If there's one thing that's certain about predictions of the apocalypse, it's that none of them have been correct to date. The mother of all end-of-the-world predictions was 2012 — according to all that Mayan calendar mumbo-jumbo — and yet, here we are.

Or at least, here is where we think we are. Perhaps the apocalypse did in fact happen, and I sit here deluded in some sort of "Jacob's Ladder" purgatory, the rest of you all just figments of the past creating a simulacrum of life as I once knew it. Or maybe it's me who's the figment, existing only in your bardo dream.

But there's the rub: How do you or I know that we're actually alive and the outside world exists? Why, because our senses perceive it as real, of course. But, like a fried Tepco thermometer in a reactor core, if our basis for evaluating the world around us is malfunctioning, it becomes impossible to trust the accuracy of any input.