2012 -- Armageddon, Imminent Terrorist Attack, or Collective Realization?

[Lysimachus]

Or none of these?

There are a lot of theories associated with the year... What are all of your thoughts?

I'll weigh in here -- I don't think anything will happen, save for possibly someone MAKING it happen. That is, some group of fanatics blowing up a city somewhere, or something to that effect.

[Kelven]

Realistically? It'll be like Y2K. As in, nothing.

Unrealistically? We will look up into the corn-blue sky, and there will be the Quetzalcouatl, twisting impossibly, like a banner in the wind. He will say: I have given you gifts. I have given you cities and farms, and the tools to build both. And yet, where are the sacrifices I was promised? Where are the lives, given to feed the gods? You forgot us, and we have starved and died. And so, I take back my gifts.

Below, the screams of humanity will fill the air, as their creations turn against them - for everything made by human hands truly belongs to the Quetzalcouatl.

The wind will die, the sun will freeze in the sky, and the footfalls of Ometeotl will shake the earth. The hungering gods will awake one last time, to sate themselves on the blood of their most ungrateful creation.

Or maybe we'll all just get a popup saying our free trial has expired.

[Sabachthan]

Coronal mass ejection sends us back to the stone age (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20127001.300-space-storm-alert-90-seconds-from-catastrophe.html?full=true). Riots, disease, and starvation in civilized countries. African and Islamic countries rise as the new world leaders.

[Emmons]

The end of times has been predicted many times in the past and have hitherto remained unfulfilled.

I've got money on the world not ending.

[opalexian]

Maybe...something wonderful will happen.

[Lysimachus]

Let's not let it go to the crazies.

[Thalevia]

Realistically I can see several things happening:

1. A group of people either a cult group or otherwise will commit suicide together.

2. Some group will use it as an excuse to start some major shit somewhere in the US or other developed country.

3. Most of the world will go on oblivious to the Mayan calender.

4. The earths magnetic field finally does it's usual flip of the magnetic poles sending our technology into chaos.

[opalexian]

Let's not let it go to the crazies.

Why is that the crazies? Wonderful things are madness? So you WANT it to all go down the shitter?

I sense gay conspiracy. >_>

[Gorvena]

Why is that the crazies? Wonderful things are madness? So you WANT it to all go down the shitter?

I sense gay conspiracy. >_>
This is causing me to use amazing amounts of self-restraint...

On-topic though, if it comes even close to the stupidity we witnessed with the Y2k hype, I'll be unpleasantly surprised. Then again, people are generally stupid and have short attention spans. And the media need something to talk about.

[Raziel]

It's Aztec.

Not Mayan.

[Szordrin]

We'll start to run out of oil and countries will try to horde it, others go to war trying to get the remainder. Instead of finding other sources of energy, we figure blood will work just fine. Eventually, countries will be dramatically smaller or not exist at all. Huge economic crisis. Due to genetically altered produce budding with organic, all of our food will die after one season due to the zombie cell(or whatever). Because of this, our food supplies will be limited. Most people starve in countries who allow genetically altered food. Due to the mass amount of preservatives and side effects of miracle medicines, humans lose their ability to reproduce. The major world countries will kill themselves in their pursuit of happiness and money.

From all of the years of global warming, we eventually cause a melting large amounts of ice in Siberia, causing the petrified forests up there to melt and release their methane gasses into the atmosphere. This raises the temperature so high that the icecap melts, ruining many habitats such as the Great Coral Reef, Antarctica, and the like as well as washing the remainder of the human population away to drown.

Then the earth will be hit by a solar flare from the sun at the exact moment that the poles change and Mount Saint Hellenes erupts into a super volcano, causing us to plunge into a miniature ice age as our atmosphere burns away.

[Swerto]

Both the Zombies and the robots will rise. There will be an all out apocalyptic war fought between the two with us stuck in the middle being turned into either power sources or more troops.

In the end it will all be decided when the sun turns out and a meteor strikes the earth. Those that survive are quickly destroyed by a strain of bacteria, and the bacteria is destroyed by an alien bacteria that was on the asteroid in an all out bacteria vs bacteria war.

[Resinous]

If the world does end, I can only hope that it is a bad ass event and that it lasts at least one week for me to enjoy it to the fullest. If it just goes poof and its over I will be severely saddened that hollywood directors can make a better ending than the heavenly architects that created all.

[Chikt]

I'll turn 25.

God help us all.

