Just looking for a straight vote, reasons why would be cool. I will pre-emptively make fun of myself by admitting I’m a lifelong conspiracy theorist.*
I’ll go first: Maybe? Polar ice caps melting, blistering temperatures and a drought (out here at least), plenty of war to go around and world leaders who act like idiots. Seems kinda frightening. But then I think of the historical perspective and realize that 1918, killer bird flu decimating the world, World War I taking out scads of young men, economies going to hell etc. must have seemed quite apocalyptic to the people of the time. It makes me skeptical.
*I function quite well in society and do not live with my parents.
Bloke I know who usually goes around the city in bare feet, no matter what the weather or the season, was wearing gumboots today. Yes, I know it’s winter here right now, but that was a heck of a shock. Definitely a sign of some sort of cosmic burping …
People gong back hudreds (if not more) have been waiting for the Apocalypse and will not come for them until their death. The way that the New Testament describes it could not happen. In their day they thought the earth was the center of the universe. They didn’t know there are many stars and that our sun is the only one in our solar system. If our sun even came a short distance closer to earth it would burn up. Our Planet is suitable for humans because of its relativity to the sun. They did not know the earth was round and so talked of the 4 corners of earth.
Maybe not the ‘Apocalypse’, per se, but I do kind of think that all Hell is going to break out during my lifetime. Chain reactions of disasters, even. Whether or not you think it is caused by human intervention, the climate does look like it it is changing, and the climate changes of the past have frequently caused droughts, floods, mass population shifts leading to wars, plagues and other nasty consequences. Add all the nuclear weapons around the globe to this. IMHO, there is a mighty shit storm on the horizion.
Global warming could and probably will lead to some pretty bad times in the near future. Couple this with nuclear proliferation, shrinking oil supplies, a collapsing U.S. economy, and maybe an influenza pandemic and you don’t have to be a Conspiracy theorist to see bleak times ahead. However the future has a tendancy not to conform to our expectations.
I’d guess the OP is referring to a generic Apocalypse, not the official Christian one. My guess is that there will be serious disruptions. On the other hand, I grew up under the shadow of the bomb, and whatever we forecast now is better than what could have happened then.
Now if would only hold off until I was either dead or too senile to care, I’d be grateful.
Short answer: yes. But I’m stretching the term “impending”.
End of mankind: The average “lifespan” of a species is approximately a few million years. Homo sapiens has been around about 200,000. Including factors like epidemics, supervolcanos, large metoer strikes, possible loss of polarity of the earth resulting in deadly radiation, abnormally large solar flares, loss of survival-skills, changes in atmospheric conditions, superhurricanes, massive ejections of noxious gases from undersea fissures, etc., we don’t really have all that good of a chance of making it.
End of the world: not until looooong after we are gone. Approximately 5 billion years.
Definitely yes! Only because I’d like to see it before I die. I think experiencing the Apocalypse would be cool, you know, before the whole death thing.
Then again, I’ve always been fascinated by the genre of post-apocalyptic stories that are out there. It started when I read The Girl Who Owned a City in like second grade, and just went on from there. I loved The Stand. And post-apocalyptic video games are the best.
Things do seem to be getting a little crazier, but I could be mistaking “Crazy” for “stupid.”
I’m not sure whether we’ll have an apocalypse shortly or not, but I am definitely not convinced by the argument that current predictions of apolcalypse must be inaccurate because past predictions of apocalypse were inaccurate. By definition, there’s at most one point int human history where predictions of imminent apocalypse are correct. All previous predictions must have been incorrect. Therefore, if the apocalypse does actually occur at some point, skeptics directly prior to that point will still be assuring themselves that the world is safe because previous prophecies of doom were wildly inaccurate. On this one case, the prophets will prove to be correct.
The world as we know it is perfectly safe. It can not, and will not end until the Saints are up by 10 points, have the ball first and goal, and the AFC Champions have no time outs remaining with 3 seconds left in the 4th Quarter of the Superbowl. At that precise instant, BOOM!