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End of the world

Are we in the end times? (Read OP)

  • 25 or under, yes.

    Votes: 1 1.9%
  • I'm 25 or under, no.

    Votes: 12 22.6%
  • Over 25, yes.

    Votes: 7 13.2%
  • Over 25, no.

    Votes: 28 52.8%
  • Other (in case I missed something)

    Votes: 5 9.4%

  • Total voters
    53
only about 300000000 years, then the sun will run out of hydrogen and go supernova, wiping out all the planets this side of the asteroid belt.

I'll be sunning on Betalguese 4 by then.
 
I'll be sunning on Betalguese 4 by then.

that's not such a good idea

Astronomers believe Betelgeuse is only a few million years old, but has evolved rapidly because of its high mass.[7] Due to its age, Betelgeuse may be observed to supernova within the next millennium.
 
I don't predict any major damage to our little planet in our lifetimes. But I happen to think that we live in a special time span on Earth. I think we are blessed existing in a time of prosperity and health and relative peace. People in the future will be obsessed with rationing. Look at how we plow through our resources! That can't go on forever! But we don't really worry about it too much. Our grandchildren will.
 
-- It does feel like an end time to me, and based on my travels I think things will boil over soon --

There's lots of talk about the end of the world, like 2012, economic collapse, nuclear war, etc.

I picked up similar sentiments on my last travels in Africa around 18 years ago now - it was mostly Pentecostalist Christians / churches that inspired this belief.

I haven't felt the world / humanity was going to end since my mum used to tell me that before she beat me with a belt in my pre-teen years. Been cynical ever since she wasn't able to inflict proper pain anymore. She was one of those rabid christians who preached hellfire and damnation (and she delivered it via dad's trouser belt)
 
There's lots of talk about the end of the world, like 2012, economic collapse, nuclear war, etc.

I am just curious to see what the proportions are for what people believe on DP.

I divided the poll into "younger generation" and "older generation" because for the younger generation (I would define this as 25 or under), this phenomenon may be new to them; for older people, they might have seen a lot of 'end of the world' scares before now but nothing happened. For instance, in my life I saw the Y2K phenomenon and everything was fine.

EDIT: And by end of the world, it could be literal, as in there will be huge catastrophe that kills most humans; or figurative, we will suffer a huge collapse or paradigm shift to some new way of living. In either case, how our collective society operates now will be fundamentally changed.

EDIT II: My time frame is not 2012, that was just an example.

No - and I'm 29.
This is my view of the 'end of the world' issues and situations:

The earth itself will be here for a VEEEERY long time.
We might not be.
Like any other species - we are also prone to extinction.
Any possible extinction will be an end of *our* days - not necessarily an end to a dog's days or an elephant's days - but ours and ours alone. . . not even the earth's - in fact - it might be the opposite for other species. With us gone many might flourish and only natural selection will finish off others.

The things that give us a hands up in the 'preventing our own extinction' situation is that we are capable of *causing* our own extinction, *knowing* something might happen, *informing* others that it might happen, *preventing* it from happening if we want, and *avoiding* it in the future based on what we learn in the past.
 
There's lots of talk about the end of the world, like 2012, economic collapse, nuclear war, etc.
.

The world won't end, even if the humans manage to wipe themselves out. There will still be cockroaches.
 
[video]http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/end[/video]
 
Therapist, so no medication for me. I've discussed my "exit strategy" on other threads concerning this issue. It has to do with a turbo-charged late model space-ship, a map of a small planet orbiting Sirus B, lots of good Hendrix music and "Three Stooges" episodes for the trip, and now, seemingly, a lackey/master kazoo player.

To be serious, how do we know that our existance is not just a figment of someone's... perhaps MY imagination? Oh... sorry... I'll try again.

Seriously. Not something I worry about. I believe the world is going to be around for a long, LONG time.

As long as the world is a figment of your imagination, and you believe the world is goingto be around for a long time, then we have no worries.
 
I don't expect an "end of the world", just an end of a huge social experiment. Those who are fit to survive (by various means) will, and those who aren't won't. The world will go on, but change is a normal state.
 
I am well over 25, by nearly two decades. :mrgreen:

I've seen and heard a lot of predictions by a wide variety of doomsayers. For most of them, the deadline has come and gone and nothing happened. You could say I am skeptical of all those who make proclamations of the end being nigh, especially if they do so with too much certainty. The latter are usually frauds or the self-deluded.

Being a theologically conservative Christian, I believe in the Second Coming and it's possible imminence, but I don't believe that even Billy Graham has the slightest notion when that will be... it isn't the END of the world anyway, but rather the end of a specific era and dispensation.

I remember in my youth, the new Ice Age was going to have glaciers rolling over Manhatten by 2000. Didn't happen. The alignment of the planets in 1982 was going to cause every fault line on Earth to cut loose... Nope. The Ozone was going to be gone before 2000 and the few human survivors would be living underground and only coming out at night....Nope.

When I was a kid we did Civil Defense drills in case of nuclear war.... duck and cover, get under your desk, tuck your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye, lol. The USSR was going to destroy us, or conquer us, etc etc.... well it didn't happen, the USSR no longer exists and we're still here.

So yeah, I'm kind of skeptical of ALL end-of-the-world hysterics. Maybe some version of TEOTWAWKI will happen one day. Maybe it will even be in my lifetime.

I consider things like earthquakes, hurricanes, flooding, or terrorist/rogue attacks with nukes or EMP to be far more likely, and prepare accordingly.

I don't fret over it much though, no one gets out of this life alive anyway.
 
