death in 2012

[RoMeO]

is anyone worried about the supposed end of life in 2012 and no im not talking about the movie im talking about the scientific proof that in 2012 earth venus the moon and the sun will realighn and shift from there positions in space causing a solar flare and alot of space rubbish to strike the earth this is going to happen science has proven this the scarier fact is the prediction of the mayan calander saying all life ends on 10/12/2012 scary that a 6000 yr old prediction comes at the same time of a once in 28000 year event for the earth by all means everyone here knows i believe in no God yet even quotes in the bible say the second cleansing of earth will be with fire, fire so hot that it will boil the seas, now even if we had global nuclear war human kind could never generate enough heat to flash boil oceans so the prediction of a solar flare seems to me the only way, not posting this to scare people nor am i in anyway scared as we all are doomed to die, just wanted 2 see the thoughts of others on this matter.

[Tryptamine Serpentine]

These things happen with time...

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

"Estimates of the number of major mass extinctions in the last 540 million years range from as few as five to more than twenty. These differences stem from the threshold chosen for describing an extinction event as "major""

* 5.1 Looking for the causes of particular mass extinctions
* 5.2 Most widely supported explanations
o 5.2.1 Flood basalt events
o 5.2.2 Sea-level falls
o 5.2.3 Impact events
o 5.2.4 Sustained and significant global cooling
o 5.2.5 Sustained and significant global warming
o 5.2.6 Clathrate gun hypothesis
o 5.2.7 Anoxic events
o 5.2.8 Hydrogen sulfide emissions from the seas
o 5.2.9 Oceanic overturn
o 5.2.10 A nearby nova, supernova or gamma ray burst
o 5.2.11 Continental drift
o 5.2.12 Plate tectonics
o 5.2.13 Other hypotheses

If we remain clever, any impending mass dieing event shouldn't be anything we as a race can't live through. And As I stated in another thread...



...This graph basically says we fucked up not too long ago, and we are going to have to pay for it.

"Growing populations, falling energy sources and food shortages will create the "perfect storm" by 2030, the UK government chief scientist has warned. He said food reserves are at a 50-year low but the world requires 50% more energy, food and water by 2030.[77][78] The world will have to produce 70% more food by 2050 to feed a projected extra 2.3 billion people and as incomes rise"

"The world population has grown by about four billion since the beginning of the Green Revolution and most believe that, without the Revolution, there would be greater famine and malnutrition than the UN presently documents (approximately 850 million people suffering from chronic malnutrition in 2005)"

"As of May 2008, the price of grain has been pushed up by increased farming for use in biofuels,[66] world oil prices at over $140 per barrel ($880/m3),[67] global population growth,[68] climate change,[69] loss of agricultural land to residential and industrial development,[70][71] and growing consumer demand in China and India.[72][73] Food riots have recently occurred in many countries across the world."

For a great part of it all, we created this situation for ourselves, now we as a race will have to grow up and deal with it or suffer the worst kind of consequences...

[starreborn]

pfft, i'm not scared. i don't believe in any of that end of the world bullshit.

[Nostalgic]

It was supposed to end in 2000 and now 2012

How many predictions of the end of the world are there?

I will not worry myself about it.

[Tryptamine Serpentine]

To be swayed by Ancient Mayan predictions would be faulty logic, however it is a well known fact that the Universe and Earth are hostile places, and that there are several biological, industrial, and cosmic forces that could easily lead to humanities demise. To say we are an immortal and impenetrable species would surely be even faultier logic than being paranoid of a returning destructive phenomenon, such as a 'super' volcano or quake.

A good book that recently came out on this subject is 'Death from the Skies' by Phil Plait. Quite informative and fun to read.

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

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

http://books.google.com/books?id=hH068NFwwIkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=death+from+the+skies#v=onepage&q=&f=false

And don't let the cover fool you, Plait is an accredited scientist, and his book has been met with positive reviews across the board.

