From: grimoire@byron.u.washington.edu (John Greer)
Subject: Re: The end of the world...
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 23:12:45 GMT

Jason wanted end-of-the-world dates...

I'm not sure that this qualifies, exactly, as it's not precisely the end 
of the world -- rather, of Western civilization, or (if you prefer) of
the present age of the world.  Still, there are dates involved.

Some years back, I worked for a microfilming company that did hospital
records, and for several weeks I did a job involving long strips of
paper with squiggles on them (fetal monitor records, if you must know).
Each individual "frame" of each of these had a number stamped on it,
running from 0000 on up sequentially to wherever the strip ended.

At this same time in my life, I was spending the majority of my free
time in magical practice and study.  This may have bearing on what
happened...

The microfilming machine I was using required an almost meditative
level of concentration -- the strips had to be guided into the intake 
and "steered" to the center of the rollers, all this at moderately
high speeds.  After an hour or so, my mind would get into some fairly
strange states.

One shift, sometime after sunset, I was filming one of these things --
I'd been at the machine for several hours straight -- and for some
reasons the numbers that were rolling past caught my eye: 1942, 1943,
1944...and so on.  I found myself thinking of them as dates -- and 
suddenly found myself having a, well, vision is the wrong word, as it
didn't have any visual component.  Can you imagine something that is
to the emotions as a vision is to sight?  A feeling, flavor, or quality,
impossible to put into words, that seemed to resonate with the "feel"
I had for the years in question...

The numbers kept rolling by, and the perception did too -- past the 
1950s, the '60s, the 70s.  Each "year" had its own quality.  Hmm, I
thought, this is interesting; what's going to happen when it goes past
1989 (the current year)?

It went past 1989.  The perception continued.

Later, on the bus ride home, I took down as much in the way of notes
as I could get into words.  The gist of it is basically as follows:

1989-1993: Indian summer.  Decline masked by hand-waving, bravado, big
           technological feats drawing attention away from increasing
           smaller-scale breakdowns.  Toward the end of this period,
           great promises and hopes.

1994-2002: Gray and increasingly turned inward.  Intractable problems,
           a tendency to settle for whatever can be achieved over the 
           short term.  Nostalgia.  Nervousness.

2003-2006: Crisis.  Death and suffering on a very large scale. Breakdown
           of production and distribution systems, hunger, sickness,
           violence on an interpersonal scale (not, apparently, an
           international one).  An overall sense of fear.

2007-2009: A brief period of renewed stability, imposed more or less by
           sheer force.  Talk of a recovery in which no one believes.

2010-2011: The new stability begins to give way.  Increased poverty and
           suffering, though not so extreme as during the crisis.  Attempts
           to resolve the situation through fascism and similar ideologies
           of obedience.

2012:      Disaster.  The feeling I got for this year can still put a chill
           down my back:  darkness, cold, an image of something like jagged
           teeth.

2013-2015: Decline and fall.  Spiralling disintegration of the entire
           social structure.

2016-on:   A dizzying plunge into darkness.  Thereafter, tiny flickering       
           lights here and there.

So there it is.  The sense I had at the time is that it focuses principally
on North America.  Other than that, I leave it to be interpreted as you
like; "simple harmless craziness" is probably as good an interpretation as
any other.

The experience never happened again, if it matters.

-- John Michael Greer
   grimoire@u.washington.edu