This Is The Way The World Ends...

[meQal]

A friend of mine sent me a link to a "viral" website for the film 2012. I was shaking my head at it cause I know someone is going to find this and think it's for real.
http://www.instituteforhumancontinuity.org/

I like the simulators for global destruction. They're fun to mess with for a bit and the whole lottery thing is a hoot.

[Saucerman]

I know far too many people who believe the world actually will end on December 12, 2012, due to "the Mayan Calendar" and "Crystal Skulls."  It saddens me to see so little critical thinking going on, and I've given up trying to explain what the Mayan Calendar actually means in regards to 2012 (it marks the end of the current K'tun, or 52 year cycle) because they just get mad at me for it. 

[ER]

Every few years people get hummed up about a new impending date for global destruction via polar shift, comet, Y2K, bird flu, the Zero Factor, or 2012. When one fad passes the next comes along. It's a cycle and it probably says something about human psychology.

[ghouck]

Considering I live in Alaska, which has more than it's share of hick survivalist knuckleheads, I especially enjoyed the whole Y2k thing. I personally know several people that built additions to their home, bought elaborate water-treatment devices and generators, and stocked up on MREs and ammo for the impending doom. (who the heck spends $12,000 on a water treatment system in the state with by a very wide margin, the cleanest water, not to mention the 3 million + lakes?). I know quite a few people that really acted as if not only would everything involving a computer stop working, but would NEVER work again. Heck, I know a guy that bought three dozen shovels because he was sure they were going to be a hot comodity and good for bartering in years to come. I purposefully did nothing to prepare for at al made fun of them the whole time. Y2K came and went and then people started talking about how "The next millenium doesn't start until Jan 1 2001", as if that was ever the question.

[ER]

I figure it's easier to store bullets than food.

[schmendrik]

I've been hearing "2012" for years now. Probably since about when the millennium passed uneventfully. Mostly it's connected up with some crackpot theory about the Mayan calendar, which supposedly predicts... something or other... in 2012.

But for some reason one particular crackpot theory called the "photon belt" irritates me more than any other. Probably because it's crackpot *physics* and my training is in physics.

As this page explains, originally the "photon belt" was supposed to kill us all in 1996.
http://www.salemctr.com/photon.html

But now the "photon belt" people seem to have linked up with the 2012 people.
http://www.salemctr.com/photon/center5b.html

By the way, if you're looking for a good source of trillions of photons per second, right here on earth, I'll sell you some photon-generation equipment. Send me a check for $1000 and I'll FedEx one of these fancy-schmancy photon generators.


Now if you really want something to worry about, you can check out NASA's catalog of killer asteroids heading our way in the next century.
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/

[meQal]

I always tell people the reason the Mayan Calendar ended on Dec. 21st, 2012 is because that is where the guy working on it stopped for to go to sleep and the next morning European Explorers arrived with the gift of Cholera.
I remember Y2K and felt it was something to get people to buy new crap going into the year 2000. I  watched my late brother go insane over it.  He bought a ton of crap like some sort of milk that didn't need to be refridgerated, couple of shotguns, and enough food to feed an army. When he asked me why I wasn't stocking up, told him that i was the one with the bunker style house that was easy to defend, (house I was renting was an old store made out of cinder blocks) and figured he could always come there to hold up for the event. Then I would go home an laugh about it.
I feel that a lot of these disaster predictions are just ways to encourage panic shopping, besides if an apocalyptic event was to occur, think the lucky ones are going to be those who don't have to live in the after effects of it. Besides, if one happens, I see it as God, Nature, Fate, or whatever you wish to call it saying you guys had your chance and it something else's turn.

[ghouck]

Doomsday predictions have been happening for quite some time, on many different levels, with anything from tiny to widespread belief. Look at those knuckleheads that killed themselves because of the (I bleieve) Hale-Bop comet. So they offed themselves, because some OTHER knucklehead says there is a UFO that is going to , ,  do something, hell I don't remember, but these things come and go, BFD. Weren't there some that claimed atomic testing was going to open space to a new dimension and destroy everything? Heck, even a looney like Charles Manson can get people to believe his doomsday crap.

I think some people pick out the most absurd and choose to believe it, simply to get themselves to believe they are smarter than the other 99.999% of the population who DON'T believe it. If you can convince yourself you are right, you have convince yourself you're amongst the spartest people alive.

[Javakoala]

My favorite is how Revelations gets reinterpreted every so many years.  They've been using that as the pattern for the End Of Times for freaking centuries.  Another reason to support faith and undermine religion.

Anyone with brains knows the squirrels are going to take over in 2048.  They told me so.   

[Jack]

I thought we were going to be sucked into a black hole when they fired up the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.  That would have been so damned cool!  But no, instead we get some lame Mayan thing. 

[CheezeFlixz]

In the year 1000 a lot of people believed the world would end and killed themselves to avoid the apocalypse, a 1000 years later in the year 2000 it happened again ... I need to check but I don't think it happened. Granted I think with this ice storm that hit me, one of the seven seals was broken. 

[Raffine]

This site, for a mere 40 bucks a year, will make sure all of your heathen friends and relatives get a snarky email from you after you get Raptured.

http://www.youvebeenleftbehind.com/services.html

 I'm guessing including this emoticon () in you emails is extra. 

Sign up . . . before it's too late.

[meQal]

My favorite is how Revelations gets reinterpreted every so many years.  They've been using that as the pattern for the End Of Times for freaking centuries.  Another reason to support faith and undermine religion.

Anyone with brains knows the squirrels are going to take over in 2048.  They told me so.   

Is  that going to before or after the Zombie Apocalypse?

[Rev. Powell]

This site, for a mere 40 bucks a year, will make sure all of your heathen friends and relatives get a snarky email from you after you get Raptured.

http://www.youvebeenleftbehind.com/services.html

 I'm guessing including this emoticon () in you emails is extra. 

Sign up . . . before it's too late.

I think this may be the most cynical scam on the entire Internet.

Wish I'd thought of it.   

[ghouck]

I thought we were going to be sucked into a black hole when they fired up the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.  That would have been so damned cool!  But no, instead we get some lame Mayan thing. 

That's still a possibility, they never really got it going, but plan to this year.

I liked how many people were all at once physics experts speaking confidently about "tiny black holes" that they swore were going to be created when CERN was nearing fire-up.