[opalexian]

I heard on the radio how at least one of the guys who wrote a 'ZOMGZ 2012 IS COMING R U PREPARE' books said that his actual material is a lot more rational and I think it was just talking about the Aztec calender and theorizing about the past references it had to major events and what happened with them and 'oh, isn't this interesting,' but the publisher threw a fit and made him change the title to 'DOOOOOOM DOOM DOOM DOOM 2012' or something.

[Szordrin]

You know, it wasnt just the Aztecs that predicted it with their calendar.

[Chikt]

A lot of people predicted something in the year 2000, never happened. A lot of people predicted the end of the world WELL before then, never happened. 2012 is just the most recent wave of predictions.

I love the Aztecs and I still think they were a lot more intelligent than we'll ever fully know, but I don't believe that you can predict the end of the world through science or divination. If you believe in god, then you know he/she/it likes their surprises. If you believe in science, you know that pin pointing the day, week, month or year the world ends is like pin pointing the day, week, month or year that the universe was born.

[Vardyag'n]

Cats will rule the world. Just like they're supposed to. All was, hunger, strife, will end. Everyone will be happy. GO CATS!

[Szordrin]

Nostradamus hasn't been too far off in his predictions, G.

[Kelven]

It's Aztec.

Not Mayan.

Not quite.

The Mayans used the Long Count calendar (that's the one that matters, since the Long Count date of 13.0.0.0.0 will land somewhere in the second-last week of December, 2012) a lot, since it handled long spans of time better than the other cyclical calendars available, and the Mayans were deep into astronomy.

The Aztecs also used the Long Count, but not as often.

So everybody is right, wooo~!

NOTE: Or so I remember from highschool textbooks. I am happy to be corrected if someone can find a more reliable source than my swiss-cheese memory.

[Chikt]

Nostradamus hasn't been too far off in his predictions, G.

That depends on how you look at his predictions because - given the ambiguity of them - they could mean anything at all, and be tied to several historical and more recent events. It's all up for interpretation.

Experts on Nostradamus place his predictions of the end of the world in 3786 or 3797 (depending on who you ask) which is only meant to happen after a 27 year long war. So as far as Nostradamus goes, I don't really see any predictions for Armageddon in 2012.

[Sabachthan]

Sometimes I wonder if we'll make it past 2010.

[Toxaris]

I honestly think that the end of the world is self-fulfilling prophecy. Back in the day, "God" was the only one that could destroy the world, but now man has the capacity for it as well. As we get closer to the time when everyone thinks the world will go to hell, it actually does because people freak out and act like retards.

In my personal opinion on what kind of armageddon I'd like, zombies would be the coolest. We need to be prepared and start inventing some zombie-control collars like in Fido.

[Karkarov]

1: Man cant destroy jack. Even if we nuke every inch of the planets surface some life will live and so will the planet. It may take a few thousand/tens of thousands of years to recover but it will sooner or later. We will all be dead but guess what..... we arent the only things in the universe, it isnt all about us.

2: My prediction... the first day of 2012 is a holiday. I have to work every holiday. See where I am going with this?

[Cyrass]

Nostradamus hasn't been too far off in his predictions, G.

It's hard to be wrong when you're that damn vague.

[Toxaris]

I guess I should've replaced "the world" with "humanity" instead. That's what I actually meant in my post.

The world = humans

The earth = the planet

[Szordrin]

It's hard to be wrong when you're that damn vague.

Gotta realize that when he was writing those predictions, modern terms and things today didn't exist so he had to use what was at his disposal.

Planes = Large birds.
Huge trees/towers= Skyscrapers

Dig it?

It's not like he was going to write "Joe Smith will invent a doomsday device made of uranium and titanium, he will detonate it in Chicago, Illinois in the South Loop at Epic Burger. This will happen precisely at January 1, 2012."

That would be impressive tho..

[Tiraline]

Both the Zombies and the robots will rise. There will be an all out apocalyptic war fought between the two with us stuck in the middle being turned into either power sources or more troops.

In the end it will all be decided when the sun turns out and a meteor strikes the earth. Those that survive are quickly destroyed by a strain of bacteria, and the bacteria is destroyed by an alien bacteria that was on the asteroid in an all out bacteria vs bacteria war.

I love that show.

[Sabachthan]

"And then man shall mount their large birds
And drop destroying acorns until nothing is left"

is a different thing from

"Two birds will enter a bar.
One will leave; the other will die."

[Tiraline]

1: Man cant destroy jack. Even if we nuke every inch of the planets surface some life will live and so will the planet. It may take a few thousand/tens of thousands of years to recover but it will sooner or later. We will all be dead but guess what..... we arent the only things in the universe, it isnt all about us.

