It's just a matter of time, now.
Welcome, one and all, to 2012. According to a bunch of wing-nuts some easily-excited doomsday enthusiasts, 2012 will be the year in which the whole Earth meets its makers. These lunatics apocalypse proselytizers are basing this prediction on the fact that the ancient Mayan calendar will reach the end of its current 144,000-day cycle on December 21, 2012. Never mind the fact that this calendar, which begins on the creation date of mankind according to the Mayan religion, has already run this cycle 12 times, and this end-point will merely be the end of the 13th era. Never mind, also, that the Mayans were incapable of predicting the end of their own civilization, which would imply that their ability to predict the end of ours is somewhat suspect.
None of that matters. Because clearly the Mayans could not have been wrong, and the world is certainly going to end in 2012. There are multiple predictions as to how this will take place, from a bizarre prediction surrounding a completely-fictional “rogue planet” named Nibiru, (which a self-proclaimed expert named Nancy Lieder claims is in an orbit exactly matching Earth’s, but on the exact opposite side of the sun so we can never see it, which fails to explain how it will destroy the Earth), to fears that the Large Hadron Collider will create a black hole which will completely engulf the earth in a manner of minutes (completely ignoring the fact that even if the LHC could create such a black hole, it would be so tiny that it would take longer than the entire age of the universe to consume a single milligram of matter).
But surely one of these predictions will be true! There are dozens of them out there, so surely one of them must be accurate!
So, going on the assumption that these supposed Mayan predictions could not possibly be inaccurate, what will be the cause of the world ending on December 21, 2012?
I'm betting on the Vogons.
President Gingrich pays a religious group to attack Louisville, KY to cover up the Christian escort service he has been running.
A smart, funny, independent woman will find me attractive, and either the paradox will tear spacetime apart or there will be some sort of matter-antimatter explosion the first time we hold hands.
I'm worried I might cause the same thing.
Egad, that sounds frightening. You should wear gloves from now on when you date. And probably a hat.
I think they should both wear Penning traps.
Just to be sure.
Another, often overlooked, fun fact about the Mayan calendar; it probably doesn't end with the 13th b'ak'tun. That's just the last one we have thanks to a bunch of overzealous Christian missionaries who determined the Mayan texts to be satanic and decided to burn most of them. Pretty much everything we know about the Mayan calendar comes from a handful of codices smuggled out by one priest who didn't have his head up his ass.
I'm still putting my money on "human idiocy" for what causes the next mass extinction event.
So, "human idiocy" for the next mass extinction as well as the current one?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene
I just hope the International Commission on Stratigraphy can stay on top of things.
As I see it, the end times will be caused by a number of things. In six words: peak oil, carrying capacity, antibiotic resistance. On top of that, a figurative slurry of human idiocy and a literal one of a bunch of toxic gunk which we will drown in in a half-metaphorical manner.
I believe everyone will see it coming from far enough away to panic and make it a lot worse.
If I had to predict an apocalypse for this year, I'd say random asteroid that no one notices until it's too late.
I hope it's at the hands of the Large Hadron Collider. Mostly so that this website: http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworld… is wrong for the brief moments before we fully spaghettify.
"So, going on the assumption that these supposed Mayan predictions could not possibly be inaccurate, what will be the cause of the world ending on December 21, 2012?"
i think i will ask potential suitors this question. it's a trick question, but anyone who believes that the Mayan calendar predicts the "end of the world" is not the kind of person i want to interact with. do these people realize that humans will probably disappear from the planet before the Earth itself is destroyed?
my votes for the eventual decline of humanity involves either biological or nuclear causes (antibiotic resistance from people using antibiotics for allergies and viruses, meltdowns, nuclear and biological warfare). sure, we might get hit by a huge asteroid or the sun will cook us all with radiation, but i think we'll do ourselves in before that happens.
The mention of Nibiru reminds me of John Norman's novels about Gor, the Counter-Earth. I remember devouring those books as a teenager.