Hello everyone -

What would the Maya (Classic and Post Classic, not today's Maya) do in 2012?

That's easy: sacrifice a lot of people to prevent a ts'oc (tz'uk) impact event from
occurring. I even wrote a piece about it a while back, and I hope you enjoy reading it:

AN EXTREMELY LOW COST APPROACH TO DEALING WITH THE NEO HAZARD

Hello Benny -

In recent weeks we have been greeted with repeated announcements of the
reduction in funds available to NEO (Near Earth Object) programs, as governments
whose revenues are coming under stress due to the economic slowdown seek to economize. In
view of these developments, which trend is likely to continue for at least
the next couple of years, perhaps it is time to re-consider the use of the
ancient Mayan technique for dealing with the hazard of asteroid and comet
impact, specifically that of human sacrifice.

Now many in the scientific community may scoff at the idea and dismiss it
out of hand, but as the Mayan priests pointed out, once they began human
sacrifice, they were never again pounded by the sky gods. So by inductive
demonstration, the technique appears to work. It has the further advantage
of being an extremely low cost scheme to put into operation, as it requires
no payment for any telescopes, electronic devices, computers, or staff, and
even less payment for the bureaucrats who manage these programs.

Of course, one does run into the problem of obtaining human sacrificial
victims. While the Mayan resolved this problem by sacrificing their
unwanted, literally their poor bastards, given the current economic
conditions and the prevalence of extra-marital sex, such a plan may not gain
wide public support today. But perhaps a ready solution to this problem may
lie immediately at hand, specifically, in the use of lawyers as human
sacrificial victims.

To my knowledge I do not believe that anyone in the NEO community has ever
previously considered the use of lawyers for this purpose. What advantages
does the use of lawyers as human sacrificial victims bring, aside from the
fact that there appears to be an over-abundant supply of them? Well, first
off, they seem to be universally despised, and this seems to be true in
every nation. Given the international scope of the NEO effort, it is nice to
find a common point about which the citizens of most nations can agree.

Second, lawyers could easily be captured for this purpose by the simple
technique of placing a newspaper advertisement seeking an attorney for a
lawsuit against a wealthy corporation. Once obtained, my understanding is
that lawyers may usually be sedated by the administration of flavored
alcoholic beverages.

Of course, one problem with the plan may lie in ripping their beating hearts
out out of their living bodies, as it is widely reported that lawyers have
no hearts. On the other hand, it is also widely reported that lawyers have
no feelings, and this may make the entire process somewhat easier to
accomplish, in the case that lawyers can indeed be found who have hearts.

In the case where it does turn out that lawyers indeed do not have hearts,
then that does not necessarily mean that the scheme of using human sacrifice
to fend off the next asteroid or comet impact must be abandoned. It is
still possible that the scheme could be realized by the use of government
bureaucrats instead.

Yours in science,
EP

E.P. Grondine
Man and Impact in the Americas