The end of the world is nigh!

Paek’s paintball strategy is based on a solution submitted by the winner of the competition last year, who suggested deflecting an asteroid with a cloud of solid pellets. Paek’s strategy is based on using pellets, but also filling them with paint in order (Rex Features)

Haven't you heard? It's the end of the world! Or nearly anyway. Today is 12/12/12; crazy things will doubtless happen at 12:12:12 this afternoon. But we're also getting extensive reports that around the world, particularly in Russia and China, that doomsayers are convinced that December 21st will be our last day on earth. Presumably these are the same religious brethren who predicted the millennium would bring the end of the world, as have other fantasists from time immemorial. Apocalypse is a Christian idea.

As Rafia Zakaria, an attorney and political philosopher, writes for Dawn.com: "The end of the world, predicting it, debating it, fearing it and imagining it have, after all, been a favourite topic for centuries of human existence, and the fact that these words are written and read are in themselves proof that doomsday dates have come and gone with the world stubbornly just going on. But if doubt still evokes phantasmagoric images of the final moment that could be just nine days away, then indeed there is not a moment to waste between now and Dec 21, 2012, the day that some believe the world will end."