Years ago – way back in the wild and wooly days of the late 20th Century – there was a wonderful thing called Y2K. You remember Y2K, don’t you? All of our computers were going to crash on January 1, 2000, civilization would fall, and small city-states would emerge from the rubble of a once great human empire.

Why was it so wonderful, you ask?

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Well, lots of money changed hands in those exciting days. People were buying Y2K survival guides (which are still pretty useful in any natural disaster, actually), victuals (baked beans and bottled water?), and land – lots and lots of land.

People had to go somewhere to regroup, to hide out, or to build the next human empire with their followers. A lot of them came to Arkansas. In fact, infamous Christian Reconstructionist Gary North was said to have convinced a number of his wacky followers to buy land in Northwest Arkansas, to help build a society based on harsh Old testament principles, once Y2K hit.

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We dodged a bullet on that one.

Plus, of course, a lot of people with more money than brains bought land, waiting for the disaster, hunkering down among their cans of baked beans.

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Well, January 1, 2000 came, and the end didn’t come.

Unless you consider the poor sap who woke up and realized, “It’s January 1, I’m in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by baked beans, no cell phone coverage, and no DSL. It really is the end of the world!”

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Well, as luck would have it, these things work in cycles. According to our old friends the Mayans (I’ve never met any Mayans, actually, but I’ve seen so many documentaries on them I feel that we are old friends) something momentous may happen in 2012.

This has enough people so worked up that they are working themselves up in a frenzy, making even more documentaries, selling survival guides, and even writing novels (curse you, Whitley Streiber!).

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You are probably asking yourself, but how can I cash in on this? Well, my friends, it may be true that the Y2Kers have simply given their old survival guides new names, but we’ve got something most of them haven’t got.

Land. In fact, some of us may even be some of the rubes who bought land in 1999, waiting for Y2K to hit. It may be the perfect time to recoup some of those losses.

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Yes, the real estate market may be down – but this is a special case. I’d start buying those ads in survival magazines now, my friends.

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Just follow this guy’s example.

This fellow has a banner on his website proclaiming:

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4 years and 158 days until the end of the world?

The author is writing a book, “Survive 2012,” and some of the sample chapters he is planning are:

Global Grids

Evolution

Unicorns

Space Threats

Elders

Carbon Dating

Myths

Doomsday Scenarios

How and where to survive

It’s probably the How and Where to Survive chapter that may be of most interest, but anybody who can tie 2012 and Unicorns together is probably wasting his time in what some of us might refer to as Real Life.

Those interested in his work can go to:

http://www.survive2012.com/

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Quote of the Day

In general, the Brits act as though the government is their business and they every right to meddle in it. Americans, by and large, display no such self-assurance. To the contrary, we seem to believe, deep in our hearts, that the business of government is beyond our provenance. – Mark Slouka,
“Notebook: Democracy and Deference,” Harpers, June 2008

rsdrake@nwark.com

 

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