The world will end this December 21st

Warpony

So theres talk about what that Mayan calendar predicted will happen on that certain date on this year. Now I heare that since said calendar isnt complete or it has a missing piece, maybe it just means there was nothing more planned after this time or it means it would be left to anyone's guess. But there are some people who are very convinced that either the end or something big could happen. Now lets remember that event called the y2k bug when supposedly computers would get confused after 2000 started among other judgement day predictions. But really, what could happen anyway?

agoaj

Nah man, they found the rest of the calendar.

It was on the back.

agoaj

And here's the lowdown on the issue from Wikipedia

According to the Popol Vuh, a book compiling details of creation accounts known to the K'iche' Maya of the Colonial-era highlands, we are living in the fourth world.[33] The Popol Vuh describes the first three creations that the gods failed in making and the creation of the successful fourth world where men were placed. In the Maya Long Count, the previous creation ended at the start of a 14th b'ak'tun.
The previous creation ended on a long count of 12.19.19.17.19. Another 12.19.19.17.19 will occur on December 20, 2012, followed by the start of the 14th b'ak'tun, 13.0.0.0.0, on December 21, 2012.[n 7] There are only two references to the current creation's 13th b'ak'tun in the fragmentary Mayan corpus: Tortuguero Monument 6, part of a ruler's inscription and the recently discovered La Corona Hieroglyphic Stairway 2, Block V. [35]
Maya inscriptions occasionally reference future predicted events or commemorations that would occur on dates that lie beyond 2012 (that is, beyond the completion of the 13th b'ak'tun of the current era). Most of these are in the form of "distance dates" where some Long Count date is given, together with a Distance Number that is to be added to the Long Count date to arrive at this future date.
For example, on the west panel at the Temple of Inscriptions in Palenque, a section of the text projects into the future to the 80th Calendar Round (CR) 'anniversary' of the famous Palenque ruler K'inich Janaab' Pakal's accession to the throne (Pakal's accession occurred on a Calendar Round date 5 Lamat 1 Mol, at Long Count 9.9.2.4.8 equivalent to 27 July 615 CE in the proleptic Gregorian calendar).[n 8] It does this by commencing with Pakal's birthdate 9.8.9.13.0 8 Ajaw 13 Pop (24 March 603 CE Gregorian) and adding to it the Distance Number 10.11.10.5.8.[36] This calculation arrives at the 80th Calendar Round since his accession, a day that also has a CR date of 5 Lamat 1 Mol, but which lies over 4,000 years in the future from Pakal's time—the day 21 October in the year 4772. The inscription notes[citation needed] that this day would fall eight days after the completion of the 1st piktun [since the creation or zero date of the Long Count system], where the piktun is the next-highest order above the b'ak'tun in the Long Count. If the completion date of that piktun—13 October 4772—were to be written out in Long Count notation, it could be represented as 1.0.0.0.0.0. The 80th CR anniversary date, eight days later, would be 1.0.0.0.0.8 5 Lamat 1 Mol.[36][37]
Despite the publicity generated by the 2012 date, Susan Milbrath, curator of Latin American Art and Archaeology at the Florida Museum of Natural History, stated that "We have no record or knowledge that [the Maya] would think the world would come to an end" in 2012.[38] "For the ancient Maya, it was a huge celebration to make it to the end of a whole cycle," says Sandra Noble, executive director of the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies in Crystal River, Florida. To render December 21, 2012, as a doomsday event or moment of cosmic shifting, she says, is "a complete fabrication and a chance for a lot of people to cash in."[38] "There will be another cycle," says E. Wyllys Andrews V, director of the Tulane University Middle American Research Institute (MARI). "We know the Maya thought there was one before this, and that implies they were comfortable with the idea of another one after this."[39]

Turkson

Warpony wrote: »

So theres talk about what that Mayan calendar predicted will happen on that certain date on this year. Now I heare that since said calendar isnt complete or it has a missing piece, maybe it just means there was nothing more planned after this time or it means it would be left to anyone's guess. But there are some people who are very convinced that either the end or something big could happen. Now lets remember that event called the y2k bug when supposedly computers would get confused after 2000 started among other judgement day predictions. But really, what could happen anyway?

