2012...what's really going to happen?!?
 

Now, for those of you that dont know, there has been MAJOR HYPE on the 2012 topic. Just google "2012" and you'll find a zillion responses. People all over the world have been discussing this.

So, i want everyone to post something that will DEFINITELY and scientifically HAPPEN in 2012..

The reason I'm making this thread is for us to find out through discussing what will REALLY HAPPEN, and learn new fact's from one another. And how we can organize as a people..because we all know that government is going to help us.

To name a couple I'll start...

1. An unkown "planet" (nibiru, planet X) is heading towards earth.

http://www.timecube.com/

ask this guy

thread over

Olympic Games in London ? :D

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/433_Eros
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoame...Count_calendar

Only the first one has a rational chance of being a threat, but I believe the scientists that say it won't come close enough to hit us.

2012 is when the priests of Syrinx take over society.
For one hundred years...until 2112.

US elections again? :p

...there will be 29 days in February?

The end time according to Mayan belief, or alternatively a new beginning with or without humans. Course they also believed in human sacrifice to end a drought.

2012 marks the end of the thirteenth B'ak'tun cycle in the Mayan Long Count Calendar. The Mayans had a slew of calendars, kinda like how we have the Lunar and Solar calendars in addition to the current widely used Gregorian Calendar. You could even include a week calendar in there as the Mayan calendars are basically different scales and ranges. So the end reached in 2012 is basically analogous to the end of the 2008 calendar this year. In fact the end of the thirteenth B'ak'tun marks the start of the fourteenth.

All the 2012 end of times stuff is just the latest apocalypse bull. There have been plenty before and plenty yet to come.
Here's a fun page: 220 Dates for the End of The World

Nibiru and Planet X are equally dubious. Or are you Poe-ing me here?

All you need to know:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012

im pretty sure he wants things thaat are supposed to end the world.......oh wait good point photek :rolleyes:

I heard something about the magnetic-sphere will lose all its power around 2012 and the poles will shift. During this time we will have crazy amount of tsunami's, volcano's erupting (yellowstone - super volcano), sea levels getting higher, skin cancer rates raising because the magnetic-sphere wouldn't be blocking the sun through layers to protect us from the UV.

Planet X and 433 Eros have missed the Earth, passing by without incident. Despite initial fears, the LHC has been running smoothly, notably not having destroyed the Earth. Memories of the recession of 2008-2010 are fading. Tensions in the world have eased after four years of a more enlightened US foreign policy. Apple market share is approaching 80%, and Bill Gates is selling discount shoes.

Heady times indeed.

Until the fateful day when Chuck Norris buys a Mac and starts a thread at forums.macosxhints.com that Mikey-San responds to. There is no town, room or thread in all of cyber- or physical- space that is big enough for both Chuck Norris and Mikey-San. The thread collapses under the strain and the resulting singularity goes on to consume the Earth and the universe, even /dev/null. And just like that, all that we know, ceases to be. In the year two thousand. And twelve.

Americans will still be driving SUVs and wondering why energy costs are high.

Do you get any of your information from scientific sites, or just the ones that are pre-occupied with perpetual motion?

zombies!

I am prepared are you?

i call shotgun on....well the shotgun

Can you even buy a shotgun in the UK? If the zombies hit your island you are left with blunt objects. Sucks for you!

Now, I have a a few guns, some ammo, canned goods, first aid kit, and escape routes out of the city. I would say that my chances, while not guaranteed, are higher than most people in the even of a zombie apocalypse.

After the magnetic shift, all electric motors and watches will run backward. Time will move in reverse.

The long anticipated great earthquake in California will occur, separating California from the rest of the North American continent. The Isle of California will survive, while the rest of the continent slips under the waves. Atlantis will reappear.

Christmas sales for 2012 will be significantly slowed.

President Elect Sarah Palin will press to assume office early... wink, wink.

Totally Offtopic:
Sarah Palin is Parah Salin'!

It is the end of times!

