Apocalypse Copyright 2020 Shane Rogers Entertainment Midnight Facts for Insomniacs Podcast Transcript (Note: transcript consists of episode outline) In this episode we’ll be diving deep into eschatological beliefs. Not to be confused with scatological beliefs. Both are arguably full of crap but this is ESCHATalogical, or concerning the End Times, Armageddon, Apocalypse, the Rapture, etc. And we will eventually define these terms. I also want to point out that I’m not picking on religious people here. We’re going to be focusing on the mystical and religious doomsday scenarios, but there are plenty of non- religious adherents to the idea of the end times. Witness: doomsday preppers. We’ve talked about this in the past. I’m really fascinated with preppers and the whole apocalyptic ideology. And they are experiencing a huge resurgence right now, with the crashing economy ,riots in the streets, the plague of COVID-19. It feels like the End Times whether you’re religious or not. But let’s start with religion, and an almost universal version of eschatological myth. Possibly the most popular version of an end times scenario is the flood myth. Most cultures have one. Typically, floods are viewed as apocalyptic cleansing events, they don’t actually result in the end of the world but rather the end of the current world and a rebirth. It’s like god shaking an Etch- a-Sketch. Is that the oldest reference we’ve ever made? It’s like God wiping a hard drive. And that’s true of most end time scenarios. They typically signal a new beginning. when it comes to the flood myth, obviously we have Noah in the Bible, but there are also Chinese flood myths, Indian, Greek, Irish, etc. In Norse mythology, which we’re going to return to when we talk about Ragnarok, there’s a great battle between the king of gods—Odin, along with his brothers—against the giant Ymir. Ymir is killed and floods the world with his blood, drowning all of the Giants except one, Bergelmir, who along with his wife survive on a floating vessel (like Noah) and re- populate the world with frost giants. Except that instead of an ark, they floated on a coffin over an ocean of blood. So, less cheerful. And fewer animals. I’d much rather chill on a giant floating zoo with my family, rather than just me and my wife on a bloody coffin. The coffin thing depends on the translation of the old Norse word Luor, which might also refer to a wooden chest or box. I don’t see how that’s much different, a coffin is just a wooden box that you die in, which is the natural result of floating on an ocean of blood. Since we’re on the topic of Norse mythology, let’s get into their actual end-times scenario. Ragnarok. norse mythology is the mythology of the Vikings, famous for Odin and Thor and the biFrost rainbow bridge, Loki etc. Marvel fans will know all about this stuff... Although obviously a very modified version. Ragnarok is a unique version of the apocalypse. There are very few civilizations that predict that their gods will die, that they will fail, and ultimately be destroyed. It’s a very fatalistic outlook. Harsh. Like, even the Mayan version of the end of the world is really just the end of humanity, the gods still survive. And the Christian version of Armageddon includes the eventual defeat of Satan, and usually the good guys are raptured away to heaven. Is “raptured” a legit verb? The act of yanking people off the planet. If aliens suck you up with a laser beam, are they rapturing you? “Don’t rapture me, bro.” Ragnarok begins with a mini ice age, three uninterrupted winters worth of blizzards and icy winds. humans will turn on each other in a desperate struggle for survival. It’s like the donner party but on a massive scale...it’s the donner festival, it’s donner lalapalooza. Donnerpalooza. “brother will slay brother, father will slay son, and son will slay father.” so I guess it’s more like thanksgiving. The giant wolves known as Skoll and Hati, who in Norse mythology have been pursuing the sun and the moon since the beginning of time, which is a long time to not get to stretch or take a nap, will finally catch their prey. And I feel like that’s kind of a silver lining, like how sad is it that they’ve been pursuing the sun and moon forever...it’s like when you hang a carrot from a stick and dangle it in front of a horse. Like yeah it works but you’re a dick unless you give the horse that carrot. I’m just saying let the wolf eat the sun. He’d have some serious indigestion. “Hati” btw translates to “one who hates.” That wolf is literally a hater. Also, another wolf, the giant Fenrir, snaps his chains and gets free. Again, I’m kind of on Team Wolf here. One has been chained up for eternity, the other two haven’t had a meal in millennia, they can’t catch a break. Anyway the stars also disappear so it’s getting pretty gloomy. Yggdrasil (igg-drizzle) the tree that rises through the nine worlds and binds everything together, it shakes, and that’s like a million Loma prietas. Very few of our listeners will get that reference. Tectonic chaos. The giant serpent jormagund will rise from the sea and go full Godzilla until Thor shows up and battles him to their mutual destruction. This snake is supposed to be the cause of earthquakes...I would have thought that would be the shaking of the universal tree...like a mild wind could cause a ten-point-oh, but hey, they didn’t ask me. I expect my magical, mythological explanations to have some logic. Like, ok the world is on the back of a turtle and that’s cool but like is this a desert turtle because water-turtle-shells are slippery AF. So the contortions of the serpent will shake lose a massive ship called Naglfar (which translates to “nail ship”) from its moorings and it will drift away. Can you guess why this is called a nail ship? Because it’s made of the fingernails and toenails of corpses. Loki will become the ship’s captain, leading an army of giants. This is good stuff. Super creative. Odin will fight fenrir, and he will fight valiantly, and valiantly he will get his ass handed to him and be swallowed. Thor slays the serpent but is covered in so much venom that he drops dead as the world sinks into the sea, leaving nothing but a void. Not sure how that works, because we’ve covered this...a void is empty. It can’t include an ocean. But whatever. Some versions end there, but some include A man and a woman, Lif and Lifthrasir (Old Norse Líf and Lífþrasir, “Life” and “Striving after Life”) who survived by hiding in a specific woods, which somehow floated on top of the ocean...? Anyway these two incredibly apparently very selfish people who didn’t tell anyone else about their hiding place will venture out into the freezing cold world and repopulate the void...it doesn’t have to make sense. Anyway, they will breed and there will be rampant incest, brothers and sisters and lots of cousin- fucking, and the world will be populated by inbred idiots. Maybe this DID happen. The Mayans The Mayans used what is called a long-count calendar, which counts each day dating back to the supposed creation of the world. Similar to how Christians used the life of Jesus as a marker for BC and AD. Except the Mayans couldn’t have a BC because there was nothing before the creation of the world. It would be like if we counted dates starting with the creation of the earth in genesis, and we’d all be living circa the year 6000. Btw the Mayan creation date measured by our calendar would have been august 11, 3114 BC. Which is very specific. The Bible doesn’t get into details. I wish it would. It would be so cool if genesis was like, in the beginning god created the heaven and the earth. And lo, it was April 4th, at 3:17pm. It was a nice day in the void. The Mayans utilized the concept of cycles, one type of which is referred to by scholars as a b’ak’tun. A tun was about a year (360 days); 394 years made a b’ak’tun. According to Mayan legend, the gods actually created three failed worlds before the current one. Nobody’s perfect. Third time is the charm. Sometimes you make a crappy world and you have to wipe it clean and start from scratch. That’s what floods are for, right? So the previous world, the one before ours, lasted 13 b’ak’tuns which equates to 5,225 years. If you do the math starting with the very specific creation date of august 11, 3114 bc, that means the fourth world would potentially end on December 21, 2012. Or so I’m told. I didn’t do the math. I’m not that bored. I have stuff to do. So if you believed that the world was going to end in December 21, 2922, you had to first believe in the Mayan gods. Are there a lot of new age doomsday weirdos who actually worshipped Yaluk and Maximon? Because this is the prerequisite.