I’ve been writing about Shadowrun professionally and otherwise for near on twenty years now. Given the game’s focus on events stemming from 12/21/12, I think that makes me a bit of an expert on the subject. As the self-appointed expert on the end of the world I want to say this: Regardless of what we say about the validity of the date and the Mayan calendar, the end of the world isn’t meant to be a one-day toss off. The date marks the official end of what they called the 5th world. The 6th world is another experience entirely, one fraught with new enemies and perils. Some of those threats have been fictionalized while others are directly reflected in scientific reports such as the Global Trends 2030 report. That report speaks of so-called black swans, dangerous but extremely rare phenomena that might cause huge problems. I think the swans are the thing we need to worry about, and they are the reason that the 6th world is when the world begins to end–at least as we know it.
I’ll be writing about these threats at length, but the one I think bears thinking about first is the idea of solar flares. Given the highly fragile state of our electronic ecosystem, an emp producing flare could toss the world into major upheaval. We don’t have a solution or any public preparedness for such an event. If we lose even a dozen key satellites to fire from the sky, our already damaged financial systems will kick into a much higher level of chaos.
Just something to think about at on the eve of the end of the world…