You know, I actually did the calculations on this for my thesis (on the Second Amendment). I can't locate my notes at the moment, but I think I came up with needing something like a thousand nukes to carpet-bomb the contiguous U.S. alone. Did this based on blast radius.

Then Homeland Security followed me around for four weeks after I got the information, by the way... :rolleyes:

[Thalevia]

Gotta realize that when he was writing those predictions, modern terms and things today didn't exist so he had to use what was at his disposal.

Planes = Large birds.
Huge trees/towers= Skyscrapers

Dig it?

It's not like he was going to write "Joe Smith will invent a doomsday device made of uranium and titanium, he will detonate it in Chicago, Illinois in the South Loop at Epic Burger. This will happen precisely at January 1, 2012."

That would be impressive tho..

Except Nostradamus never wrote anything about birds hitting statues or trees or anything. It was all a hoax.

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/Hoaxipedia/Nostradamus_Predicted_9-11/

http://www.nostradamus.org/911.php

The second link lists all his writings if your interested.

[Szordrin]

Uh. It was an example. I never said he wrote anything like that. I could have said flaming flying chariots for space crafts if I wanted to.

kthx

[Swerto]

I love that show.
Nice to meet a Red Vs Blue fan.

<3 Church (even if that is a Griff quote)

[Karkarov]

I also read some nostra whatever his name is who cares and frankly some of it is so vague there are many examples that could have been interpreted to mean dozens of different events. What does that mean? Simple. It means he made everything so generic that no matter what sooner or later something would happen that "fit the bill" and he gets proven a true seer or whatever you want to call it.

[Medduren]

Sometimes I wonder if we'll make it past 2010.

Or past this weekend, what with 'satellite' launches (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090313/ap_on_re_as/as_nkorea_missile) and all that jazz.

Raziel better intercept that shit or were gonna have a lot of angry weaboos on our hands.

[Szordrin]

I also read some nostra whatever his name is who cares and frankly some of it is so vague there are many examples that could have been interpreted to mean dozens of different events. What does that mean? Simple. It means he made everything so generic that no matter what sooner or later something would happen that "fit the bill" and he gets proven a true seer or whatever you want to call it.

Oh boy, you figured it out.

[Aphraelle]

It's Aztec.

Not Mayan.

Actually, it is Mayan: the Aztecs adopted their tōnalpōhualli ( < tōnal-li "sun; day" + pōhual-li "(re)counting; something (re)counted" < tlapōhua "to count things") from the Maya tzolk'in, the so-called Calendar Round (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar_round) of approximately 52 years, which was used primarily for ritual purposes, particularly a form of numerological divination and also to determine a child's first name, which would be the child's birth date. They did not adopt the Long Count (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_Long_Count_calendar) calendar that is the source of the date 13.0.0.0.0.

(With apologies to their fans and descendants, the Aztecs were rather late-comers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Aztecs#The_Aztecs_arrive_in_the_Val ley_of_Mexico) to the Valley of Mexico and generally tended to be looked down upon by the older peoples as graceless barbarians aping the civilized ways of their betters. It isn't really surprising that they didn't pick up the Long Count, although they might well have had the conquista (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_conquest_of_Mexico) not intervened.)

[Karkarov]

I dont know everything seems peachy to me what with that whole G20 thing and this recent 13 people killed at a citizenship class issue. I mean come on guys thats only the 5th mass shooting in the last month.

[Szordrin]

Unfortunately, it's hard for psychologists and criminal investigators to understand shooter's motives since they kill themselves after the fact. As someone who's come from a school with a shooting incident, I can sincerely express the want/need to know.

Dunno why I just admitted that.

[Vilmah]

As someone who's school saw multiple homicides, I have less an inclination to wanna know why they did it. Because seriously, I'm willing to bet that their reasons are stupid as fuck.

"Bitch, whatchoo mean you been hangin' with Diantay?"

[Szordrin]

Not everyone kills someone over denting their dubbs, Vil. Mass killings with a suicide at the end are vastly different than stabbing someone on the street for talking to their girl.

[Vilmah]

I know, but really, killing is killing. Even if we knew why people did the things they did, it wouldn't validate them. Help people to stop that sort of thing from happening again? Maybe it would help that. I'm just constantly shocked at what people are capable of.

[Szordrin]

It's not that I'd like to know for those reasons. I'd just like to know so I can close that question for good. Kinda hard to not wonder when you've lost friends over an unexplainable event.

