Reasons to be cheerful in 2012: it's not the end of the world. Again

Things may be tough in 2012, but it won't be the end of the world. I can't stress this highly enough.

Every year has its doomsday predictions. Only last year, Christian radio host and eschatological alarmist Harold Camping picked 21 May as the date of the Rapture. "Beyond the shadow of a doubt," he said. When the end of the world failed to conform to his itinerary, Camping rejigged his calculations and shifted his prediction to 21 October. When that day also came and went, even Camping had to accept that the continued existence of the world was down to something other than his failure to carry the 1.

For 2012, at least, the doomsayers appear to have settled on a single date: 21 December. The reasons cited for fixing this as the End of Days are varied. It marks, some say, the end of the Mayan "long count" calendar, and therefore Armageddon. It is also claimed that it's the date when an astronomically unprecedented "galactic alignment" will take place, causing celestial havoc.

Other folk predict a catastrophic reversal of the planet's magnetic field. One school of thought holds that a mysterious planet called Nibiru will collide with the Earth round or about the 21st. Even Nostradamus has weighed in. People who want the world to end tend to see these distinct scenarios as corroborating, rather than contradicting, each other. With all this apocalyptic weight behind it, 21 December has become a popular revised date for those whose previous predictions failed to come to pass. In millenarian circles at least, it's going to be a big day.

Few things bring me more joy than the non-arrival of an adverse outcome for which I have failed to prepare. By virtue of doing nothing, I seem wise. I rode out the Y2K scare without an AA battery or box of matches in the house. I did nothing to protect my family from bird flu. I routinely go on long car journeys without bottled water, blankets or a knife with which to cut off my own arm. Doomsday predictions are, of course, easy to defy, and hard to prepare for in any case. But they do provide an annual reminder of the general resilience of the universe. So that's what I'm looking forward to in 2012: the world not coming to an end. Again.