Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard weighed into the debate about whether the world will end on December 21 under the Mayan calendar in a spoof video about Korean pop and flesh-eating zombies.
In a one-minute video address recorded for the youth radio station Triple J, a sombre-looking Gillard said the pending apocalypse was at hand despite there being no proof found by the “best and brightest” government scientists.
“My dear remaining fellow Australians, the end of the world is coming,” she said, tongue in cheek.
“Whether the final blow comes from flesh-eating zombies, demonic hell-beasts or from the total triumph of K-Pop, if you know one thing about me it is this — I will always fight for you to the very end.”
The prime minister said there was a bright side to Armageddon, which she noted had not come as a result of the much-hyped Y2K millennium computer bug in the year 2000 or due to Australia’s corporate pollution tax.
“At least this means I won’t have to do Q and A again,” she said, referring to a weekly current affairs talk show.
“Good luck to you all.”
Gillard recorded the message for a special “end of the world” programme being broadcast on Triple J Friday after Australian science writer Karl Kruszelnicki warned December 7 was the world’s real end-date.
Kruszelnicki, a renowned author and science commentator, said he reached the date by putting the Mayan and Gregorian calendar into a complex algorithm combining mathematics and comedy.
The video went viral on social media after being uploaded to YouTube, with most people seeing the funny side, although a few questioned whether it was a waste of taxpayers’ money.
Triple J host Tom Ballard admitted he had been surprised when Gillard agreed to take part “but I’m grateful because everyone needs to be warned and informed”, joking that he understood she had now retreated to a bunker.
“I don’t think it’s hilarious at all, I think it’s a very serious matter and people are worried,” Ballard told AFP.
He said he was anticipating “zombies, natural disasters, people not getting along very well, being quite mean to each other, and of course all the world’s religions proving to be false” when the end came on Friday.
It is not the first time Gillard has enjoyed Internet fame — footage of a fiery speech in parliament in which she accused her conservative opponent of sexism and misogyny in October has been viewed more the two million times.
December 21 represents the end of a cycle in the Mayan long count calendar that began in the year 3114 before Christ.
A doomsday industry has boomed in Hollywood around the notion that the calendar’s end will bring the fiery end of human civilisation, with the blockbuster “2012″ depicting Earth being swallowed by floods, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
The Mayan culture enjoyed a golden age between 250 AD and 900 AD in present-day Mexico and Central America, before its steady decline and the arrival of Spanish imperialists in the 16th century.
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Watch video, uploaded to YouTube, below:
OK … so this is a spoof video for Triple J’s “end of the world” programme being broadcast on Friday. I still think it is offensive. Everyone knows many Christians believe today that the end of the world is coming….and sooner than later. They read the Book of Revelations and take it literally and seriously. There are many others who simply look at the cataclysmic changes in the world and conclude that ‘something is coming’. For the Prime Minister of Australia to make a video like this is to mock them all and is offensive to her duty to represent with respect all of her constituents. Furthermore, I’ve got news for you….the end of the world is coming some day for some generation. It will come ‘like a thief in the night’ …. when the world least expects it. That is to say it will come for that generation who does not believe and is least prepared. To mock the reality of the end of the world is to set the stage for its coming upon the very generation that mocks it. Jesus Christ Himself spoke about the end, and if God Himself acknowledges it, what a fool it is who denies its coming. The wise prepare. As Scripture says, the foolish virgins did not bring extra oil and were not prepared to meet the Bridegroom. That story speaks to the very generaton who sees that the Lord is delayed in coming and so no longer prepares for His arrival. It will be that generation who is left outside wailing and grinding their teeth.
Human beings are now busy doing nothing but silly, thinking nothing but silly, and eating silly things. That’s why they create imagies like zombies, because they are thinking lazy things. They think of counting time, because they are bored of staying long on this earth and are afraid of the demons they imagine daily. They read stories imagined by other thinkers who imagined their own fears and wrote them down. What a waste of thoughts. Corrosion!