When will the end of the world come?

Great Debates
1

People has the practice of predicting the end of the world for ages. If you were to journey back to ancient civilisations like the maya, they had long predicted that the end of the world would arrive at december 21 or 23 year 2012 on their calendar. Even great seers like Nostradamus have predicted the end of the world himself, predicting a great catastrophe in 1999. Translators of his work then begin revising them and had new intepretions of what the prediction actually meant, which now many believe refers to the september 11 events.

All this sets me into thinking, why do mankind repeatly predicts the end of the world as if he really wants it to happened?Another recent memory were people predicting that the world would end at 06/06/06. Obviously, the mark of the beast. Maybe they expect an antichrist to be reborn at this date or something…

The future seems bleak to me. Is it just me, or is disasters becoming commonplace? i mean with all the recent wars like the iraq and isreal-lebanon conflict, not forgetting Kim Jong ll and his nuclear warheads blooming the way for a future nuclear holocaust with his firm stand on becoming a nuclear power.

Even mother nature does not smile upon us, with the tsunami that occured during boxing day recording a 9.0 on the richter scale and a estimated a death of 200,000++ strong. America was also not spared with its new orleans disaster caused by hurricane katrina.

The list is exhaustive, i could just rattle on if i wanted to. But, really? Are this signals from mother nature to make peace and to also conserve our environment?If not, what are the consequences?

2

[QUOTE=tgan3]
People has the practice of predicting the end of the world for ages. <snip>
The list is exhaustive, i could just rattle on if i wanted to. But, really? Are this signals from mother nature to make peace and to also conserve our environment?If not, what are the consequences?
[/QUOTE]

I don’t see this as a General Question, so let’s try Great Debates.

Moved, samclem GQ moderator

3

[QUOTE=tgan3]
People has the practice of predicting the end of the world for ages. If you were to journey back to ancient civilisations like the maya, they had long predicted that the end of the world would arrive at december 21 or 23 year 2012 on their calendar.
[/quote]

I doubt this is true.

I’m not sure what you are saying here. There is no evidence Nostradamus had any predictive ability beyond that of any of us who might choose to make a series of vague guesses about the future. You are correct that those who choose to do so have found ways to mould his vague comments to fit events.

Same reason people read horror stories. Gives you a thrill. Plus (from the point of view of the person making the prediction) it gives you attention, which many people crave.

Neither. It is not just you, many people feel this way. However, this has always been true, despite disasters not becoming more commonplace by any objective measure that I am aware of. It’s just selection bias. You are more aware of disasters happening now, while disasters in the past loom less large in your perception due to distance in time.

In the early part of last century there were two world wars that make both of the conflicts you mention look like hiccups at a firework display. Kim Jong’s a worry, no two ways about it, but in the latter part of the last century the two superpowers were in serious danger of annihilating one another. There’s nothing especially bad about now.

Other disasters have occurred of this magnitude since the Earth cooled.

No. There is no evidence that “mother nature” is sentient or sends us signals. The consequences of what?

4

[QUOTE=tgan3]
. . . the maya, they had long predicted that the end of the world would arrive at december 21 or 23 year 2012 on their calendar. Even great seers like Nostradamus have predicted the end of the world himself, predicting a great catastrophe in 1999.

. . .

The future seems bleak to me. Is it just me, or is disasters becoming commonplace? i mean with all the recent wars like the iraq and isreal-lebanon conflict, not forgetting Kim Jong ll and his nuclear warheads blooming the way for a future nuclear holocaust with his firm stand on becoming a nuclear power.

Even mother nature does not smile upon us, with the tsunami that occured during boxing day recording a 9.0 on the richter scale and a estimated a death of 200,000++ strong. America was also not spared with its new orleans disaster caused by hurricane katrina.

The list is exhaustive, i could just rattle on if i wanted to. But, really? Are this signals from mother nature to make peace and to also conserve our environment?If not, what are the consequences?
[/QUOTE]
The date of the Maya calendar is simply the date that it “rolls.” It is not actually a prediction of the end of the world, regardless what a few kooks might like to claim.

Nostradamus wrote bad poetry poorly predicting a few local events (with questionable accuracy) and no one who knows anything about him believes he predicted anything resembling the end of the world.

Tsunamis are the resut of movements in the Earth’s crust that are far beyond the powers of all of humanity to affect, so if “Mother Nature” is using earthquakes and tsunamis to warn us to straighten out our behavior, it is a wasted message.

