Poll: Doomsday 2012: Are you a believer?

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Stormrulerr

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Jul 10, 2008
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[/quote] We appear to have forgotten the Shadowrun approach: world ends because magic comes back and completely destabilizes the balance of power, leading to massive nation-state-corporations. Oops.
[quote/]

close enough ;) the balance of the world will be shifted as that which was lost 5000 years ago (and replaced by technology) returns. Thus the world will be split and common human nature will unfold as war begins once more to see which method will set the new world order and restore the balance once more. ....but that is just theory of course ;)
 

Daymo

And how much is this Pub Club?
May 18, 2008
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The only good thing doomsday theroies are good for are scarying the shit out of guallable people so they do what you think is right.
 

Womlet

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Jul 9, 2008
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cleverlymadeup said:
GloatingSwine said:
cleverlymadeup said:
BlueMage said:
cleverlymadeup said:
great not this total bs idea again

look the dec 22 2012 thing has been debunked and debunked very well. it's total and utter crap to think that they mayans, who didn't make a new calendar cause they got wiped out, predicted the end of the world

and anyone with any knowledge of the world knows that time will end on January 19, 2038 03:14:07 GMT

No, we'll figure out how to add a few more bits to how we represent it before then.

Also, really, display it the way it should be: 2038 January 19 03:14:07 GMT
you're the first person to figure it out, they just need to add 32 at the least, tho probly 96 by then

for those that are wondering, google is your friend :)
That assumes a single register for the whole date. Which is frankly silly anyway. (Silly ideas were legion in early programming, granted). Breaking the date up into only three int values for Day, Month, and Year would allow even a 16 bit system to operate until the year 65535. Using something even more complex like an array where each digit in the whole date has a seperate value allows infinite expansion, because you just expand the array when you want to add a new digit.
it's not assuming, it's fact, that's the way it is
you my friend cannot say that is a fact. You have no scientific evidence to back that up and you have yet to quote anyone who does.

Now i was watching PBS(the only channel that i get that comes in HD) and i saw a special about a solar event that was to happen in 2012. apparently the sun,earth, and Jupiter will be aligned at some pion that year. Now the sun and jupiter are massive and have massive(i need a thesaurus)magnetic fields that as of that point will be on either side of earth. they went on to say that the earth's magnetic field is weakening and if the earth comes into a that situation in 2012 then the polarity might actually switch running south to north instead of norht to south. but that could be considered a big event,right? If it wouldn't be considered one, we could say an interdemantianal warp gate will open and hell spawn Demons will come through and kill everyone who doesn't jion a specific cult. of course there would be a ten dollar admission fee to jion with regular monthly donation... i think we could make some money off this :)
 

jad4400

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Jun 12, 2008
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I think somthing might happen, but I am not sure weather or not it will be the doomsday.
 

lewa nua

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Dec 29, 2007
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Atleast Y2K was a legitimate worry with any date related objects (Such as airports), But The american government is what is going to kill us! But the change of polarity of the earth's magnetic field. IT IS LEGITIMATE, to earths polarity slowly changes due to the change of the flow of convection currents. The sn has many changing magnetic fields and same on the earth. Now since these lines sometimes cross, opposite forces cancel thus being a weakness in the field. Go to school again and take physics. Magnets can change poles with changes of energy and charge.
 

Ultrajoe

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Apr 24, 2008
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lewa nua said:
Atleast Y2K was a legitimate worry with any date related objects (Such as airplanes). But meteorites is a swift death so too bad. The american government is what is going to kill us!
Asian, the true superpowers.
 

crimson5pheonix

It took 6 months to read my title.
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Jun 6, 2008
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I'm not being rude (or not trying to be) but there is credibility to the polarity switch idea. It's not going to suddenly switch around and everyone dies, but it has happened before. In your analogy of a quarter, it would be like if a quarter was spinning clockwise, then someone slapped it then spun it counter-clockwise. Whats dangerous is the "hand slap" point when there is no magnetic shielding. That's when the earth becomes a giant microwave and we roast. Worst sunburns ever.

