This week has been a busy one at Stately Spoilers Manor, what with ending one seasonal celebration, preparing for another and Young Zach rushing about asking where we keep the caltrops and high-caliber ammunition for when the zombies come. Though I don’t necessarily hold with the widespread rumors of the universe’s impending demise (and I still have no idea how Maya’s calendar got back from Terra Venture) I find it fascinating how strongly this thought process has taken hold. After all, imagining what COULD be on the horizon is always infinitely worse than facing the real future. Even as a mostly-rational, partially-educated grown-up with a 401k, there’s just that tiny ghost of a “What If?” trundling around the back of my lizard-brain, and I’ll admit to idly considering the question of what to do if any of these expectations of red skies and burning seas turn out to be true. (Find Ving Rhames and head for the mall tops the list, bee-tee-dubs…)
The MS-QOTD (pronounced “AIEEE!!!!”) knows that ancient calendars and hokey superstitions are no match for a good blaster at your side, asking: What do you think are the odds of an actual cataclysm at the end of that there Mayan Calendar thingy?
12 Comments
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I think the real question is what is going to be the next arbitrary doomsday date? This got tired for me after the millennium.
All i can say is that i made the perfect bet today: that the apocalypse will not happen. Either way, i come out tops!
Nothing better go wrong that is going to be my sons birthday. However if it does I will take the blame for my part in the impending Apocalypse.
According to Wikipedia, as a 30 year old, I have personally lived through 60+ well publicized predictions of the Apocalypse.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events
Ready to add another failed doomsday to the list.
I think the only real issues here are going to be the same kind of issues that cropped up around Y2K. Stupid people doing stupid things.
There have already been 12 b’ak’tuns that have ended, and December 21 is just the ending of the 13th.
Today is 12.19.19.17.18 according to the Mayan calendar (all of the numbers roll over to 0 except for the second from the right [the winal number] which goes back to 0 at 18). Tomorrow is 12.19.19.17.19 and Friday will be 13.0.0.0.0. It’s just a new “year” for that calendar.
Nil.
A-yup.
I’m going to be an optimist (or is it pessimist in this case?) and say about 100 to 1. Not very likely, but I try to keep an open mind.
I think it’s something like 155,000 out of, what, 7 billion? Usually.
It’s always the end of somebody’s world.
I just have to assume it was a miscalculation or mistranslation and move on with life. If it turns out the world does end, I’m not gonna be able to really complain, am I?
I haven’t personally done the research, but I’ve heard that the Mayan calendar didn’t account for leap year, so it actually should have ended something like 7 months ago…
So, no.