Now, we probably should take note of the things that we have actually done that can cause the Earth to become inhospitable to humans, (pollution, destruction of the environment, exhaustion of non-renewable resources, global warming, etc,), and try to correct our behavior so that we do not, in fact, doom our descendants to an early die-off. However, the things that you have raised in your OP are not really relevant to the problems we actually face (and none of the predictions are actual or real).

5

By end of the world, I assume you mean something like: When will humanity die off. The World itself, sans life, will probably last at least 4 billion years more…IIRC thats when the sun will begin to expand and eventually swallow up the world. Life on the world will be long dead by then…probably less than a billion years from now.

Mankind? Gods know…I don’t. Unless we get off this rock and move out of this system, it will be sometime between now and then…probably closer to now than then. Say, a few million years max for humanity…barring a really big rock coming down and smashing everything flat, or the magnetic core going tits up and stopping, or the climate going completely around the bend Venus style, or…

I will say that we will probably be here as long as there is higher order life on the planet, as we are pretty versitile and adaptable…though we might fall fairly far back to our origins if things go bad.

-XT

6

[QUOTE=xtisme]
By end of the world, I assume you mean something like: When will humanity die off. The World itself, sans life, will probably last at least 4 billion years more…IIRC thats when the sun will begin to expand and eventually swallow up the world. Life on the world will be long dead by then…probably less than a billion years from now.

Mankind? Gods know…I don’t. Unless we get off this rock and move out of this system, it will be sometime between now and then…probably closer to now than then. Say, a few million years max for humanity…barring a really big rock coming down and smashing everything flat, or the magnetic core going tits up and stopping, or the climate going completely around the bend Venus style, or…

I will say that we will probably be here as long as there is higher order life on the planet, as we are pretty versitile and adaptable…though we might fall fairly far back to our origins if things go bad.

-XT
[/QUOTE]

The Bible says it will come “as a thief in the night,” at the “trumpet sound,” suddenly, and unexpectedly.

In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. 1 Corinthians 15:52

But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.
Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat? 2 Peter 3:10,12.[/SIZE]

But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. Matthew 24:36

But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father. Mark 13:32

Many men have claimed a date certain that came and went and I am fairly convinced that many more will be claimed with certainty that will come and pass and we (mankind) will remain to hear the last trump. All else is idle speculation.
The prophet that sets a date certain that comes and goes is a false prophet, i.e. No prophet at all!"

7

And what thief blows a trumpet, anyhow? That’s what I don’t get.

8

[QUOTE=tgan3]

The future seems bleak to me. Is it just me, or is disasters becoming commonplace? i mean with all the recent wars like the iraq and isreal-lebanon conflict, not forgetting Kim Jong ll and his nuclear warheads blooming the way for a future nuclear holocaust with his firm stand on becoming a nuclear power.

[/QUOTE]

How old are you? When I was 10, I got to listen to the Cuban Missile Crisis on the radio. Even a worst case scenario with North Korea is not going to be the end of the world (except for the unfortunates targeted). A massive nuclear war between us and the Russians would have been. By any measure I can think of, in terms of nuclear war we are a lot safer now than we were 45 years ago. My kids don’t practice hiding under desks.

If you look up a list of natural disasters, you’ll see earthquakes in China killed far more than the tsunami, and far, far more than Katarina. Famines killed large chunks of the population at regular intervals a few hundred years ago and more. We hear and see about disasters today we would never have known of when I was a kid, so things seem worse. They aren’t.

9

[QUOTE=Voyager]
How old are you? When I was 10, I got to listen to the Cuban Missile Crisis on the radio. Even a worst case scenario with North Korea is not going to be the end of the world (except for the unfortunates targeted). A massive nuclear war between us and the Russians would have been. By any measure I can think of, in terms of nuclear war we are a lot safer now than we were 45 years ago. My kids don’t practice hiding under desks.

If you look up a list of natural disasters, you’ll see earthquakes in China killed far more than the tsunami, and far, far more than Katarina. Famines killed large chunks of the population at regular intervals a few hundred years ago and more. We hear and see about disasters today we would never have known of when I was a kid, so things seem worse. They aren’t.
[/QUOTE]

If you would not mind that I would add that; we now have news that is world wide coming into our homes every minuet. Years ago we were lucky to get local news except when radio began broadcasting. It used to take a day or more just to hear when a president was elected. If one lived in town the news boys shouted out the headlines.

Monavis

10

[Quote=tgan3]
The future seems bleak to me. Is it just me, or is disasters becoming commonplace?
[/Quote]

and

The future’s so bleak I had to take off my shades.