Maybe it's just me, but maybe we should apply some Occam's Razor to this. Maybe the Mayan calendar making guy died suddenly, and everyone realized they had calendars for the next several hundreds of years. I mean yes, we should probably get around to training a replacement, but it's not like we're going to start losing track of the date for a while.

I'm pretty sure there's finite date that my computer's calender will have. Doesn't mean the universe is going to collapse on that day.

Warpony

So its more like the end of an era rather than what some people think then.

Shivahn

Warpony wrote: »

So its more like the end of an era rather than what some people think then.

The Mayan calendar ends on December 20, 2012.

Even if we survive that though, people will flip the fuck out when they realize that the Gregorian calendar ends only eleven days later, on December 31.

silence1186

People have predicted the world will end many, many times before, and they will probably do it many, many more times. They will be wrong every time, short of "the sun just went nova, and we will all be consumed in a fiery inferno today. Next, in sports..."

Warpony

Yeah, I mean the earth itself has been around for billions of years and survived a lot of stuff including meteors and decimating nature disasters. I bet it can surviva a nuclear holocaust and still keep going anyway.

Quid

The Mayan calendar is a good excuse for me to get really drunk on the 21st.

Ravenhpltc24

I think the 21st is my last day of finals. If I break my back studying for weeks only to have the world end when the pain is over, I'm gonna be pissed.

Kana

Some dude who was stoned out of his gourd 2000 years ago wrote:

Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand!

And people have been sure it's aaaany daaay now ever since

People are weird.

Henroid

The new doomsday dates after this will be those years that people predicted we'll run out of oil and such.

Humanity basically craves negativity.

archivistkitsune

Also doesn't the Mayan calendar work in cycles? So instead of it being the end of the world, it's just the of a cycle that will be followed a new cycle?

PLA

Sometimes I wonder if people realise that there isn't enough clay (or time!) to jot down an infinite, linear calendar.

Also, that the mayans weren't Time Lords.

Bogart

My works do is on the 21st. Coincidence?

Kagera

Quick time to not give a shit about crazy interpretations of a barely known ancient culture.

AManFromEarth

I for one welcome our new earthquake overlords.

Esh

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for some Shadowrun action on that date. I wanna be an elf!

RMS Oceanic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcc_KAhwpa0

Or if that's too long:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pyv1A8StJSs

Tofystedeth

In defense of the Y2K bug the reason it ended up being pretty unremarkable when it finally came around is a lot of companies spent a lot of money on a ton of programmers working for months to make sure our financial software wouldn't explode. It was a real thing. They just fixed it.

emnmnme

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvI66Xaj9-o

Warpony

Cool, at least we still can use computers then. It would be hilarious if a gujy fcrom the future popped jp on that date this year and pointed the finger laughing at all who believed it

Marathon

My prediction is that nothing out of the ordinary will happen that day.

Time to see who the better prophet is, me or the Myans.

japan

Bogart wrote: »

My works do is on the 21st. Coincidence?

Just do us all a favour and lock that doomsday device you lot are working on in the stationery cupboard before getting into the booze.

CaptainPeacock

I tend not to trust predictions of people who were killed. Not seeing it coming kinda dampens credibility.

I'll bet whichever one of them that carved the thing that started all this was their equivalent of the town loon.

Melkster

Tofystedeth wrote: »

In defense of the Y2K bug the reason it ended up being pretty unremarkable when it finally came around is a lot of companies spent a lot of money on a ton of programmers working for months to make sure our financial software wouldn't explode. It was a real thing. They just fixed it.

^ Yep.

I remember when I was younger in 1999 and my Dad would constantly stay late at work working quickly on Y2K bug fixing.

Also, I work as a programmer for a big university. And I've seen lots of comments in our old code about Y2K fixing. There was a big effort to make the university compliant that took lots of resources.

So yeah. It was a big deal... And we did something about it. Crisis averted!

Now if only we could do the same thing for climate change...

Linespider5

There's a strange kind of relief people sometimes get from believing the end of the world is happening soon. 'I won't have to go to work anymore,' 'I won't have to find out what that weird growth on my back really is,' 'I can keep pretending _______ is okay, because the planet will be through with all of us before my world view will have to be challenged.'


