Parents preparing for the end of the world.

[AlexWinter]

Hey, everybody.

So I'm away at uni right now and recently one of my siblings got in touch with me to say that our mum is rescheduling Christmas to the 19th of December because of the Mayan doomsday apocalypse (bullshit).

Now I'm a fairly knowledgeable guy when it comes to astronomy and physics, having read a few books and got a few qualifications so I decided to try and reassure my family that they're perfectly fine, dismantling each myth as it came.

However, nothing I say seems to be able to sway my mother's mind and now I'm getting pretty worried. My brothers and sisters are from 1-15 and they're getting really freaked out about the end of the world now due to my mother's anxiety. At this point I'm concerned that they'll do something drastic to themselves.

So basically, I was hoping one of you might have some advice on books or documentaries that I could show them to put their minds at ease. Have any of you had to deal with something like this before?

Any help would be very welcome, thanks.

 

[Strazdas]

Is she quitting her work and selling off her things about it? if the answer is yes - time ti find somone who can pull authority to get a shrink.
if the answer is no. let her do her thing and try to keep your sisters calm. so she will do christmas earlier, then find out workd didnt actually end, hopefully she will learn her lesson and be more skeptical next time. You tried reason, she didnt want to learn from other people mistakes. let her learn from her own.
You can point out if you havent the recent case of people throwing away tiher lives because a christian radio DJ claimed end of the world is coming this year. turns out he just "miscalcualted" or so he annoucned the day after, thousands were left homeless because of that.

 

[Vault101]

your mother is probably a really nice lady and a wonderful person

but she's still kind of deluded

 

[SlaveNumber23]

If she won't listen to reason then there isn't really much you can do besides hide all the suicide implements.

 

[aba1]

Well you could always use the fact that if we include the fact that the mayan calendar didn't account for leap years we would have already had the doomsday. How about the fact that people thought this same thing was going to happen a little over a decade ago

 

[IamQ]

You can tell her that because of leap years, the apocalypse date has already happened. I think it was in late 2011.

 

[socialtangent]

2012 Hoax [http://www.2012hoax.org/] is a good resource that exposes the nonsense that is the 2012 doomsday. Give it a read, it's worth it. If you can't convince your mother, you can at least reassure your siblings.

 

[SomeLameStuff]

*snip*

Just tell her that the Mayans didn't calculate Leap Years into their calender, and so this "Apocalypse" is seven months late.

 

[Amakusa]

hmmm really, people still believe that world it gonna end. Damn that suxs. It's a shame your mom believes it. hmmmm did your mum believe the world was gonna end in 2000 with the y2k bug or something?

okay here we go, i found this list you might like to read to you mum.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events

with this nutter http://www.thephonograph.co.uk/2012/05/26/eurovision-2012-a-sign-of-the-apocalypse/ being the latest.

If you look at the wikipedia link, there is alot of people that claimed the world would end and they were all wrong. I doubt the mayan even predicted the end of the world and just stopped at that date just because it was convenient and probably would of extended their calander had they survived.

 

[Zack Alklazaris]

There is nothing you can do unless you can prove without reasonable doubt that she is a harm to herself or others. As long as the kids still go to school and are fed she can pretty much do whatever the hell she wants. I recall an episode of "Wife Swap" where the parents put a double mortgage on their house, maxed out 5 credit cards, and blew through all 3 of their childrens' college funds enjoying "the last few months before the end times." And its perfectly legal.

This shit pisses me off, its right up there with the parents who let their kids die because they believed God would heal their child instead of medicine, but at least that can be punishable with criminal negligence. Sigh... its a damn shame dude, but if she can't understand reason there is nothing you can really do.

Honestly though even if an Apocalypse did make sense I wouldn't believe it by now because i've been through so many "end of the worlds" by now it makes me head spin and I'm only 26.

 

[Thaluikhain]

the mayans didnt even have a linear concept of time. to them there was no end of the world.

pisses me off all this 2012 stuff. ive had an interest in the maya, their astronomy, calender, culture for years and it so hard to find info these days on the next due to the end of the world crap

Don't worry, in 5 weeks everyone will go back to confusing them with Aztecs and Incas again.

...

If someone believes something like that, no evidence is going to convince them otherwise. Just have to keep an eye on things and wait it out.

 

[Renegade-pizza]

The Mayans failed to compensate for leap years. The world should've ended 7 months ago. So, either were in purgatory, or people are full o' crap!

 

[Zack Alklazaris]

The Mayans failed to compensate for leap years. The world should've ended 7 months ago. So, either were in purgatory, or people are full o' crap!

To add this this the Mayan calender ends not because its the end of the world, but end of an Era or an Age. I wonder how many people don't realize the Mayans are still here and people have talked to them about this. There is no mystery here.

 

[JEBWrench]

Well you could always use the fact that if we include the fact that the mayan calendar didn't account for leap years we would have already had the doomsday. How about the fact that people thought this same thing was going to happen a little over a decade ago

You can tell her that because of leap years, the apocalypse date has already happened. I think it was in late 2011.

*snip*

Just tell her that the Mayans didn't calculate Leap Years into their calender, and so this "Apocalypse" is seven months late.

The Mayans failed to compensate for leap years. The world should've ended 7 months ago. So, either were in purgatory, or people are full o' crap!

A quick google aaaand:

http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8329/have-leap-days-confused-the-calculated-date-for-the-end-of-the-mayan-calendar

The "calculation" used is straight up days, so unless you want to break one lie (the "world ending") with another ("They didn't take into account leap years"), skip that step.

Your biggest worry should be the siblings. Talk to them, they'll be more apt to listen if they aren't completely hooked on the theory. If it doesn't seem like she's going to go Hale-Bop over the 21st, then just keep the siblings calm and collected.

 

[Eclipse Dragon]

Although I don't subscribe to this doomsday theory whatsoever (it's just silly), the way I look at it is, if the world is going to end, at least I won't die alone. If the world doesn't end, we can carry on life as usual. I don't understand why people worry about such things (unless you're really religious). If I spent my life worrying about every comet that could hit the Earth, every doomsday prophecy cooked up by random people, I'd be a nervous wreck.
-------------
The Mayans weren't even predicting doomsday, it was just when the calendar ended,
because I'm sure they had bigger concerns on their minds at the time. That little reason has at least been enough to convince my family that nothing is going to happen, and the idea is as silly as Y2K.

 

[Maze1125]

Is your mother religious? If so, you might want to point out that the Mayan prediction of the world ending was part of their religion. So why should she, a follower of a completely different religion, believe the apocalypse myth of a religion she doesn't believe in?

That said, the best advice is what JEBWrench said above. Your siblings are the issue here, explain to them why it makes no sense, not your mother. Your siblings may still worry for the time being but, when the time comes, they'll see full well that the world didn't end and so that you were right all along and that they shouldn't have worried and so will carry that scepticism along with them for the future.
Whereas, if you don't talk to them, it's quite possible that they could end up in a cycle of believing apocalypse myths saying "Sure, that one didn't happen, but the next might." Which would be backed up by your mother's attitude.

So, yeah, unless your mother is planning on killing everyone, the biggest issue here is that you need to provide a dissenting side of the argument so that your siblings can see which was right afterwards.

The Mayans weren't even predicting doomsday, it was just when the calendar ended,

That's not quite true.
Their calender ended there because that's when they thought the apocalypse was going to happen.
The Mayan's believed the world progressed in cycles, and at the end of every cycle every human would be killed except for one man and one woman who would continue the human race in the next cycle. Their calender ends at the end of the cycle which, to them, was the same as the end of the world.