Poll: Do you think we're all gonna die in December?

[Shoggoth2588]

Wait...When does the Wii-U come out? I ask because I'm pretty sure we'll be seeing a lot less of people once that happens. As for everyone dying due to the ancient Mayan calender, there are aspects of timekeeping that they didn't foresee such as daylight savings time and, leap year. DST probably won't matter and leap year won't either if they were psychic time travelers. I don't think we're going to die so if we do go ahead and call me on it.

 

[Vykrel]

ive lived through several doomsday prophecies already, so i expect December 21st to be any different.

 

[Zack Alklazaris]

No, it wont happen. In most our lives we have survives 3 apocalypses. Y2k in 2000, 06/06/06, and whatever date that crazy guy said last year. Each and every time nothing happened except possibly a lot of "end of the world" parties.

I suspect something similar is going to happen this time. However, if it does happen I am going to laugh my ass off.

 

[EHKOS]

It better not. I'm going to be pissed if I don't get to play The Last of Us.

 

[Something Amyss]

I think we will be posting about this silliness in 2013 and laughing at the mooks who actually sold everything and hunkered down for the end.

You say that now, but when the seventh Charlie Nyx book drops, we're ALL DOOMED!

 

[SadisticBrownie]

Very unlikely, but I'd probably welcome it if the final Wheel of Time book wasn't coming out in early 2013.

 

[Leninv3l]

Didn't Einstein predict that the magnetic poles were going to switch? That seems more plausible than the end of the world, as we should have had a switching of the poles like 200,000 years ago.

 

[DarthFennec]

I think there have been innumerable end-of-the-world prophesies in human history, and none of them have come true. I think the fact that this one gets so much more hype than the others is mostly because Emmerich decided to make a fucking movie about it. I think it's strange that the Mayans would be able to predict the end of humanity, but they wouldn't be able to predict their own demise by the Spanish. I think it's strange that the Mayans would leave something as important as THE END OF THE WORLD out of all of their texts, etc, so that the only hint we have about it is a subtle end-of-the-calendar. I think they honestly had to have ended their calendar somewhere, and this December was as good a time as any. I think there's no physical reason for anyone to die, I mean I think it's supposed to be an alignment of things, but there's no reason for that to cause any sort of catastrophe here ... and Emmerich's "the neutrinos have mutated" is just about the stupidest thing I've heard in my life.

Hey guys, on December 31st the Gregorian Calender is going to end. That must be a sign of the apocalypse. Now somebody fund my movie about it.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

No, I don't believe the world will end this december.

In fact, someone else on the escapist had this little awesome nugget of info to share:

There have been about 514 leap years since Caesar created it in 45 BC. Without the extra day every 4 years, today would be July 28, 2013. The Mayan calendar did not account for leap year?so technically the world should have ended 7 months ago.

Carry on

So no, I'm not worried.

 

[hazabaza1]

Hahahahahahah!
Hahahahah...
Haha.
Heh.

No, don't be ridiculous.

 

[Storm Dragon]

The Mayan Calendar simply ends in December. It does not predict the end of the world, they just stopped making it there. Additionally, they did not factor in leap years, so the Calendar actually reached its end seven months ago.

EDIT: It seems that someone brought up the leap year thing before me.

 

[Seriphina]

there was an image i saw recently about how the mayans did not account for leap years... sec

this http://i.imgur.com/wTcUX.jpg

 

[plugav]

The version I've heard recently is that the Mayan calendar didn't include leap years, which means it actually ended several months ago.
([EDIT] It appears I've been ninja'd. More than once.)

I'm still kind of hoping for an end of the world as described by Grant Morrison in The Invisibles. Could be a lot of fun.

 

[CrazyCapnMorgan]

I have to add one thing:

The world will not end. Humans will end. And the universe would be a better place at the rate we're going.

 

[kasperbbs]

Yes. Because someone didn't bother to add a few extra thousands of years in their callendar. Damn you Mayans! Your laziness ended the world(whatever that means)!

 

[CrazyGirl17]

No, in fact I'm tired of hearing about it. I'm already paranoid, dammit, I don't need this!

 

[Fijiman]

In my opinion, if there is any mass death and chaos on December 21 it will be caused by all the idiots who think "well the world is going to end so I can do whatever I want free of consequence." I also believe that more and more people are going to be preparing/thinking like that the closer it gets to the 21st. December is going to get pretty crazy.

 

[Toby Kitching]

I'm not sure I understand your logic, so please correct me if I've misunderstood something here.

Yes, if we were calculating it by their calender it's irrelevant.. but because we go by the calender with the leap years we're essentially in the future in relation to the mayan calender. So the end of the world would be placed 7 months ago by our calenders regardless.

Or am I missing something here in my sleep deprived state

Yeah, essentially you're assuming that we've looked at the calendar, and said 'it takes us through to this day, divide that into years and you get this date'. it's not how it works... what the calendar said was 'when the stars/moon/etc. are aligned in this position (which corresponded to the dating system at the time) the calendar ends' which corresponds (accounting for leap years) to december 2012. you can't think of the mayan calendar as a big list of days, that's not really how it works (from what I hear). it's a calendar in the most traditional sense, in that it charts astronomical phenomena, and this doesn't really fit to a calendar in the sense that we see it today, so the leap year thing doesn't matter.

I explained that appallingly, but I hope you'll get the gist of what i'm saying...