There's a strong case for a lot of it just being about, um, people with shaky world views.

Jibba

It won't end because Dikembe Mutombo saved us.

http://www.oldspicesavestheworld.com/

Unknown

This content has been removed.

CaptainPeacock

Ask the Millerites.

TehSpectre

FX better run an all day marathon of the terrible, terrible 2012 with John Cusack.

PLA

Didn't the world "end", like, three times last year?

RMS Oceanic

Another reason the world won't end can be found at the end of Assassin's Creed 3.

Although that means we have bigger problems.

Henroid

I can't wait for the stories of people having spent their savings away, or who kill themselves, and the rest of us wake up the next day and go to work as usual.

Edit - Not that I wish for it to happen. But I don't know what possesses these people to do this shit over an uncertainty. The only time one should be certain of death is when the blow has been delivered and received.

a5ehren

Well, if you use old UNIX systems, here are some other dates to be worried about:

At 06:28:16 UTC on 7 Feb 2036, Network Time Protocol will loop over to the next epoch, as the 32-bit time stamp value used in NTP will overflow.

At 03:14:08 UTC on 19 January 2038, 32-bit versions of the Unix time stamp will cease to work, as it will overflow the largest value that can be held in a signed 32-bit number. Before this moment software using 32-bit time stamps will need to either adopt a new convention for time stamps or be migrated to 64-bit systems,[15] and file formats using 32-bit time stamps will need to be changed to support larger time stamps.

At 06:28:15 UTC on Sun, 7 February 2106, the Unix time will reach 0xFFFFFFFF or 4,294,967,295 seconds which, for systems that hold the time on 32 bit unsigned numbers, is the maximum attainable. For these systems, the next second will incorrectly be Thursday, 1 January 1970 at 0:00:00.

Doesn't mean the end of the world, just a minor inconvenience for some sysadmins.

Henroid

a5ehren wrote: »

Well, if you use old UNIX systems, here are some other dates to be worried about:

At 06:28:16 UTC on 7 Feb 2036, Network Time Protocol will loop over to the next epoch, as the 32-bit time stamp value used in NTP will overflow.

At 03:14:08 UTC on 19 January 2038, 32-bit versions of the Unix time stamp will cease to work, as it will overflow the largest value that can be held in a signed 32-bit number. Before this moment software using 32-bit time stamps will need to either adopt a new convention for time stamps or be migrated to 64-bit systems,[15] and file formats using 32-bit time stamps will need to be changed to support larger time stamps.

At 06:28:15 UTC on Sun, 7 February 2106, the Unix time will reach 0xFFFFFFFF or 4,294,967,295 seconds which, for systems that hold the time on 32 bit unsigned numbers, is the maximum attainable. For these systems, the next second will incorrectly be Thursday, 1 January 1970 at 0:00:00.

Doesn't mean the end of the world, just a minor inconvenience for some sysadmins.

THERE'S NO TIME TO FIX IT

there's totally time to fix it

Buttcleft

If people really thought the world was ending in a month, you'd see mayhem in the streets with stupid people freaking out and others taking advantage to do all the pillaging and sexing and other crazy shit they always wanted to do.

Shivahn

PLA wrote: »

Didn't the world "end", like, three times last year?

This is a common misconception. As a catacylsmologist, I feel I must set the record straight.

Harold Camping predicted that the world would end on October 21, 2011. However, he also predicted that the rapture would occur on May 21 of that year - most people got these mixed up and treated May 21 as the end of the world date. When May 21st passed, he revised the prediction, saying that the day had actually been a judgement day, but not a physical rapture, which basically meant we'd be living the last five months in a Calvinist saved/not saved world, terminating with a simultaneous rapture and apocalypse. Most people thought he literally just said "Whoops, I was wrong, it's actually in October," but in truth May 21 was never supposed to be the world terminus.

So everyone thought they were safe, not realizing that the world end date had always been October. The fools!

Then it turned out they were right, like everyone who predicted the continued existence of reality.

(By the way, always bet on the continued existence of reality. If you're wrong, no one will collect! Score!)

Honk

Shivahn wrote: »

PLA wrote: »

Didn't the world "end", like, three times last year?

This is a common misconception. As a catacylsmologist, I feel I must set the record straight.

