Apparently a lot of folks on the interwebs believe the world is going to end come December- Mayan Doomsday/Nibiru/Planet X collision. I’ll very occasionally prance around in my tin hat and rant about a truth obfuscated from the masses, but this ain’t going to be one of those times.
Anyway, I read a blurb in the recent Harper’s about a NASA astrobiologist who’s received thousands of emails from concerned and depressed people (many of them teenagers) convinced that Planet X will obliterate us before the new year. One of them wrote that he had contemplated suicide to deal with the impending dread of 12/31/12.
My question: Have there been documented increases in suicides prior to prognosticated “Doomsdays” in the last hundred years? I am specifically excluding cults suicides like Heaven’s Gate and more curious if there is a spike in individuals killing themselves, convinced the end is nigh.
See here for a little more background.
The Wikipedia entry notes that David Morrison (the astrobiologist) gets “20-25” emails a week about this Planet X and that people ask him if they should kills themselves and their families.
I’ve never seen any evidence that any modern doomsday prediction (i.e. one that can be backed up with statistics about deaths) has had any noticeable effect whatsoever. How would would even tell that there is an effect? The world is a big place and if every single one of those 20-25 a week killed themselves it would be barely a blip. Well, if an extra 1000 people killed themselves in December in the U.S. alone it might stand out, but there are already 3000 suicides a month here.
Will those 1000 people kill themselves? Guaranteed not. Will 10? Maybe. Who can tell what crazy people will do? But doomsday predictions occur literally every year. Remember Harold Camping’s organization, which took out billboards to announce the end of the world in 2011 and got huge media attention? You know what happened then?
There were at least several suicides over the May 21 nonsense last year, so I would expect the same for this year, especially since it has been hyped up far more (I only heard about the May 21 stuff a few months before, while the 2012 stuff has been going on for years). Pretty sure though that we won’t see any mass suicides since most people don’t take these predictions that seriously (of course, a quick look finds more 2012 propaganda than you could ever read).
"One theory is that such precise predictions [for the ‘end of times’] feed the human desire to know the unknown. It could simply be a way of trying to explain the world around us, or to give us hope, says DiTommaso: ‘Within its limitations, apocalypticism is very rational. It’s a world view that explains time, space, and human existence. It’s not science - it’s not universal or repeatable - but it does explain things.’
DiTommaso also says that sociological studies have shown that people who tend to enjoy an apocalyptic world view also seem to be the kinds of people who seek out explanations of the world: ‘They tend to be quite intelligent compared with the general population but they are looking for answers for how life is the way it is, and whether there is a purpose. Envisioning a better time past the evils of the world provides a very powerful way of understanding the world and all its problems.’ Surprising as it may sound, even Isaac Newton spent a great deal of his career trying to decipher the prophesies of Daniel in the book of revelation."
Full article here: http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2011/05/why-do-so-many-people-love-a-d.html
I may be wrong but i was thinking the other day that this whole 2012 business may have shot it’s bolt. If you’d asked me 2 years ago what now would look like, i’d have expected a lot more 2012 stuff in the media, that doesn’t (as far as i can tell) seem to have happened.
Right now i’m expecting some coverage in the run-up to December 21st of the Harold Camping “this is what some people believe” type coverage, and i’m sure the History channels of this world will be rerunning their 3 year old Nostradamus/Mayan/Apocalpse crap as usual.
But overall i’m thinking the whole thing is going to be a damp squib on the pop culture front.
Well, if what happened before/after Harold Camping’s predictions in 2011 is any indication, a few people did in fact commit suicide, but no doubt only a few since otherwise it would have made headlines, plus after all of the recent failed predictions (Wikipedia lists no fewer than 5 in 2012 and 4 in 2011, although only Camping’s and the Mayans’ (purported) predictions were widely publicized), fewer people likely took it that seriously.
And possibly to the contrary, Cognitive Dissonance theory suggests that believers, having had their beliefs blown out of the water, might tend to become even more entrenched in their blown-up beliefs. This theory originated, in fact, in observations of a failed doomsday cult, written up by Leon Festinger in 1956.
(ETA: This isn’t saying that more or fewer people took it seriously. Just that those who originally took it seriously, tended to subsequently take it even more seriously.)