[heartsdreamer]

No fear at all-- none.
Those Mayan predictions are nonsense. And the prophets of doom are as always wrong. I only read and listen to scientists.

[Tryptamine Serpentine]

Quick review of Plaits book...

Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Plait, an astronomer and author of the popular Web site badastronomy.com, presents in loving detail the many, many ways the human race could die, from temperature extremes and poisonous atmosphere to asteroid impacts and supernovae explosions. Such a state of destruction existed some 65 million years ago, when a giant meteoroid struck Earth, sending up so much flaming debris that the whole planet caught fire and the dinosaurs were wiped out. Solar flare activity could bring on another Ice Age. Worse yet would be a gamma ray burster, a collapsed star whose radiation would be comparable to detonating a one-megaton nuclear bomb over every square mile of the planet. Plait discusses insatiable black holes, the death of the Sun and cannibal galaxies—including our own. Balancing his doomsday scenarios with enthusiastic and clear explanations of the science behind each, Plait offers a surprisingly educational and enjoyable astronomical horror show, including a table listing the extremely low odds of each event occurring. He gives readers a good scare, and then puts it in context. Illus. (Oct. 20)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

[Cassandra2]

No the thought of the world ending in 2012 does not bother me. I believe that we should live each day as if the world would end tomorrow. I know the world for me will end someday and for each of us here on this forum. Some of us may die today, so why worry about some day in the future. Enjoy, live to the fullest and experience new and wonderful things that are at our fingertips.

[heartsdreamer]

Enjoy, live to the fullest and experience new and wonderful things that are at our fingertips.

[Tryptamine Serpentine]

so why worry about some day in the future. Enjoy, live to the fullest and experience new and wonderful things that are at our fingertips.

Y'know, I remember one of my history teachers telling a story of how some powerful ancient culture nearly killed their entire population because they were dumping their feces upstream of a river, and were bathing/drinking downstream of the same river. All actions have consequences, being aware of the past can help shape the present, which will lead to a more prosperous future. Shitting upstream and hoping the river will take care of the rest can only last for so long.

Living in ignorance may lead to the most pleasure, but it's more likely to doom future generations.

Being aware and lucid may often be a burden, but they are the very traits that have kept our species alive this long in the first place.

[Tal]

The only "scientific evidence" I've read was written by scammers who are trying to make dollars out of hysteria. If it happens, it happens. But remember the shit that's being predicted pretty much happens every year any way. Earthquakes, tsunami, fires, flood, plague, famine. How is 2012 any different from what's already occured this year?
What would be a huge miracle would be in NOTHING happened. Now that would be amazing indeed because nothing happening is unique in history.

[Tryptamine Serpentine]

But remember the shit that's being predicted pretty much happens every year any way. Earthquakes, tsunami, fires, flood, plague, famine.

Exactly, who needs 2012 when we have natural cycles of destruction. 2012 hysteria is just superstition, though no one can say the next 100 years isn't going to be a bumpy ride.

A relatively new hypothesis is that Algae is actually one of the core facilitators of mass biological cleansing.

http://www.livescience.com/animals/091029-algae-extinction.html

http://www.greenbang.com/warming-planet-more-toxic-algae-mass-extinctions_12242.html

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091019134716.htm

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... =114081479

[Cassandra2]

so why worry about some day in the future. Enjoy, live to the fullest and experience new and wonderful things that are at our fingertips.

Y'know, I remember one of my history teachers telling a story of how some powerful ancient culture nearly killed their entire population because they were dumping their feces upstream of a river, and were bathing/drinking downstream of the same river. All actions have consequences, being aware of the past can help shape the present, which will lead to a more prosperous future. Shitting upstream and hoping the river will take care of the rest can only last for so long.

Living in ignorance may lead to the most pleasure, but it's more likely to doom future generations.

Being aware and lucid may often be a burden, but they are the very traits that have kept our species alive this long in the first place.