Harold Camping predicted that the world would end on October 21, 2011. However, he also predicted that the rapture would occur on May 21 of that year - most people got these mixed up and treated May 21 as the end of the world date. When May 21st passed, he revised the prediction, saying that the day had actually been a judgement day, but not a physical rapture, which basically meant we'd be living the last five months in a Calvinist saved/not saved world, terminating with a simultaneous rapture and apocalypse. Most people thought he literally just said "Whoops, I was wrong, it's actually in October," but in truth May 21 was never supposed to be the world terminus.

So everyone thought they were safe, not realizing that the world end date had always been October. The fools!

Then it turned out they were right, like everyone who predicted the continued existence of reality.

(By the way, always bet on the continued existence of reality. If you're wrong, no one will collect! Score!)

The hilarious part was that a few people quit their jobs, dropped out of school etc to enjoy their last moments in end of world colonies. I read an interview with a MED SCHOOL student who dropped out, she was almost done with her education. Those people's worlds may indeed have ended.

The sad part is that they had children, who are not yet old enough to be incredibly dumb and make their own hilariously misjudged mistakes, who will now have to live with unemployed parents.

Shivahn

Honk wrote: »

Shivahn wrote: »

PLA wrote: »

Didn't the world "end", like, three times last year?

This is a common misconception. As a catacylsmologist, I feel I must set the record straight.

Harold Camping predicted that the world would end on October 21, 2011. However, he also predicted that the rapture would occur on May 21 of that year - most people got these mixed up and treated May 21 as the end of the world date. When May 21st passed, he revised the prediction, saying that the day had actually been a judgement day, but not a physical rapture, which basically meant we'd be living the last five months in a Calvinist saved/not saved world, terminating with a simultaneous rapture and apocalypse. Most people thought he literally just said "Whoops, I was wrong, it's actually in October," but in truth May 21 was never supposed to be the world terminus.

So everyone thought they were safe, not realizing that the world end date had always been October. The fools!

Then it turned out they were right, like everyone who predicted the continued existence of reality.

(By the way, always bet on the continued existence of reality. If you're wrong, no one will collect! Score!)

The hilarious part was that a few people quit their jobs, dropped out of school etc to enjoy their last moments in end of world colonies. I read an interview with a MED SCHOOL student who dropped out, she was almost done with her education. Those people's worlds may indeed have ended.

The sad part is that they had children, who are not yet old enough to be incredibly dumb and make their own hilariously misjudged mistakes, who will now have to live with unemployed parents.

Being intelligent doesn't make you immune to these.

In fact, intelligent people are more likely to be cult members and such. It turns out that when you're smart, you can rationalize anything. The smarter you are, the better you are at rationalizing (and the dumber everyone arguing with you is by relation).

PLA

Yeah, when the smartest are dumb, who's going to correct them and be taken seriously?

Henroid wrote: »

Henroid wrote: »

a5ehren wrote: »

Well, if you use old UNIX systems, here are some other dates to be worried about:

At 06:28:16 UTC on 7 Feb 2036, Network Time Protocol will loop over to the next epoch, as the 32-bit time stamp value used in NTP will overflow.

At 03:14:08 UTC on 19 January 2038, 32-bit versions of the Unix time stamp will cease to work, as it will overflow the largest value that can be held in a signed 32-bit number. Before this moment software using 32-bit time stamps will need to either adopt a new convention for time stamps or be migrated to 64-bit systems,[15] and file formats using 32-bit time stamps will need to be changed to support larger time stamps.

At 06:28:15 UTC on Sun, 7 February 2106, the Unix time will reach 0xFFFFFFFF or 4,294,967,295 seconds which, for systems that hold the time on 32 bit unsigned numbers, is the maximum attainable. For these systems, the next second will incorrectly be Thursday, 1 January 1970 at 0:00:00.

Doesn't mean the end of the world, just a minor inconvenience for some sysadmins.

THERE'S NO TIME TO FIX IT

there's totally time to fix it

Noo, people will be wrong about the time for a while, unless they have wristwatches, or slightly newer computers!
It would probably be very annoying to set all the automated paperwork straight, in facilities with 20+ years old equipment that still has the flaw.