As others have mentioned, there is nothing inherent in the Iraq conflict, or in North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons, that is even remotely likely to precipitate a worldwide nuclear holocaust. Who would be fighting who, what would they be fighting over, and how would this hypothetical conflict drag all the world’s nuclear-capable states into firing their arsenals at each other?

As for the rest, disasters that take human life may seem to be more common now for two reasons: better communications and more people around to be exposed to the risks of natural disaster.

There have been major earthquakes, massive volcanic eruptions and tsunamis in the region surrounding Indonesia for longer than humans have existed, and there is no particular reason why these events will not continue for a very long time to come. Several of these, with vast loss of life, occurred in an era when it took weeks to transmit information from one part of the world to another, and thus news of their occurrence lacked the immediacy provided by instantaneous video communication.

In the examples of the Gulf of Mexico hurricanes of 2005, if they had occurred even as little as 100 years ago, there would have been far fewer people settled on the coast in their paths, although the death toll in New Orleans would probably have been much higher due to no predictive ability. Also, 100 years ago the offshore petroleum and natural gas infrastructure that made up so much of the economic damage caused by the 2005 storms simply did not exist.

More people in harm’s way, better communication: IMO, those are the reasons for the OP’s perceptions.

11

[QUOTE=spingears]
The Bible says it will come “as a thief in the night,” at the “trumpet sound,” suddenly, and unexpectedly.

In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. 1 Corinthians 15:52

But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.
Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat? 2 Peter 3:10,12.[/SIZE]

But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. Matthew 24:36

But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father. Mark 13:32

Many men have claimed a date certain that came and went and I am fairly convinced that many more will be claimed with certainty that will come and pass and we (mankind) will remain to hear the last trump. All else is idle speculation.
The prophet that sets a date certain that comes and goes is a false prophet, i.e. No prophet at all!"
[/QUOTE]

Sounds like an asteroid hit on the earth to me.

12

Sadly, the end of the world is unlikely to come for some years yet. My Global-Scale 1920s-Style Death Ray Moonbase is still being debugged by the engineering department. Let this be a lesson to you: Never, ever let engineers unionize. It blows productivity straight to heck.

13

I expect the world to end when…

  1. I’m just about to climb into bed with Scarlett Johansson…or
  2. The day I win the jackpot on the Lottery
14

The world ended on October 22, 1844. Don’t you remember?

15

Maybe i should have explained myself better. The examples i used above like the tsunami and wars are those that may cause an instant impact for that particular country, for example its economy etc. However, what about scenarios which are slowly eradicating mankind? If not, maybe cause a radical change in how we live? What i am saying is not unfounded. Global warming is steadily on the rise and would cause certain species of animals to die out and disrupt the ecosystem and food chain. Deforestation is also increasing exponentially, and would also cause several ecosystem to fail, not mentioning the air quality we receive with lesser trees. For a fact, i know that government are trying to promote growing of trees through providing of seeds and campaigns etc, but third-word countries like indonesia have not shown any improvement. Farmers would just set fire to forests and farm until there is no more arable land left, sometimes resulting in desertification. And have anyone of you read the report about how seafood would be extinct 40 years later?? I MEAN 40 YEARS!! It isn’t a very long time and very well within my lifespan. Who would have thought the boundless ocean with a plentiful supply of marine life will die out someday?? Point proven.

16

“And the Chicago Cubs have just won the…”

SPLAT goes the asteroid.

As a White Sox fan, I’m OK with this–well, except for the everyone on Earth dying and all…

17

[QUOTE=spingears]
The Bible says it will come “as a thief in the night,” at the “trumpet sound,” suddenly, and unexpectedly.

In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. 1 Corinthians 15:52
[/QUOTE]

Eh…I find that rather boring, to be honest, since zombies are so easily dispatched. I do, however, tremble at the thought of the ancient, sleeping city of R’lyeh throwing open its doors to the warm world above the south Pacific waves…when the stars are right…

Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn

18

Cthulhu hasn’t been heard from since '97. I think the pollution got to him.

19

Fool! Plastic rings from six packs are no match for the might and power of the mighty Cthulhu.

My guess? He just turned his pillow over to get the ‘cool side.’ It could get annoying after 200 million years y’know (but thanks for the link, I’ll have to use “bloop” in everyday conversations more often).

20

I think this is a good time to provide a link to Exit Mundi just to see the various scenarios by which humanity, Earth, and the universe could meet their demise.