Poll: Do You Think The End Is Upon Us? (12/21/12)

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

no
really not, because the world will end on a Tuesday

Thought it would end on a Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.

OT: World ends every day for someone, so it could possibly end for some of us that day. Maybe no one on this forum, maybe someone, maybe everyone. Future is a vast unknown quantity full of uncertainty.
I'd say the chances per person are 50/50.

 

[loc978]

no I´m not crazy
science FTW

ninjas... ninjas everywhere.

Although he does give us the relevant information there, thoroughly debunking this idiotic idea... it's interesting to note that the mesoamerican calendar keeps on ticking long, long after the next b'ak'tun. In six more of those, by the gregorian calendar it'll be October 13, 4772... which is the next piktun... and of course those count up to 20 and hit the next kalabtun which count up to hit the next k'inchiltun, which count up to hit the next alautun. It's actually quite possible to express dates that will occur 400 million years from now with that calendar (and a lot of chiseling).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_Long_Count_calendar

Seeing as the Mayan calendar didn't take into account leap years the world technically should have ended about 15 months ago so no

Leap years are an entirely Gregorian thing, to make up for the extra quarter turn or so the Earth makes each trip around the sun... trips around the sun aren't even measured by the mesoamerican calendar, so they'd have no need for a leap year. The turn of a b'ak'tun can land in pretty much any season, as seasons are also irrelevant to the mesoamerican calendar:

13.0.0.0.0 August 11, 3114 BCE (end of the world reset by the gods)
1.0.0.0.0 November 13, 2720 BCE
2.0.0.0.0 February 16, 2325 BCE
3.0.0.0.0 May 21, 1931 BCE
4.0.0.0.0 August 23, 1537 BCE
5.0.0.0.0 November 26, 1143 BCE
6.0.0.0.0 February 28, 748 BCE
7.0.0.0.0 June 3, 354 BCE
8.0.0.0.0 September 5, 41 CE
9.0.0.0.0 December 9, 435
10.0.0.0.0 March 13, 830
11.0.0.0.0 June 15, 1224
12.0.0.0.0 September 18, 1618
13.0.0.0.0 December 21, 2012
14.0.0.0.0 March 26, 2407
15.0.0.0.0 June 28, 2801
16.0.0.0.0 October 1, 3195
17.0.0.0.0 January 3, 3590
18.0.0.0.0 April 7, 3984
19.0.0.0.0 July 11, 4378
1.0.0.0.0.0 October 13, 4772

They didn't use it to track crop rotations, it was based entirely around astronomy.

 

[Gearhead mk2]

I used to, but after looking over the Mayan/Aztec/Whatever legends again, I stopped. It never really said anything about the world ending, it just kinda stopped.

 

[iblis666]

no i dont think the end of the world will be soon but one can always hope. Though truthfully i was supposed to end the world in 2000 but i was lazy.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

it amazes me that people pick and choose things completely out of context just to mostly scare others and to make money from it.

for starters the mayans didnt have a concept of linear time to them it was cyclical. the same patterns would repeat like each year you would still have winter and cold weather even if the individual details were different. yet people aparently took their concept of the long count calander comming full circle and decided thats the end of the world.

not even the mayans believed it would be the end of everything at most it was the end of the 5th world and the start of the sixth a time of transformation to be celebrated not feared.

it frustrates me to be honest. ive always had an interest in the mayans, their art, writing and calender but thanks to all this crap its next to impossible to find info on the net these days thanks to the end of the world BS.

Just a heads up, you can use the minus sign to tell google to leave out anything including a certain term. So if you put in "mayan calendar -doomsday" without the quotes, you'd probably cut out the vast majority of the crap.

 

[Olikar]

I always put "End of the World 2012" in the same boat as "NDAA is gonna kill our rights", "Obama predator droned children", "EA is killing video games" and "SOPA will destroy the Internet!" The hysterical posturings of psychotic lunatics.

Apart from the NDAA, all those thing you said are true, drones do kill children, EA is killing gaming and SOPA would have kiled the internet.