I think the answer is obvious. in 2012 the entire Mayan civilization will disappear mysteriously.

errrr... wait a sec... maybe it will mysteriously reappear???

actually, having just read that wikipedia page, I changed my mind. On December 31 of 2012, the Kyoto protocol expires. the resulting frenzy as corporations try to make up for 15 years of lost productivity due to greenhouse restrictions will poison the atmosphere overnight, rendering the world uninhabitable by January 1st.

Sad thing is, that one's almost believable...

I tried to make it through the Time Cube page, but I got stuck at 'The Physics of Santa Claus'. there are just some things that are beyond my meager mental abilities.

.
Error 2012 – The Server has encountered a Network Error. Often repeated every few minutes. A Microsoft article Q195641 suggests changing the IPX MaxPktSize from 240 to 0 within the registry.
:cool:

Well, not that smoothly. Gas leak shuts LHC for two months

Destruction of Earth delayed due to technical difficulties :rolleyes:.

saved by our own incompetence. how typically human. :)

facts people facts!

I'm graduating in '12?

I'm a little confused. You're asking for 'facts' on a 2012 apocalypse?

that settles it.....we're screwed :confused:

Tom, I immediately thought of the Talking Heads when I read that. :D

some nice thoughts on the 'zombie apocalypse'. lol

eh, all you need for the Zombie Apocalypse is a good stock of beer. fry your brain, and they lose interest.

come to think of it, that works pretty well for most apocalypses. let's all toast whatever the next big thing in evolution turns out to be. :D

We have to critically, and collectively make up a rational conclusion of what WILL HAPPEN. If the earth will scientifically stop moving...WHY? Will the government use this as a scare tactic to take away more of our rights? Think of anything else that will be happening on 2012 and let's figure it out guys!!

Well, if you're really serious about world destruction.

-Antibiotic resistant disease kills one third of the earth's population before we can find and distribute a vaccine.

-Tensions among nations rise setting the stage for WWIII, leading ultimately to a nuclear exchange.

-Continued accumulation of wealth and power in the hands of a few leads to social upheaval and revolution throughout the world. A new order will be the end result.

-First contact is made with an alien species... and they don't like us.

-A computer virus (or the magnetic shift) destroys all data on all computer systems worldwide. There are no paper backups. Complete worldwide chaos.

The most likely is "none of the above."

Rational? Nothing will happen, life goes on as usual.
We look back at this old post and make fun of you for getting caught up in a viral marketing gimmick.

:D

We can make some reasonably accurate predictions:

Four years from now, humans will have consumed approximately 120 Billion barrels of oil out of the estimated 1 Trillion barrels left in the world. That's more than 10% of all current reserves that will be gone in just four years! This percentage could be higher or lower, depending on who is President and how much really remains, but we can be sure that if we aren't well on our way towards using alternative energy sources in 2012, there will be massive economic repercussions.

Four years from now, many more baby boomers will be looking to retire, which means that the S.S. system will really begin to feel the strain.

Current world production of oil is ~48 million barrels per day which translates to ~17.5 billion barrels per year. That's 70 billion barrels in four years by my calculations. With ~1.1 trillion barrels of proven reserves, that gives us roughly 63 years before we run out of oil. People are way too short-sighted for a 59 year horizon to have a significant effect on the economy. The economy may be in crappy condition still in four years, but it won't be because of speculation on oil reserves or lack thereof.

There is one "fact" that I am confident of, however. In four years, there will be a new "2012" for the apocalyptic crackpot conspiracy theorists of the world to rally around: "We weren't wrong about 2012 - our calculations of the Bible Code were just off by a four years! 2016! 2016! The world will end in 2016!"

