaster blockbuster, 2012, which was released Nov. 13th.

Columbia’s marketing campaign consisted of the creation of a false organization, the Institute for Human Continuity, and manufacturing their product through the Internet. The Institute for Human Continuity, as the studio presents it, is supposedly an international human welfare organization that has collected distinguished scientists, business hotshots and government officials over the span of three decades to devise a plan to save the human race, when the world will end in 2012, as a result of the undiscovered planet Nibiru colliding into Earth.

“They’ve created a completely fake scientific Web site, but obviously some people are treating it seriously,” said an agitated Morrison.

Morrison even mentions several instances where teenagers confessed suicide desires in response to the 2012 phenomenon. In Columbia’s defense, Publicity Director for Sony Pictures Vikki Luya claims that the studio’s marketing attempts were nothing more than a way to entertain the masses and attract innocent attention to the motion picture.

“It is very clear that this site is connected to a fictional movie,” Luya said. “This can readily be seen in the logos on the site … the user generated videos, as well as the numerous online references to this marketing campaign.”

The Independent noted only a small Sony Pictures copyright notice and studio home Web site link were the only indications of a fiction website.

The rest of the world, audiences unaffected by Columbia’s marketing campaign, shares a skeptical and indifferent opinion about the chaotic controversy.

“It’s very much like the Y2K scare. In my opinion, it’s all bunk,” shared Rodney Steward, a visiting professor of History at Auburn University.

Auburn students also share a similar opinion. Catherine Babin, a freshman in anthropology, isn’t shaken at all about the controversy, in fact she expected it.
“[It’s] the way the industry has to be in order to make money,” Babin said. “They always pick up stuff that people are scared of at the moment, and the fears always change with time.”

The movie-based idea of a 2012 Armageddon is a combination of several doomsday theories, literary and urban myths, human ignorance, and according to Michael Finley’s Web site essay “The Correlation Question” and Dartmouth University’s Vincent Malmstrom’s essay “The Astronomical Insignificance of 13.0.0.0.0,” the controversy of the imminent completion of the ancient Mayan Long Count Calendar, reaching its final, 13th baktun (1 baktun=144,000 days) on Dec. 21, 2012.

Dr. Morrison pointed out that the planet Nibiru theory goes back to ancient Sumerian astrology predictions mixed with controversy theories of 2012 planetary collisions, the most interesting of which is led by Nancy Lieder, founder of alien welfare Web site ZetaTalk. On her website, Lieder claims to perceive intuitional messages from alien species in the Zeta Reticular star system, via an implant she says was inserted in her brain during childhood, and was chosen to warn mankind that a planetary object, called Nibiru, would sweep through our solar system, causing a fatal polar shift on Earth's axis. Other doomsday theories include geomagnetic reversal (reversal of the planet's magnetic poles), black hole alignment (havoc on earth caused by gravitational effect between the Sun and the gargantuan black hole located at the center of the Milky Way), and the Wet Bot Project, created by George Ure, which is a series of automated software applications that searches the internet for key words and uses the discovered patterns to predict human events, like terrorist attacks, and natural disasters.

All of these doomsday theories, which have been disproved by scientific evidence, are “a very western, Christian [concept],” says Archaeologist Guillermo Bernal of Mexico’s National Autonomous University.

Guatemalan elder Apolinario Chile Pixtun couldn’t agree more. According to The Associated Press, Pixtun describes the concept of the apocalypse coinciding with the Mayan calendar as “western, not Mayan ideas.” Most current Mayans, research writers, archaeologists, and astronomers credit the end of the Mayan calendar not as the end of human civilization, but as a period of revolution in spiritual attitudes.

John Major Jenkins, research writer best known for his works on the Mayan calendar, described the upcoming emergence of the 13th baktun “as a time of transformation and renewal.” Pixtun and various other Mayan tribes have expressed their exhausting contempt for such theories and the theorists who go out of their way to pursue such pseudoscientific ideas.

Although most Mayans agree that 2012 holds a significant presence, they have more pressing worries, as Joe Huchim, a Mayan archaeologist states.

“If I went to some Mayan- speaking communities and asked people what it is going to happen in 2012, they wouldn’t have any idea,” he said. “That the world is going to end?We have real concerns these days, like rain.”