There is always somebody out there to find negative in something said positive. Go figure!
What you said above is happening in our present time. The rivers and oceans are so polluted,
our food has so many chemicals in it that we don't need to be embalmed when we die, we are already preserved. The air we breath is toxin. Our waters have been poisoned. Our food is contaminated with toxins. So to sum it up what we breathe, drink, and eat, they are all killing us. Live your life to the fullest and enjoy the day that the good lord has given us and not worry when something is going to destroy our planet.
When I live life to the fullest, to the best of my ability, I love and honor the creator and what he has created. When I do not love and honor all, to the best of my ability, I harm myself, for we are all part of the energy of the creator.
http://whocareswhentheworldends

[Guardian7347]

The 2012 predictions are based off the Mayan calender, which is the most advanced, most accurate calander system in existence. The reason for the "end of the world" speech is because the mayan calender is broken up into (for lack of a better word) eras called katuns. With the ending of each katun, there are certain associated events(I'm a little unclear of the details, it's been a while). Well, with the ending of the katun we are currently in, there is cataclysmic events associated with it. To make things far more panic-inducing for those prone to do so, the Mayan calender(which goes back to before the beginning of Mayan civilization) decidedly ends on 12/21/12. The commonly accepted opinion holds that obviously the mayan "knew" the world would crash and burn on this date, so didn't bother marking any time after that.
Who knows, maybe, with their vastly superior astronomical knowledge, they DID know some planet-killer would intercept the earth on this date. Maybe the celestial alignment WILL somehow cause the planet's magnetic poles to switch polarity, as I've heard they have several times throughout the planet's history, and causing all sorts of climatic turmoil. Who knows? I sure don't.
However, I find it odd that whatever happens would very conveniently wait until the calander had run it's full course through the katun to destroy the world. Why not half way through the katun, or three days into it? It makes for great story-telling, and it's cool to think we could predict the end of the world in a catastrophic manner, but I suspect the world will most likely keep ticking along. It would certainly add to the mystique of the ancient Mayans if it did, but then again, if the world were destroyed, or even decimated, who would be there to care that they were right?

[heartsdreamer]

from AP

2012 isn't the end of the world, Mayans insist

MEXICO CITY -Apolinario Chile Pixtun is tired of being bombarded with frantic questions about the Mayan calendar supposedly "running out" on Dec. 21, 2012. After all, it's not the end of the world.
Or is it?

Definitely not, the Mayan Indian elder insists. "I came back from England last year and, man, they had me fed up with this stuff."

It can only get worse for him. Next month Hollywood's "2012" opens in cinemas, featuring earthquakes, meteor showers and a tsunami dumping an aircraft carrier on the White House.
At Cornell University, Ann Martin, who runs the "Curious? Ask an Astronomer" Web site, says people are scared.

"It's too bad that we're getting e-mails from fourth-graders who are saying that they're too young to die," Martin said. "We had a mother of two young children who was afraid she wouldn't live to see them grow up."

Chile Pixtun, a Guatemalan, says the doomsday theories spring from Western, not Mayan ideas.
A significant time period for the Mayas does end on the date, and enthusiasts have found a series of astronomical alignments they say coincide in 2012, including one that happens roughly only once every 25,800 years.
But most archaeologists, astronomers and Maya say the only thing likely to hit Earth is a meteor shower of New Age philosophy, pop astronomy, Internet doomsday rumors and TV specials such as one on the History Channel which mixes "predictions" from Nostradamus and the Mayas and asks: "Is 2012 the year the cosmic clock finally winds down to zero days, zero hope?"

It may sound all too much like other doomsday scenarios of recent decades — the 1987 Harmonic Convergence, the Jupiter Effect or "Planet X." But this one has some grains of archaeological basis.
One of them is Monument Six.

Found at an obscure ruin in southern Mexico during highway construction in the 1960s, the stone tablet almost didn't survive; the site was largely paved over and parts of the tablet were looted.

It's unique in that the remaining parts contain the equivalent of the date 2012. The inscription describes something that is supposed to occur in 2012 involving Bolon Yokte, a mysterious Mayan god associated with both war and creation.