EDIT: Besides, it's all a moot point anyway as you will all be bowing to your new master CRIMSON PHEONIX! And only my best friends will be in the court of the Crimson King.
 

manicfoot

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Apr 16, 2008
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I really thought the world was going to end in 2006 because of the whole 'planet x' thing. I also thought it would end this year because of that huge particle accelerator they're building in Switzerland in an attempt to create the 'God' particle. It could potentially create a black hole.

I think its a lot more plausible that we'll be wiped out by our own stupidity more than anything. Either something obvious like nuclear warfare, or something not so obvious like accidentally creating a black hole and opening pandora's box.
 

BallPtPenTheif

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Jun 11, 2008
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mew905 said:
Mayan calendar ends on that day, and all sorts of doomsday theories spawned from it. It's just the end of a series of calendars that make up the "long run".
the mayans couldn't figure out that pissing and shitting near their drinking water was making them sick yet they were capapble of knowing when the earth would come to an end?

right
 

Limasol

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Feb 8, 2008
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If your into Nostradamus you might believe that aliens or magic will come to the world in 2012, should make the Olympics here quite interesting!!!. I don't believe Nostradamus because all his predictions are so vague you could stretch them to fit anything.


Debunking:
Abandon all your possessions and run for the hills: It has been foretold that the world is coming to an end sooner than you think, in the year 2012. It seems that you can't pick up any newspaper or magazine without reading that the apocalypse is almost upon us.

What really is going to happen in 2012? Asteroid 433 Eros is going to pass within 17 million miles of the Earth in January; the United States will hand over control of the Korean military back to the Koreans in April; there will be an annular solar eclipse in May and a solar transit of Venus in June; the Summer Olympics will take place in London; the Earth's population will officially pass 7 billion people in October; the United States will elect a new President in November; construction of the new Freedom Tower will be complete in New York City; the sun will flip its magnetic poles as it does at the end of every 11-year sunspot cycle; and, as I'm sure you've heard by now, the Mayan calendar completes its 5,125 year cycle, presumably portending the End of Days.

Mayans had three calendars. They had a solar calendar that was 365 days long, and a ceremonial calendar that was 260 days long. These two calendars would synchronize every 52 years. To measure longer time periods, they developed the "long count" calendar, which expressed dates as a series of five numbers, each less than twenty; something like the way we measure minutes and seconds as a series of two numbers each less than sixty. And, just in case this might seem too simple, for some reason the second to last number was always less than eighteen. The first day in the Mayan long count calendar was expressed as 0.0.0.0.0, and by our calendar, this was August 11, 3114 BC. Every 144,000 days (or about every 395 years, which they called a baktun), the first number would increment, and a new baktun would start. Recall how we all got to enjoy the excitement on the millennium of watching the digital displays roll over from 12/31/1999 to 1/1/2000? Well, that's what's going to happen on December 21, 2012 to the Mayan calendar. It's going to roll over from 12.19.19.17.19 to 13.0.0.0.0, just as it has done each of the previous twelve baktuns. There's no archaeological or historical evidence that the Mayans themselves expected anything other than a New Year's Eve party to happen on this date: Claims that this rollover represents a Mayan prediction of the end of the world appear to be a modern pop-culture invention. It's true that the Mayan carvings of their calendar only depicted 13 baktuns, but what did you expect them to do? Carve an infinitely long calendar every time they wanted to express a date? The explanation could be as simple as they didn't expect people in the 21st century to still be obsessed with their archaic calendar.