Actually.... isn't Windows7 scheduled for release in 2012 ?

weeeeeelllll... two minor points. (1) oil consumption is constantly increasing, so the real figure is probably somewhere between 70 billion and 120 billion. (2) Oil depletion problems will begin to occur long before reserves are exhausted. it's not like things are going to go along fine until the wells suddenly all run dry. once some critical point is passed, you'll see skyrocketing prices, hoarding, probably even warfare as countries and corporations try to grab hold of as much of the dwindling supply as they can. heck, you're already seeing the beginnings of that in the Iraq war, and it's likely to get much worse. I'd say 30-40 years before the violence peaks.

it's sad (and ironic) that we'll probably use up the last of the oil reserves trying to kill each other over the last of the oil reserves. but then it's sad (and ironic) that we waste so much of what the dinosaurs left to use making little plastic dinosaurs. :rolleyes:

hey, maybe that's it. Microsoft will accidentally reinstate the year 2000 bug, and all the world's computers will die before they can create a patch.

where theres a will theres a way....and im pretty sure if i went to the rough areas i could find a double barrel

err what now?

As seen on Digg (and a dozen other sites):
http://img385.imageshack.us/img385/7...ling221oy7.jpg

geez, now all we need to do is find a picture of Farrah Fawcett-Majors on a boat (Farrah whalin') and we'll be set.

(1) I don't think that demand for oil is going to continue to grow. I think that it is going to start to plateau as environmental movements continue to push for greener policies from governments. Many governments are talking about cutting emissions by 50-80% by 2020. Even if they only achieve half of their goals, it will still have a significant impact on oil consumption. Even allowing a constant growth in demand (production increased by 14% from 2000 to 2008), the timeline is still out by 40 years (again too far off for the short-sighted nature of the world markets).

(2) You may be right about violence peaking in 30 to 40 years. I have more faith in human ingenuity, however. I think that the push for environmental concerns will continue to drive us to seek out alternative energy. Perhaps ITER and DEMO will pave the way away from fossil fuels. Or perhaps it will be other technologies. I am confident they will emerge, however, as necessity is the mother of invention - and what a tough mother she is!

You forget that only part of oil consumption goes to energy. Plastic products, rubber products, lubricants and bases, things like vinyl and latex, all sorts of things that you wouldn't expect (like certain kinds of medicine that are synthesized from organic compounds). your average car is probably 20% (by volume) organic synthetics with an empty fuel tank. even if companies start working towards cleaner energy sources, they will still put a tremendous drain on fossil reserves. our lives would get pretty bare without organic chemistry (and from the look of that list above, our sex lives would get hit hardest - lol).

I hope you're right. :) that's a classic debate, you know: paranoid conservationists vs. techno-theosophists. :rolleyes:

Where do you get 48 million bpd? The US uses around 21 million bpd, and is estimated to consume about 25% of production. That would put world production/consumption at 84 million bpd, cutting your 63 year supply almost in half.

Wikipedia. I didn't see a reference for your numbers, so I grabbed my own. I wasn't intending to debate the number so much as point out that it is a relatively long timeline in comparison to the factors that typically dominate market fluctuations in the short-term. I don't see the impending drought of oil affecting the market any more in four years than it currently does.

There's a reason wikipedia is blocked on our school network... *cough*

I haven't forgotten anything. In 1828, Friedrich Woehler synthesized urea from ammonia and cyanic acid. This was the first time an organic compound had been synthesized from inorganic compounds. Since then, we have refined the process to be able to produce a wide variety of synthetic organic compounds from inorganic compounds. For example, synthetic motor oil is not made from petroleum products.

The reason we do not produce everything from synthetic organic compounds is a simple matter of economics. Energy is required to produce synthetic organic compounds. That energy must come from somewhere. For most of the world, that somewhere is petroleum and coal. So, why not just use the petroleum directly?

In the case of fusion and alternative energy source, the original source of the energy is not petroleum based. Consider that a working fusion reactor should be able to produce energy cheaply (note that I emphasize working - no one has gotten to that point yet). Cheap energy makes synthetics much more viable.

I am not publishing a paper based on Wikipedia articles. I was simply looking for some quick number from which to do a calculation. The point is the order of magnitude, not the specific number. I still maintain thatWikipedia is a good starting point from which to do research. Just don't take it too seriously (which I wasn't trying to do).