However — shades of Indiana Jones — erosion and a crack in the stone make the end of the passage almost illegible.

Archaeologist Guillermo Bernal of Mexico's National Autonomous University interprets the last eroded glyphs as maybe saying, "He will descend from the sky."

Spooky, perhaps, but Bernal notes there are other inscriptions at Mayan sites for dates far beyond 2012 — including one that roughly translates into the year 4772.

And anyway, Mayas in the drought-stricken Yucatan peninsula have bigger worries than 2012.
"If I went to some Mayan-speaking communities and asked people what is going to happen in 2012, they wouldn't have any idea," said Jose Huchim, a Yucatan Mayan archaeologist. "That the world is going to end? They wouldn't believe you. We have real concerns these days, like rain."

The Mayan civilization, which reached its height from 300 A.D. to 900 A.D., had a talent for astronomy
Its Long Count calendar begins in 3,114 B.C., marking time in roughly 394-year periods known as Baktuns. Thirteen was a significant, sacred number for the Mayas, and the 13th Baktun ends around Dec. 21, 2012.

"It's a special anniversary of creation," said David Stuart, a specialist in Mayan epigraphy at the University of Texas at Austin. "The Maya never said the world is going to end, they never said anything bad would happen necessarily, they're just recording this future anniversary on Monument Six."

Bernal suggests that apocalypse is "a very Western, Christian" concept projected onto the Maya, perhaps because Western myths are "exhausted."

If it were all mythology, perhaps it could be written off.
But some say the Maya knew another secret: the Earth's axis wobbles, slightly changing the alignment of the stars every year. Once every 25,800 years, the sun lines up with the center of our Milky Way galaxy on a winter solstice, the sun's lowest point in the horizon.

That will happen on Dec. 21, 2012, when the sun appears to rise in the same spot where the bright center of galaxy sets.
Another spooky coincidence?

"The question I would ask these guys is, so what?" says Phil Plait, an astronomer who runs the "Bad Astronomy" blog. He says the alignment doesn't fall precisely in 2012, and distant stars exert no force that could harm Earth.

"They're really super-duper trying to find anything astronomical they can to fit that date of 2012," Plait said.
But author John Major Jenkins says his two-decade study of Mayan ruins indicate the Maya were aware of the alignment and attached great importance to it.

"If we want to honor and respect how the Maya think about this, then we would say that the Maya viewed 2012, as all cycle endings, as a time of transformation and renewal," said Jenkins.
As the Internet gained popularity in the 1990s, so did word of the "fateful" date, and some began worrying about 2012 disasters the Mayas never dreamed of.

Author Lawrence Joseph says a peak in explosive storms on the surface of the sun could knock out North America's power grid for years, triggering food shortages, water scarcity — a collapse of civilization. Solar peaks occur about every 11 years, but Joseph says there's evidence the 2012 peak could be "a lulu."

While pressing governments to install protection for power grids, Joseph counsels readers not to "use 2012 as an excuse to not live in a healthy, responsible fashion. I mean, don't let the credit cards go up."
Another History Channel program titled "Decoding the Past: Doomsday 2012: End of Days" says a galactic alignment or
magnetic disturbances could somehow trigger a "pole shift."

"The entire mantle of the earth would shift in a matter of days, perhaps hours, changing the position of the north and south poles, causing worldwide disaster," a narrator proclaims. "Earthquakes would rock every continent, massive tsunamis would inundate coastal cities. It would be the ultimate planetary catastrophe."

The idea apparently originates with a 19th century Frenchman, Charles Etienne Brasseur de Bourbourg, a priest-turned-archaeologist who got it from his study of ancient Mayan and Aztec texts.
Scientists say that, at best, the poles might change location by one degree over a million years, with no sign that it would start in 2012.

While long discredited, Brasseur de Bourbourg proves one thing: Westerners have been trying for more than a century to pin doomsday scenarios on the Maya. And while fascinated by ancient lore, advocates seldom examine more recent experiences with apocalypse predictions.