Another story predicting doom in 2012 says that a new planet, variously described as Planet X, a planet/comet (which makes no sense), or the planet "Nibiru" is going to pass so close to the Earth as to cause earthquakes and tidal waves and all kinds of destruction, possibly even flipping the Earth completely upside down. This is an urban legend that's been around for a long time, but for most of the story's history, this was supposed to happen in May of 2003, as any Internet search for "Planet X" will reveal. Apparently what happened is that the Planet X advocates, perhaps embarrassed or disappointed that 2003 passed without incident, heard about the much more popular Mayan calendar story, and decided that 2012 is close enough to 2003 that it must be the correct date and that the Planet X destruction is probably what the Mayans were foretelling. The Planet X legend got started by misinterpretations of astronomical observations combined with an ancient Sumerian carving that has been erroneously interpreted to depict a solar system with ten planets. Why the craftsmen who made carvings in ancient Sumeria should be presumed to have planetary knowledge superior to that of modern astronomy is not convincingly argued. If you're interested in all of the actual science behind the Planet X story, there's no better source than Phil Plait's "Bad Astronomy" blog, which goes into all the facts, rumors, and sources in detail.

Here's one more reason people are frightened about 2012. About 500 years ago, Copernicus confirmed what Hipparchus had observed in 2200 BC: that the axis of the Earth, which leans over at 23.5°, completes one full rotation every 25,765 years. This means that in 12,000 years, Christmas will come to Australia in winter and the northern hemisphere will depict Santa in Bermuda shorts. Astrologers call this period a Great Year, and they divide it into 12 Great Months or astrological "ages", each about 2,147 years long. Each age corresponds to one of the signs of the zodiac. We are currently in the Age of Pisces, and like the song says, we're soon going to enter the Age of Aquarius. According to modern official delineations of the edges of the constellations, we'll move into the new age in the year 2600. But there's some disagreement, and some astrologers place it at 2595, 2654, or 2638. A few put it much earlier, as soon as 2150 or even 2062. However, once the news of the Mayan calendar broke, a large segment of the astrological community abandoned the official constellation definitions and stated that the Age of Aquarius will begin in 2012. So, you can call this a third major reason why the world will end in 2012, but you have to be awful loose with your astrology, and you also have to think of some reason why the dawning of the Age of Aquarius might bring on the end of the world. I have not found any plausible claims for how it might have this effect.

So that's a lot of reasons, weak though they might be, to predict that the we're all going to die in 2012. However, there's one significant fact that the 2012 doomsayers all seem to forget: Despite all the various 2012-ish predictions for the end of the world, there are far more stories of apocalypse with different dates. For example, popular interpretations of Nostradamus found predictions for the end of the world in July of 1999, December of 1999, June of 2002, and October of 2005. It's also been said that his writings could mean the dead will rise from their graves in either 2000, 2007, or the year 7000. Nostradamus never said anything about 2012.

Many Protestant Christians believe that the end of the world will come in the form of what they call the Rapture, when the righteous will all be whisked away to heaven. Shakers believed the Rapture would come in 1792. Seventh Day Adventists first calculated it would happen in 1843, then when nothing happened, they found an error in their calculations and corrected it to 1844. The Jehovah's Witnesses made firm predictions for 1918, 1925, 1941, 1975, 1984, and 1994. A book was published in 1988 called 88 Reasons the Rapture is in 1988. A number of Bible scholars found firm scriptural evidence that the Rapture would happen in October of 2005. Thousands of Koreans gave away all their money and possessions in preparation for the Rapture on October 28, 1992. Even Sir Isaac Newton made a calculation based on scripture that showed the Rapture could not happen before 2060. Some Jewish scholars place the "end of days" via Armageddon in the year 2240. I couldn't find 2012 mentioned in any of these stories.

In fact, James Randi's magnum opus publication An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural lists 44 distinct end of the world predictions that all came and went unfulfilled. Why should we think that the 2012 legends are any different? Any examination of the science behind any of the stories, even a glib examination, reveals a complete absence of plausible foundation. Only the Planet X story, which is the most easily falsified as it depends on concrete astronomical observations that are demonstrably false, offers a proposed mechanism for exactly how this "end of the world" is to be accomplished, the alleged gravitational destruction. Neither the Mayan calendar people, nor the Age of Aquarius people, have offered any claims for how or why the world will end, only that their particular legend points to a rollover in some ancient calendar. My calendar rolls over every time the ball drops in New York, and I've yet to see this cause any planetary cataclysm, except for the guy who has to mop out the drunk tank at the NYPD.

