Countdown to Doomsday

December 21, 2012 is regarded as the end-date of a 5,125-year-long cycle in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, or Mayan Long Count calendar. Some interpretations see this date as the beginning of a new era, others as the end of days. Mayanist scholars contest the significance of the date, saying that the date’s apocalyptic import – “the 2012 phenomenon” – is a pseudo-scientific or paranoid or opportunist fabrication.

Step forward the opportunists.

Doomsday! 2012 Calendar is described by its makers as “irreverent countdown to the Mayan day of destruction” and takes the apocalypse with a pinch of salt, ’50s movies aesthetic and jokes included.

Apocalypse Doomsday Countdown Calendar showcases the illustrative art of Ed Koenders who casts a slighly wryer eye over the end of days (see below).

But one Amazon reviewer is disgruntled with the Apocalypse Calendar for having ten too many days.

“Even though it acknowledges the end of the word on December 21st, 2012, it shows December 22nd and continues through the end of the year,” he rants.

“Even more insulting, it include[s] a mini calendar of January 2013. How false and misleading can you get! How wasteful. Do we have to get ripped off all the way to the end of the world? Anyway, y’all be careful buying your 2012 calendars because most of them make this same mistake.”