2012 Prophecy

[RJM Corbet]

Does anyone have any thoughts on the subject?

 

[Vertigo]

I presume you are referring to the "Mayan prophecy". As I understand it the prophecy that the world would end in 2012 is an invention of the media. What the Maya believed is that it will be the end of a "cycle" of which we are in (or coming to the end of) the fourth. They did not see this as an apocalyptic thing but rather something to be celebrated:

"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

It seems to me it is more like the zodiac ages, as in the age of Aquarius and so on.

If you search around I think there has already been a thread or two discussing this, or maybe it might have been some topic drift on the 2012 film thread, I'm not too sure.

 

[J Riff]

No idea. I don't know how much credence to give any of the astrolgy-based theories.
The Great Pyramid illustrates this well: - was it a grain silo, or a magical place aimed at certain stars, so that the spirit of the Pharoah (or alien) could connect with the homeworld, or the gods, or something.
It's one or the other and I lean toward practicality. So 2012 is interesting, but will probably pass with no great disaster or polar-reversal or whatever is predicted- much like other predicted disasters, like all the computers breaking down in the year 2000.

 

[Cayal]

Does anyone have any thoughts on the subject?

The ink ran dry. End of thought.

 

[Dave]

The will be another Royal celebration, and possibly two. It will be a summer of sport in Europe. There will be disruptions in the world food supply. In the U.S. houses and businesses will go without electricity for a day. Governments will attempt to destroy freedom on the internet. A premier footballer will have an affair.

Did you mean that kind of thing? Keep it deliberately vague and ambiguous. The more vague and ambiguous the better; the more things you can then claim came true later. No one remembers those you got wrong anyhow.

 

[TheEndIsNigh]

It's all true I tell you, every word.

For it is foretold of the great nothingness to come. A darkness that will last for eternity and beyond. A time where time will not exist; an end of time.

"And there will come a time when darkness will descend to envelope the heavens and the Earth.
A time when the universe will shrink to nothing and be as though it never was.
A time when the universe is not.
A time of normality."






the TEIN Prophesies

Go: make peace with yourselves, in the short time we all have left.

 

[Dave]

For it is foretold of the great nothingness to come. A darkness that will last for eternity and beyond. A time where time will not exist; an end of time.

But that's what you told us last year!

 

[clovis-man]

All I know is that the "Rapture" didn't happen this month. So now I have to wait until after my next birthday in October.

Oh, wait. Maybe I was thinking of the "Raptor". That would be different. And much better.

 

[mosaix]

So 2012 is interesting, but will probably pass with no great disaster or polar-reversal or whatever is predicted- much like other predicted disasters, like all the computers breaking down in the year 2000.

The computers didn't break down in 2000, Riff because they were fixed in advance.

I was one of a team of 36 who spent the years 1997 to 1999 identifying and fixing over 800 priority A millennium-related bugs in a major telecom operators switch data collection system (there were over 1200 priority B and over 2000 priority C bugs).

The fact that 2000 passed without incident and that people believe that the whole thing was some kind of weirdo-related prediction is credit to thousands of computer professionals.

 

[Vertigo]

Yes I get a bit annoyed with that one too, Mosaix. Everyone says it was all hot air and "look nothing happened". And I just think, yeah, nothing happened because so many people (myself included as well) put so much effort in beforehand to make sure it didn't. It just belittles all the work that people put in to make sure it was an anti-climax!

The problem is if the mission is for nothing to happen then no credits anyone with the effort taken to ensure nothing happens

And, please... as I said in the second post of this thread, the 2012 prediction is not a prediction and never was one. It is a sensationalist myth created by the media. It is merely the end of a cycle in their mythology no more Armageddon than the end of the so called Age of Aquarius is/was/will be. There is nothing in the archeological evidenced to suggest they saw the end of a cycle like this as anything other than something to celebrate.

 

[Starbeast]

Some people still believe the mysterious tenth planet that orbits a dwarf star is still headed our way. They back this up with two things:​

1. The tenth planet that was discovered and made world news quite a while back (even I remembering reading about that in the newspaper and saw it on CNN), is surprisingly never mentioned again, anywhere (which has me wondering as well).​

2. The hugh (it is pretty big) observering station that was built in the anarctic to watch the southern sky (a perfect position to watch the approaching X planet).​

Checking on Planet X​

 

[RJM Corbet]

Now that one IS checkable, and I did check -- and its true! Very impressive, SB

 

[Chaoticheart]

In regards to the Y2K thing. The problem was only so widespread to begin with because the problem was ignored until the last minute. If they had swapped over to 4-digit dates back in the 70's there wouldn't have been any issue.