"No one who's writing in now seems to remember that the last time we thought the world was going to end, it didn't," says Martin, the astronomy webmaster. "There doesn't seem to be a lot of memory that things were fine the last time around."

[angeleyes30]

Don't you find it odd that only lately everyone has been talking about and worrying about 12/21/2012? If this prediction was made by nostradomis many, many.... years ago, then why all of a sudden is this just coming to people's attention. I've only heard about it for a couple of years now. Anyways, if you believe in the bible, it says the lord will come (second coming) as a thief in the night, and no one, absolutely no one will know when that is, so if that's true than this prediction of the exact date is not going to be. Just some of my thoughts on that. You asked.

[greenhavoc]

so why worry about some day in the future. Enjoy, live to the fullest and experience new and wonderful things that are at our fingertips.

Living in ignorance may lead to the most pleasure, but it's more likely to doom future generations.

I dont agree with that at all,but the reasoning behind why i feel this way is impossible to explain,so i'll give you the short version.
Ignorance allows an individual to make honest decisions.Ignorance knows no fear therefore any desision based on an ignorant understanding(considering the god factor,if there is such a thing)is made in complete Earnest.It may be the wrong desision,but it's by far the most productive form of an environmental adaptation.It's just an opinion.

[Cay Lin]

is anyone worried about the supposed end of life in 2012 and no im not talking about the movie im talking about the scientific proof that in 2012 earth venus the moon and the sun will realighn and shift from there positions in space causing a solar flare and alot of space rubbish to strike the earth this is going to happen science has proven this the scarier fact is the prediction of the mayan calander saying all life ends on 10/12/2012 scary that a 6000 yr old prediction comes at the same time of a once in 28000 year event for the earth by all means everyone here knows i believe in no God yet even quotes in the bible say the second cleansing of earth will be with fire, fire so hot that it will boil the seas, now even if we had global nuclear war human kind could never generate enough heat to flash boil oceans so the prediction of a solar flare seems to me the only way, not posting this to scare people nor am i in anyway scared as we all are doomed to die, just wanted 2 see the thoughts of others on this matter.

well, people have been predicting the end of the world for a long time, so frankly, i don't think it's true. they thought the world was going to end in 2000 because it was a new century. *crickets chirping* yeah, nothing happened. I don't know, if it is going to end, that would be the perfect excuse to do all the things i was afraid to do when i had my whole life ahead of me.

[xxParisJacksonFanxx]

God, 2012 scares me. Thanks for mentioning that Romeo!!! lol MEANER!

[Xwikki]

Eh, If I die like a few days before I'm 17 I'll be really pissed off...

[xxParisJacksonFanxx]

lol and it would be 3 months after I turn 19. my b-day's September 9th.

Romeo has me terrified now...THANKS A LOT!! lol

[Xwikki]

Ahhhh don't worry about it, if it happens, it happens. Can't be changed.

[Cay Lin]

I'll be just old enough to date!!! And to get a cell phone. I think i'd rather have a cellphone!

[MandaPantz13]

Lol me and my friends have been discussing this for years.
So much scientific proof (dont ak me the nitty gritty when my mate starts on it-he lets fly and i cant keep up)
But i do know the polar points are supposed to change gradually (the poles become the equator and vice versa) this wont happen in one day, but we will gradually see changes over the next 2 year that will *for lack of a better word* prove this to be true. Hvae you not noticed the amount of cyclones/hurricans/typhoons and earthquakes, floods, and tidal waves throughout the world recently?
I mean only time wil tell, but i've heard some pretty startling evidence that something major is going to happen in 2012.

Oh and for the record, that whole 2000 the world will end was SO OBVISOULY crap. They said it would happen because the computers woudlnt be able to read the date. but they would just flick over, its like if it was going from 999 to 1000 that it MAY cause a problem because it added something but, was rediculous theory.