In that case I would argue that 35 and 70 years are both short enough to have devastating consequences as more people become aware of the certainty that oil is running out and the increasing speed at which it is doing so. Free markets are based on the idea that increased production reduces cost, but we aren't producing oil. We're just pulling it out of the ground. As we pull it out faster, what's left becomes more valuable at a faster rate, and the more we pull out of the ground, the harder it becomes to get at what remains.

Every day that goes by is another day closer to when it will cost more energy to get a barrel of oil than the energy contained in the barrel. We're already close to that day.

Look at it this way: Iran isn't interested in Nuclear power just to piss off America. They're running out of oil and they know it. It won't be long before other oil producers come to the same conclusion.

has anyone mentioned earth will become incredibly prone to the sun once the magnetic sphere weakens tremendously?

Only you. The magnetosphere isn't going anywhere any time soon.

How about the '23' theory?
Like the world is going to end in 2012 because 20+1+2=23. That is based on the thing that 2/3 is .666, which is the 'evil number'. That and the fact that 23 appears a lot in our history and stuff(link). And there are a whole lot more things that add up to 23 that you could prob find online such as 9/11, Hitler's death, etc. Then again, you could probably do that with a whole lot of other numbers ;)

Or 2+0+1+2=5 ... 5th letter of the alphabet is E, which stands for End.

hmm,
"/Applications" > "Calculator.app"
"View" > "Decimal Places" > "3"
"2" ÷ "3"

I get 0.667

Hooray, we're saved!

...and Calculator.app actually gets something right for a change.

Well, technically 2/3 is .666666666666666666666 to infinity. It's just rounded as .667 ;)

Right, but last I checked 666 was the number of the beast - not .666 or .66666.... In fact, I doubt they use a decimal point anywhere in the Bible!

well, that just means there are going to be an infinite number of beasts; one for each triplet.

I'm constantly amazed at how easy it is to make anything mean anything...

well, speaking purely in patterns:

• the sun is currently at it's lowest ebb of sunspot activity (nothing comparable since 'the little ice age'
• we're about due for a shift in magnetic poles (which happens fairly regularly). no telling what that will do to the magnetosphere
• we're about due for another supervolcano erruption from yellowstone (which also happen fairly regularly)

Our best bet, it seems, would be that the supervolcano erupts just as the magnetic poles shift and the suns radiant output drops. the clouds of ash and greenhouse gasses from the volcano should keep in the heat from the diminished solar output while simultaneously protecting us from the radiation that slips through the weakened magnetosphere. of course, it will be like visiting Satan's own health spa...

the magneticsphere is actually losing its power. So get ready for when the solar flares from the sun begin, it will most definitley affect earth. who wants some earthquakes? some tsunamies maybe? how about YOSEMITE super volcano erupting and contaminating the air for half of america. :)

Won't that kill the dinosaurs?

I am comforted that Nostradamus has predictions that extend past 2012. And, the Social Security Trust Fund will last until 2040.... no way Congress would let us expire with money left over.

well, there you go. an argument that actually makes sense. :D

After a while, amazed transforms into dumbfounded :p

Geomagnetic reversals occur on a scale of thousands to millions of years apart. They don't happen regularly at all. They are very irregular - no pattern of occurrence has been discerned from geological records. Saying that we are about due for a geomagnetic shift is like saying that the Pacific Rim is due for an earthquake - yes, it will happen, but good luck predicting when it will happen! The point also applies to supervolcano erruptions being called "regular".

The decrease in the Earth's magnetic field over the past 2000 years has been fairly steady, which leads many to believe that we are heading towards a geomagnetic shift. According to this thinking, the shift will occur in approximately 2000 years. However, there is also evidence that geomagnetic excursions happen on a frequent basis (more frequently than reversals). The rate of decline and the current strength of the magnetic field are still within normal variation since the last reversal. Thus, what we are witnessing could be normal variation, an excursion, or a reversal. Given the predictions by geoscientists that put a reversal out by around 2000 years, I am confident in saying that the magnetosphere is not going anywhere.