Many people tend to place more trust in ancient neolithic traditions than in the observations of modern science. There's nothing wrong with studying and respecting our predecessors' history for what it was, but when you turn things over and start believing that scientific knowledge of the natural world has only decreased over time, you're not doing anyone any favors.
 

z121231211

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Jun 24, 2008
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I read somewhere that the Schumann Resonance ("Earth's Heartbeat") is at 7.8hz now and is increasing. In 2012 it will be at 13hz and start decreasing.

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

werepossum

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Sep 12, 2007
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Limasol said:
SNIP SNIP SNIP
Excellent post, sooo meaty. I am in agreement and awe.

Early Christians believed the Second Coming was imminent, even within the lifetime of Jesus' contemporaries. I think after a couple hundred years Christians stopped holding their fingers in their ears, but there was mass hysteria as the year 1,000 approached. Fearing Judgment many people gave away all their worldly possessions and made pilgrimages.

The Muslims have their Ninth Mahdi - it would be interesting to know what other major religions have as their own concepts of the end of the world.
 

guyy

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Mar 6, 2008
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Ok, monster post incoming.

About the "reversing core" thing: actually this is a lot more plausible than it sounds, but still not doomsday-worthy. The Earth's magnetic core isn't as simple as a bar magnet--it's a huge mess of rock moving around all over the place--and because of the chaotic cycles it actually does "flip" every few thousand years or so. We know it's done this before, and quite a lot of times, because of microscopic magnetic rocks geologists found near the edges of continental plates; they all point in the direction of the magnetic field when the rock around them solidified, and every few feet they all suddenly reverse directions.

The problem is, for a short period while the field is flipping, most of the field cancels itself out and the total magnetic field of the Earth becomes very weak. Luckily we also have the ozone layer to block solar radiation and cosmic rays--assuming someone doesn't make a CFC-based doomsday device--so this wouldn't end the world. A lot of birds would get very confused, and you'd have to wear tons of sunscreen to keep from getting sunburned constantly, but that's about it. And, of course, the field would be back to normal after a few years.

As for the world ending by some unknown means because some random guy in the Dark Ages said so, or because some ancient calendar is about to expire, well, that's just stupid. I mean, if you want to get really superstitious, there's a good-sized asteroid which I think is predicted to fly very near the Earth twice, both times on a Friday the 13th. But it's expected to miss both times; though the first pass might come near enough to obliterate the satellite beaming down your hypno-vision (that is, it's coming within geosynchronous orbit distance, which does not mean it will go into orbit, and if you thought it did mean that you really need to learn some science). So...yeah. I have no doubt the world will end, but I expect it'll be by nuclear war, some nutjob's doomsday device, or most likely, by a giant asteroid that we didn't notice because we were too busy fighting irrelevant wars to bother looking for deadly space rocks.

Also, I've found a completely meaningless and unanalytical post claiming to mean something, so it's rebuttal time. I'll leave off who posted this so it doesn't seem like a flame:

"The Earth is degenerating today.
Bribery and corruption abound.
Children no longer obey their parents,
every man wants to write a book,
and it is evident that the end of the world is fast approaching."
-- Assyrian tablet, c. 2800 BC
Let's see now...

"The Earth is degenerating today." Yeah, because we won't stop burning fossil fuels. And anyway, everyone always seems to think the world is in rapid decline, but it's still here and seems to have improved a lot.

"Bribery and corruption abound." Nothing new. People have always been jerks. Actually it used to be a heck of a lot worse in the past, especially the Dark Ages, when bribing and self-corrupting is pretty much all anyone did.

"Children no longer obey their parents." Again, nothing new. It's the natural process of teenagers trying to force their way out of the nest.

"every man wants to write a book." Well yeah, because most people are literate now, and still just as self-obsessed as ever. So what? Is that bad?

"and it is evident that the end of the world is fast approaching." Wait, it is? From that? That's kinda random.

Logic is your friend. Don't pay attention to ancient tablets unless they actually make sense. This is poetry, not prophecy.