When we were young, we used to hear many different stories and fables form our elders in the family. One story I remember most of the time is the descent of Thagyamin, king of the celestials from his skiey abode during the water festival season. We believe the tale about his recording of each and every child’s attitude, if he or she has done good deeds or committed sins of one kind or another. Scared and afraid of going to hell, we, children took particular care to behave ourselves and shy away from bad deeds and sins.
Another memorable story seems to be the occurrence of the doomsday when seven suns, instead of one that we have, appear in the sky because of the immeasurable sins people have committed. My friends and I all know that dooms day or the Judgment day is the day of God’s final judgment of mankind at the end of the world. We dreaded so much about the doomsday in those days and looking up in the sky became a habit for many of us.
After we became older, we realize there’s no way of all these stories to come true that they seem to be just fabrications on the part of the elders to scare the kids from committing bad deeds or sins. Anyway they served their purpose with majority of the youth of our era growing up into decent, ethical and responsible citizens.
Very recently, my grandfather, now in his early 80’s has started to talk about the doomsday whenever the two of us have a chance for conversation.
I noticed grandpa has been harping on the same tune of doomsday scenario day in and day out and other family members could not stand him anymore. Patiently, I give my ears to his talk and my mind wavered in between the two diversions-grandpa’s being paranoid or the possible realities of the present day.
What I remember most from grandpa have been the narrations on the episodes of an American TV Series in his younger days called the Doomsday Preppers. According to grandpa, these doomsday preppers are people who genuinely believe the notions of the looming doomsday, that some sort of catastrophe would befall with the end of the world nearing. These people are preparing themselves to endure and survive in case the eventualities should occur, building underground dwelling, storing various rations and collecting a variety of weapons to defend themselves. Grandpa was a superb narrator. I got really fascinated with different episodes of ‘Doomsday Preppers’, portraying different themes as to how the world come to an end.
Come to think of it, Doomsday Preppers seem to be paranoids. But on the other hand, I argued to myself, it may be true; nobody knows what awaits round the bend. Grandpa’s hypotheis includes three distinct scenarios for doomsday. The first one is the world struck by an asteroid from space. That is plausible since we know that an extremely huge asteroid did strike the Earth off the Yucatan Peninsular in Mexico, some (65) million years ago. That incident completely wiped out the dinosaurs from the face of the Earth. We all know that asteroids keep falling from space but that scenario poses as a very remote chance since the late renown physicist ‘Stephen Hawkings’ has forecasted that it could happen only about a thousand years from now.
Grandpa’s second scenario for the doomsday is somewhat related to the geopolitical situations around the world. At present the world has more countries in possession of nuclear weapons. If ever a nuclear war breaks out, the nuclear explosions would cause a thick layer of radioactive dusts that would engulf the Earth and block out the sun rays for a very very long time, creating extremely drastic colds where no organisms can survive. They even got a name for that situation: the Nuclear Winter.
The recent case of the Chinese Tech Giant “Huawei” brought forth critics’ remarks like ‘tech cold war’ and Tech Iron Curtain, the expected peace talk between US and North Korea, UK, US and Iran struggles, etc plus the late advancements in nuclear weapons all give rise to concerns over another World War in future. All will suffer in an all-out-nuclear war. The third scenario in grandpa’s hypothesis based on the threats of the climate change caused by global warming. Even though this scenario wouldn’t be quick like in a nuclear war, their consequences would bring forth so many chaos and havocs, with more frequent and greater magnitude-intensive natural disasters of all kinds.
For most lay persons, the first two reasons for the dooms day’s occurrence sound a bit far-fetched but the last issue of global warming and climate change stand as the most plausible one. Everyone of us regardless of gender, race, religion and country can contribute one way or another to stop the epidemic. We must reduce the greenhouse gases, in other words, the carbon emissions, which are the main causes of global warming that leads to climate change.
Everyone can take the easiest step of growing tree. Trees absorb the CO2, sequester it and release back oxygen into the atmosphere. Think more of recycling. Reduce water use. Sustitute fossilized fuels. Avoid fireworks and char coals in cooking. Stop slash and burn agricultural practices, so on and so forth.
In fact the world is the only home we, human beings live in. As good citizens we need to think for the good of our country. As responsible habitants of the world, we are expected to do anything for the betterment of our only world.
(Ref: ‘Doomsday Could be Real’ by Khin Maung Myint, The Global New Light of Myanmar, Dec 31,2016)