[Skaadvik]

Fox Mulder's sister is going to come to my house and take me to Xibalba with her alien friends and we're gonna party hardy.

[Xiphus]

By 2012, there's probably yet another war and all of civilization will bomb themselves to oblivion. And then we thrive upon irradiated cockroaches for another century.

[Malorii]

/blank stare

Everyone is still getting worked up over a bunch of of people who predicted the end of the world because they couldn't count any higher? I would have given them more credit if they could have predicted the Spanish or whoever came from the ships and wiped them out, or did they end up wiping themselves out I can't remember./

I have a Calender, it ends every twelve months.


I have lost my hope for apocalyptic futures after I was let down by Y2K, I sat out side for HOURS waiting for the rioting looters to start.


Every generation thinks they're special and they'll end up being the last. It'll happen when it happens, I highly doubt it will based on some calender from an older superstitious civilization. Wasn't there also supposed to be some cosmic alignment in 20** of May? That when the plants aligned in this certain way it would raise the ocean level to catastrophic rates?

Nothing will happen, if anything it's going to be zombies.

[Karkarov]

You dont want to know why people do those things Szordin. I have a good inkling I know what motivated alot of them and frankly if my hypothesis is correct it just makes the events that much more meaningless. In the case of the citizenship class shooting I mentioned there probably was a legitimate motive of some kind but most of them have no real meaning and there is no real motive. At least not one that a normal person should need or want to understand.

[The_Golden_Wolf]

We'll start to run out of oil and countries will try to horde it, others go to war trying to get the remainder. Instead of finding other sources of energy, we figure blood will work just fine. Eventually, countries will be dramatically smaller or not exist at all. Huge economic crisis. Due to genetically altered produce budding with organic, all of our food will die after one season due to the zombie cell(or whatever). Because of this, our food supplies will be limited. Most people starve in countries who allow genetically altered food. Due to the mass amount of preservatives and side effects of miracle medicines, humans lose their ability to reproduce. The major world countries will kill themselves in their pursuit of happiness and money.

From all of the years of global warming, we eventually cause a melting large amounts of ice in Siberia, causing the petrified forests up there to melt and release their methane gasses into the atmosphere. This raises the temperature so high that the icecap melts, ruining many habitats such as the Great Coral Reef, Antarctica, and the like as well as washing the remainder of the human population away to drown.

Then the earth will be hit by a solar flare from the sun at the exact moment that the poles change and Mount Saint Hellenes erupts into a super volcano, causing us to plunge into a miniature ice age as our atmosphere burns away.

Blah blah... too much crap to read.

[Tiraline]

It's not that I'd like to know for those reasons. I'd just like to know so I can close that question for good. Kinda hard to not wonder when you've lost friends over an unexplainable event.

I realize this may sound callous, but...sometimes it's just because the shooters want to retaliate for their own hurt feelings. And they then end their own lives because they've lost hope, or weirdly enough, they want to "have the last word." It's a freakish last-ditch effort to exert control, too.

It's human nature to want revenge. Most of us put limitations on what we'll do for revenge, but some see no reason to do so.

But alas, all we can do is speculate.

[Sabachthan]

I have a Calender, it ends every twelve months.
<3 ... although the zombie mention was lackluster. Are you feeling okay?

Could've sworn I'd already settled the Mayan issue with this:
http://www.sheldoncomics.com/strips/sd060130.gif

[Raziel]

indeed. It's the Mayan Y2K.

[Malorii]

Yeah I haven't been feeling well lately, I don't know whats wrong. :(


I'm not sick, I'm just lacking in spirits.

Either that or my roomate is one of those energy sucking vampires, or my car.


But yeah, I remember when women would NOT go through their pregnancy in Oklahoma on 6/6/2006 because they where waiting on the anti christ, or super unlucky or something.

[Tiraline]

Yeah I haven't been feeling well lately, I don't know whats wrong. :(

I'm not sick, I'm just lacking in spirits.

O_o Those are the first symptoms of zombification. If you suddenly start bleeding from your eyes, gnawing ravenously on your roommate's arm, or buying commemorative plates, you might want to have that looked at by a medical professional.

[Rand_Shea]

Doesn't this just prove that humans can only predict things so far before they ultimately have to end and think up an entirely new system?

If the world does end, though... well... dem's da brakes.

[Okhu]

If the world ends no one will be alive long enough to worry about it. I'm sure.

And if they are alive...well that just sucks for them. :l