Happy Mayan Apocalypse 10th Anniversary

[Max Rockatansky]

Anyone else remember when doomsday sayers and paranoid people thought we were going die ten years ago today?  I actually had an employee who went up to the Colorado Plateau the week leading up to 12/21/2012.  His thought was it was best to camp out in the woods for a week based around the assumption that the world might end.

[JayhawkCO]

Anyone else remember when doomsday sayers and paranoid people thought we were going die ten years ago today?  I actually had an employee who went up to the Colorado Plateau the week leading up to 12/21/2012.  His thought was it was best to camp out in the woods for a week based around the assumption that the world might end.

I'd fire him for incompetence.

[Max Rockatansky]

Anyone else remember when doomsday sayers and paranoid people thought we were going die ten years ago today?  I actually had an employee who went up to the Colorado Plateau the week leading up to 12/21/2012.  His thought was it was best to camp out in the woods for a week based around the assumption that the world might end.

I'd fire him for incompetence.

He got there eventually.

[triplemultiplex]

The end of the world is always just around the next corner.
Remember all them stupid billboards that said the world would end in May of 2012?  That was another good one.

There really is a sucker born every minute.

[Henry]

The end of the world is always just around the next corner.
Remember all them stupid billboards that said the world would end in May of 2012?  That was another good one.

There really is a sucker born every minute.

I remember those billboards, but it was May of 2011 that the world would end. Either way, I never bought into the bullshit.

[skluth]

Let's not forget the Millerites.

[SectorZ]

Do we have any new pending end-of-world dates? I know that old guy that conned people in to driving around in RVs preaching his end days based on some math he ran kept fudging the numbers every time his day came and went.

[thspfc]

Do we have any new pending end-of-world dates? I know that old guy that conned people in to driving around in RVs preaching his end days based on some math he ran kept fudging the numbers every time his day came and went.

I'm not sure about the end of the world, but the end of the United States has been 20 years away or less for at least a century.

[Rothman]

Let's not forget the Millerites.

Hm.  I thought the Adventists had at least one hard prediction before giving up on it.

[roadman65]

I heard something similar, though it was on the lines of a past leader would be the last of his Domain. World War III would commence and the US would defeat Islam but have a lengthy battle with China, but in 2017 the thousand year peace described in the Good Book  would begin.

Of course it's 2022 going on 2023 and no peace here yet.

[Life in Paradise]

Are we sure that the world didn't end and we just weren't officially notified?

[Max Rockatansky]

Are we sure that the world didn't end and we just weren't officially notified?

I've heard suggestion that we are all actually dead and the reality we see around us is a dream or simulation.

[74/171FAN]

I thought that the last end of the world prediction was on the day of Jason's south central PA meet back in September.  Of course, it went on as scheduled.

[jgb191]

We're just ten days away from the 23rd anniversary of Y2K (you know where we had that massive worldwide shutdown of computers!)

[Bruce]

The actual doomsday is climate change.

[GaryV]

I thought it was an old book from England.

[dlsterner]

Do we have any new pending end-of-world dates? I know that old guy that conned people in to driving around in RVs preaching his end days based on some math he ran kept fudging the numbers every time his day came and went.

The closest one I can think of would be a variant of the Y2K "scare", which would occur in January 2038.  Computers running UNIX (if they used a 32 bit signed value to store the date/time) would have the date/time overflow and roll over from 2038 to 1902, and you would have all the "Chicken Little" people worry about what might happen then, similar to the fears around Y2K.

In reality, I'm sure most (if not all) modern UNIX based OS's are using 64 bits for the date/time, which renders this issue moot.

[jp the roadgeek]

The actual doomsday is climate change.

And according to Al Gore, that doomsday was 22 years ago. 

[Max Rockatansky]

The actual doomsday is climate change.

Depends, I don't see humanity is even making it a fraction of the one billion years (possibly two billion) it will take the Sun to get too hot and render the Earth a boiled dry hell scape.

[SectorZ]

The actual doomsday is climate change.

https://apnews.com/article/science-health-fossils-animals-genetics-77553eb8372e4830794de18f4f74e837

Spare me, 2 million years ago northern Greenland was a boreal forest 20-35 degrees F warmer than today. That sounds a lot healthier for the planet than it being under a mile of ice.

[hotdogPi]

The actual doomsday is climate change.

https://apnews.com/article/science-health-fossils-animals-genetics-77553eb8372e4830794de18f4f74e837

Spare me, 2 million years ago northern Greenland was a boreal forest 20-35 degrees F warmer than today. That sounds a lot healthier for the planet than it being under a mile of ice.

The issue isn't human temperatures, at least for a few hundred years. (Canada is open space, as is much of Russia purely from a land perspective and you ignore its government.) The issue is other species, particularly where we get our food. It's much easier to adapt to a 4.5°C change in 20,000 years than 1°C in 100 years that will become 4.5°C in 400 years, especially as a plant species.

Then there are the stronger hurricanes. (To clarify: global warming increases strength, not frequency.) Even if Florida becomes uninhabitable, they can still hit the Northeast. We've been lucky to dodge recent ones, but we're between Sandy's path and the path of the one that hit Nova Scotia very recently, so we can definitely be hit.

[triplemultiplex]

The premise of the whole Mayan apocalypse was really stupid on its face.  Like the Mayan's calendar didn't roll over to the next unit of time like every other calendar in the history of humans?  Duh. 

And the proponents were all over the place about what the actual mechanism of destruction would be.  Something about black holes or rogue planets or like the Earth flipping over; none of it made any sense astronomically, geologically, or physically.  Solar flares!  That was the other thing they would say, but it's like why the hell would the Mayans even know about those? They wouldn't have known the sun does that, much less have any ability to predict them centuries into the future.  Such are the limits of naked-eye observation of the cosmos.  The Mayans were too close to the equator to ever see any auroras, even during particularly active cycles.

So then the 2012 kooks hooked up with the ancient aliens kooks and wove their respective bullshit together into steaming pile custom made to dupe the uncritically minded into thinking the world was about to end.  The aliens told the Mayans about the apocalypse!  That's it, we've solved it!  Give us another "History" Channel show, please.

The actual doomsday is climate change.

https://apnews.com/article/science-health-fossils-animals-genetics-77553eb8372e4830794de18f4f74e837

Spare me, 2 million years ago northern Greenland was a boreal forest 20-35 degrees F warmer than today. That sounds a lot healthier for the planet than it being under a mile of ice.

Unless you live less than 50 feet above sea level.

[hotdogPi]

Solar flares are a legitimate threat. If the 1859 one had hit now, we would have been devastated, although not quite to the extent that COVID-19 did. Of course, there's no connection between the Mayan calendar and solar flares.

[Rothman]

I am still waiting in eager anticipation of our north and south poles exchanging places.

[CNGL-Leudimin]

Thanks for reminding me my 10th anniversary on this forum was on Tuesday. I didn't even remember.