I'm not sure if the world will "end" anytime soon, however I do believe something will happen in 2012. Not necessarily because it was predicted, but I just feel SOMEONE will take advantage of the date / year to play into either the fear or the gulibility of people.

Someone could play into the fear of people:
- Someone might attack a country around that time or there could be a major terrorist attack. It would instill a lot of fear into people.

People could play into the gullibility of others:
- A person, group, company or political party could use the date/year as a way to gain followers or boost people's moral.

Overall I know people will use the date to their advantage, whether for political, commercial, or other purposes.

And though I hope it doesn't happen, I have a feeling there will be a major terrorist attack in the U.S. or somewhere around the world in 2012, simply because so many people think something will happen.
 
I'm not sure if the world will "end" anytime soon, however I do believe something will happen in 2012. Not necessarily because it was predicted, but I just feel SOMEONE will take advantage of the date / year to play into either the fear or the gulibility of people.

Now that is something that wouldn't surprise me at all. As tense as the geopolitical atmosphere is lately, nothing would surprise me.
 
Now that is something that wouldn't surprise me at all. As tense as the geopolitical atmosphere is lately, nothing would surprise me.

Turn on cable news and they do it every day.
 
Isn't 2012 simply the end of the Mayan calendar?
Do we really think the Mayans had some mystical powers of prognostication?
They didn't even have the sense to realize the blue-eyed guys on horses weren't their friends.
 
It seems every generation thinks the end of the world is near until it passes them by.
 
I picked up similar sentiments on my last travels in Africa around 18 years ago now - it was mostly Pentecostalist Christians / churches that inspired this belief.

I haven't felt the world / humanity was going to end since my mum used to tell me that before she beat me with a belt in my pre-teen years. Been cynical ever since she wasn't able to inflict proper pain anymore. She was one of those rabid christians who preached hellfire and damnation (and she delivered it via dad's trouser belt)

I think the sense that I am getting is not that humanity itself is going to end, but the way we are doing things in the current world order is not working and is bound to stop one way or another. It would be hard for every single human to vanish, and I don't think "end of the world" means the planet itself is going to blow up. I tend to agree with the sentiments already stated in this thread, that it mostly relates to the western lifestyle which is non-sustainable, and in turn our parasitic economy that is branched out worldwide to support our behaviors.
 
It seems every generation thinks the end of the world is near until it passes them by.

I have noticed that there are a few different groups of people that see it slightly differently. One group thinks the world is not going to end at all. Another group has no specific attachment to whether or not it ends, but may still acknowledge that things are going down hill. Then there's another group that seems to actively fantasize about the apocalypse incessantly, and is constantly preaching about it.

The last group I don't really get. Whenever there is a paradigm shift in our world, a lot of people die. It's not really something we should be anxious for.
 
I've often wondered why Christ is supposed to return to the earth and take the 12 tribes of Judea with Him to the big wedding in the sky (Book of Revelations). I guess that it seems odd for Him to rescue those that don't believe He's the Son of God and leave behind the believers to be smitten unto the Bowels of Hades. Should I convert?
 
I've often wondered why Christ is supposed to return to the earth and take the 12 tribes of Judea with Him to the big wedding in the sky (Book of Revelations). I guess that it seems odd for Him to rescue those that don't believe He's the Son of God and leave behind the believers to be smitten unto the Bowels of Hades. Should I convert?

No, just smoke a joint.
 
Isn't 2012 simply the end of the Mayan calendar?
Do we really think the Mayans had some mystical powers of prognostication?
They didn't even have the sense to realize the blue-eyed guys on horses weren't their friends.

No it's just an end of the 5,000 year cycle of the Mayan Calendar. It continues on. Mayans themselves don't seem to give much attention to date or what occurs when a cycle ends and starts.

As a society we seem to assume every time a date zero's or rounds out the apocalypse must ensue.

I imagine society 2,000 years from now will read our Gregorian calendar and assume that something big must happen after December 31 since the calendar ends. People then assume that this something "big" must be either physically or spiritually significant to all life in some matter. This is what happens when we assume what an ancient civilization was thinking.
 
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Isn't 2012 simply the end of the Mayan calendar?

No it's just an end of the 5,000 year cycle of the Mayan Calendar. It continues on. Mayans themselves don't seem to give much attention to date or what occurs when a cycle ends and starts.

As a society we seem to assume every time a date zero's or rounds out the apocalypse must ensue.

I imagine society 2,000 years from now will read our Gregorian calendar and assume that something big must happen after December 31 since the calendar ends. People then assume that this something "big" must be either physically or spiritually significant to all life in some matter. This is what happens when we assume what an ancient civilization was thinking.

No, it's a bit more than that. On the winter solstice of 2012, the sun will sit precisely on the crossroads between the Milky Way and the galactic equinox, forming a perfect alignment with the center of the galaxy. This happens once every 26,000 years or something (I can't remember exactly how many) and ONE of the Mayan calendars ends on the day this is to happen. To the Mayans, this was the end of one age and the beginning of another.
 
No, it's a bit more than that. On the winter solstice of 2012, the sun will sit precisely on the crossroads between the Milky Way and the galactic equinox, forming a perfect alignment with the center of the galaxy. This happens once every 26,000 years or something (I can't remember exactly how many) and ONE of the Mayan calendars ends on the day this is to happen. To the Mayans, this was the end of one age and the beginning of another.


Does anyone know what a galactic equinox is, and whether it has some physical significance (ie lines of force or gravitation) or if it is little more than convention, or something that matters only to astronomers?

I'm reminded of 1982, when a lot of otherwise intelligent people believed that the alignment of all the planets in the Solar System was going to bring on global calamity.
 
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