 

[Snatcher]

It better be the end of the world or else I want my money back!

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

Spoiler: In a word?

No.

If the end does come I hope I have been more of a positive thing on this Earth than a negative one and I want to die in the arms of my loved ones. But I really don't see it happening.

 

[Kyr Knightbane]

No.


Just...NO.

Personally I think the Mayans got sick of building giant freaking staircase calendars. I get annoyed after spending 30+ minutes on a card house and it collapses. Think of how they felt? Big ass rocks. Painstakingly putting dates on them. After 2012 years, i'd say screw it too.

The world will end when Microsoft and EA make a console together.

 

[Brotha Desmond]

The Mayans never predicted the end of the world. The predict disasters like plague or drought, but not the end times. The prediction one Mayan king had was that he would come back at the end of the 13th Bakuhnn (sp?) and take back the throne. The jews, christians and muslims are one of, if not the only, religion to predict the end times. And we all saw how that ended every single time.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

Nope. Anyone who SERIOUSLY thinks "yes" is nuts.

Have we seen ANY evidence for impending and immediate doom in the past year?

Unless the end of the world is caused by a GIGANTIC !@#$ING NUCLEAR WAR all over the middle east that spreads across the entire world, I don't think the world is gonna end anytime soon, since we'd have seen SOME kind of sign.

I mean, unless you think the Mayans predicted a nuclear war......Which is...You know...Ludicrous.

That being said, however, I will not be leaving my home that day, just in case there are crazies running wild going "OMGENDOFTHEWORLDKILLEVERYTHING!!!!".

 

[eternal-chaplain]

Hehe, I always thought that was just...the hokiest thing ever.
Still is.
Oddly enough, the craze concerning it has died down considerably as the date draws ever nearer. X3
Regardless, in this year alone, we've seen at least 3 'dooms-days' come and go; I don't see why this is any different.

 

[C F]

It better be the end of the world or else I want my money back!

I thought I said no refunds.

Besides, the world can't end. We're still waiting on the return of the Reapers. Or the arrival of the Scrin. Or <insert other sci-fi plot happenings here>.
At the very least give us Sburb. I mean, come on.

Maybe this is what Eliot meant when he said "Not with a bang but a whimper". I must say, I'm going to be very disappointed if the actual end of the world is more predictable and less exciting than the experience you can get by sitting down with a nerd and sifting through his brain. The cosmic budget cannot be that bad.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

The way I look at is, well our calender comes to an end December 31st EVERY YEAR. You know what we do when that happens? Do we all get down on our knees and repent for our sins? No! WE BUY A NEW CALENDER!! Just because the bloody calender is coming to an end doesn't mean shit, and how the hell did they work out that it ends on that specific day? I don't imagine the Mayan calender translates to ours well enough to be that precise.

The Mayans were excellent astronomers, and based their units of time off of well known celestial events, as a result our translation is quite accurate. In addition, most of the long term dating also involved a simple count of the days. They used a base 20 math system rather than base 10, but it is still just numbers.

Ok, granted. Not that that changes anything.

 

[Wyes]

21/12/12* Fixed that for you, OP.

OT: No, definitely not. But hey, maybe I'll spend the day with my girlfriend, just in case.

 

[thesilentman]

snippity snip

Listen to this guy and we'll all be fine. It's the end of the world as we know it, not destruction of the planet. Maybe we'll all be friends after December 21, 2012 happens...

 

[Bravo Company]

Without twinkies we will not be able to fight against the zombie apocalypse that EVERYBODY knows is going to start on December 21st, therefor the end of the world is eminent.

Interestingly enough, I saw a poll that asked a bunch of people how they think the world will end. There was the asteroid impact, the super virus, the super-colliders creating a particle that devours all matter...or a black hole, and renegade robots. But the #1 answer by a wide margin was "Zombie Apocolypse".

Zombie apocalypse seems to be the go-to choice for the end of the world, but what baffles me is; if everyone is ready for a zombie apocalypse who is going to become a zombie and lets not get started on what we're going to eat because twinkies are out of the question.