To expand on the levels of bullshittery, he initially picked “sometime in 2012” based on noting the number of elapsed days between 3 events in his life that he considered significant. (death of his mother, meeting a woman, and the date of the La Chorrera experiment with said woman.) He claimed that these events formed a sequence that could be found hidden in the King Wen sequence of the I Ching. By curve fitting these 3 data points and extrapolating to the end of the King Wen sequence, he predicted an event of peak novelty and the termination of history in 2012-ish. A computer (Apple ][) was used therefore the method is clearly scientifically sound.

He later refined it to align specifically with the Mayan Calendar because that was getting trendy, and he had a public speaking business to support. He pretty much says so in some of his later recordings.

Note he always claimed the end of his “Timewave” was the end of history, not the end of the planet or the end of the universe, or the end of humanity. He speculated that one potential event that could thus end history would be the invention of a time machine.

I wasn’t arguing his methods were scientific or anything. They’re not.