A few links on the subject, posting in order of increasing academic reputability:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/12/sc...rtner=USERLAND
http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/que...php?number=523
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/j...TRY=1&SRETRY=0

Unless you have an account through your academic institution or workplace, you will only be able to read the abstract of this last one - that should be sufficient to get the gist of it, however.

Yes, but the first one will be 1/100th of full size, the next 1/100000th, and so on...! Not nearly as scary. Although the one which is 1/10^666 might be... of course, since that's really 10^-666, it means it'll actually be good, not evil! :D

ugh. how dare you contradict my speculations with mere facts! :D

the fact is that earth is heating up. We dont need to be manipulated by al gore's film that claims that we have caused the problem to earth heating up..we have probably 10% to do with it honestly....The rest is just a natural cycle of earth...NATURAL

LOL! Right! Well over six Billion people, with literally billions of machines burning over 30 Billion barrels of oil per year, with the affects accumulating every year, and it's the natural cycle that takes precedence! :eek:

Edit:
Oh, and let's not forget the billions of tons of coal that is burnt in plants that are NOT clean. Add to all this massive deforestation, overfishing the oceans, and millions of square miles of blacktop covering the earth and absorbing sunlight that would have been reflected back into space. Yet somehow, it's just a coincidence that the earth is naturally warming. :rolleyes:

no offense to these people or anyone who follows this religion... thats just a head up to what i am about to say. in the infomus 2012 when the world is suppose to end and everyone is still alive the christian community will be wondering why everyone is still alive and the world has not ended yet. Along with the fact that several people think this actually might happen. If thats the case then wow, you do not know whats going to happen 4 years from now. like i said no offense to the christian community or people who believe that the world might end in 2012 or any other organizations or communities that i might be offending

yes, and the other 90% has to do with the decline of pirates in the world. however, if we all eat nothing except pasta from now until 2013, the all-powerful Flying Spaghetti Monster will have mercy on us. :D

well the heating up of the earth explains why there have been ice ages.

The planet does heat and cool, but that generally happens over long periods of time, not mere decades. What's more, the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere tend to closely match temperature changes, and we've already increased CO2 to levels beyond those in previous warming periods.

Even if you don't want to conclude that the planet warming is due primarily to our actions, it's an inescapable conclusion that we're contributing to it. If we assume for the moment that warming is primarily due to natural cycles, we still must reverse our course because global warming will be devastating for humans. We need to push the climate in the opposite direction from the one we're pushing now, no matter what the cause.

The world ending (or the Second Coming of Christ) on Dec 21, 2012 is not a Christian belief any more than Y2K was. Since religion is a taboo subject on this forum, I'll stop there.

Palin As President <-- click, click. ;)
[click anything that gets a pointy cursor at least once]

-HI-

Quoted for truth. thepeople, if you are going to make generalizations about the Christian community (or any religious community for that matter), it would do you well to do some research on the subject first. If you had, you would have discovered that NONE of the world's major religions propose that the world will end in 2012.

The fact is that you keep jumping from one melodramatic doomsday topic to the next. What is your game here? Are you really this panicky, or are you just having a little fun seeing what kind of speculation and debate you can prompt with such overhyped assertions?

Now that's funny! Joe the Chair cracks me up.

That is pretty entertaining! At the bottom it says updated daily, so I think I'll be checking back to see what else they come up with!

2012... wasn't that a Rush album?
No wait (oops), that was 2112. :)

you guys just have to look at the facts. you cannot just assume something like that will happen..but fact fact facts are everything. Now for the Rush album 2112...i did hear some things that an astronomy teacher said, i forgot the details..but i remember he was saying he isnt as worried about 2012..but 2112 is something more to fear...

Are you being serious...?

(I'm too lazy to read the last 5 pages.)

I'll be pushing 170 years of age when 2112 rolls around. I choose not to worry about it.

I'll be sure to tell my great-great-great-grandchildren to watch out for 2112.