With the hysteria about 'Doomsday' starting to heat up, NASA decided to take some time to put young teenagers and children at rest regarding the upcoming date during which it is all supposed to end: December 21, 2012.
On Monday, a post was put up on USA.gov to reassure the younger audience that there was no impending danger on December 21, the date the mainstream media is pitching as doomsday.
The article was entitled "Scary Rumors about World Ending in 2012 Are Just Rumors" and it explicitly tells the reader that "The world will not end on December 21, 2012, or any day in 2012."
It also notes that NASA has received thousands of letters from children and teens concerned about the end of the world. NASA even devoted a page to debunking those rumors and brought attention to past rumors. "The old mystery-planet-collision rumor year was 2003, but when 2004 arrived safely, the rumors changed to 2012. So what end-of-the-world year will the rumor mill make up next?" says the post.
One of the main reasons that NASA and the government have chosen to send the message to the young is due to apparent suicidal thoughts that have arisen from doomsday anxiety.
"At least a once a week I get a message from a young person - as young as 11 - who says they are ill and/or contemplating suicide because of the coming doomsday," NASA astrobiologist David Morrison states in the post.
The fears initiated over doomsday 2012 were the result of misreading of the Mayan Caldender. On the 21st of November, the winter solstice, one of the Mayan calendar cycles known as the 13th b'ak'tun ends. As a result, a number of people began to propagate the rumor that this calendar indicated the end of the world.
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