Granted they needed to conserve more space 'back in the day', but still, with even a little bit of common sense, they should've realized that down the road using the 2-digit system would bite them in the ass.

And @Vertigo, we can't say it isn't a prediction of the end of the world either. In Mayan belief, we live in the fourth world. So the assumption is, that at the end of the cycle the gods will create a new world. Whether this actually means the end of this one or not is unknown.

All we know is that it was time to be celebrated, which in no way eliminates the possibility that they believed the world would end. The fact is: we don't know what they genuinely believed, and we never will. As for 2012, we just have to wait and see.

 

[RJM Corbet]

No. It's a hoax. It was made by someone named 'nibirushock' and he admitted that it was a fake.

www.abovetopsecret.com

There are blank squares like that all over the place on Google Sky.

Another one bites the dust ...

 

[Dave]

There are blank squares like that all over the place on Google Sky.

Astronomers have a name for them, they are known as Clouds.

 

[Metryq]

In regards to the Y2K thing. The problem was only so widespread to begin with because the problem was ignored until the last minute.

My thoughts exactly, CH. I fully understand all the work that was done in a "panicked" last few months, but database admins had a couple decades, at least, to see this one coming.

I had to laugh at some of the absurd claims in the media—such as the property damage that might happen from lawn sprinklers turning on in the middle of the night (e.g. ice damage in northern states). Seriously, how many people have computer controlled lawn sprinklers? I've also heard the jokes about Linux or Java-based toasters, but again: how many toasters need an OS? The media really hyped Y2K into the Skynet judgment day and the coming of the terminators. "Your doorbell will try to kill you!" To think that the media actually pushed this kind of BS and, worse yet, there were masses of mouth-breathers who believed it.

 

[mosaix]

In regards to the Y2K thing. The problem was only so widespread to begin with because the problem was ignored until the last minute. If they had swapped over to 4-digit dates back in the 70's there wouldn't have been any issue.

Granted they needed to conserve more space 'back in the day', but still, with even a little bit of common sense, they should've realized that down the road using the 2-digit system would bite them in the ass.

Whilst the two digit year was a major problem, Chaotic it was by no means the only one associated with the millennium.

Should the year 2000 have been a leap year for instance?

Leap years occur in years exactly divisible by four, except for years ending in 00.

So far so good and many systems were set up on this basis i.e. 2000 not being a leap year but completely forgetting:

unless they are divisible by 400 in which case they are leap years.

 

[J Riff]

Oh well, the Y2K patch was a free download, and it kept techies employed, a good pseudo-hoax, there.
Meanwhile, the tenth planet story has been around a long time, and it was told to me as a story, not as SF.
There was a tenth planet, like this one. Humans came from there originally, managed to blow it up or wreck it. Now, Earth is doing the exact same things, all over again. This time, however... TBC.
Maybe this was originally simply somebody's plotline for a novel, back in ancient times.

 

[RJM Corbet]

Astronomers have a name for them, they are known as Clouds.

You get those blank 'uncharted' squares on Google Earth too, in some places. It does make you wonder what's there.

But you wouldn't be able to see some 'Planet X' on Google Sky anyway, if telescopes battle to. As mentioned in another thread there's no way of knowing anything about what you pick up on the web. You can't take anyone to court -- even if you can find out who it is. Anyone can register a username, open an e mail address.

The fakes are becoming a competition, a bit like the viruses -- and some of them are pretty good. But then, some folks are easily taken in by them, like me, for example, in the small hours of night

METRYQ: There's nothing more ridiculous than a toaster with a microchip, and they're everywhere ...

 

[Chaoticheart]

Oh well, the Y2K patch was a free download, and it kept techies employed, a good pseudo-hoax, there.
Meanwhile, the tenth planet story has been around a long time, and it was told to me as a story, not as SF.
There was a tenth planet, like this one. Humans came from there originally, managed to blow it up or wreck it. Now, Earth is doing the exact same things, all over again. This time, however... TBC.
Maybe this was originally simply somebody's plotline for a novel, back in ancient times.

Sounds like the plot to that Mission to Mars film (I think that's what it was called? - had Gary Sinese and Don Cheedle)