At this time last year, December 21 2012 seemed like a silly idea that wouldn’t be of any worry for a long time. Now suddenly it’s almost on us. This article will focus on past people’s predictions about the end of the world, and how silly they look in retrospect

3) Ronald Weinland, 2008. In his book titled 2008: God’s Final Witness, he predicted that the world would fall into its worst time in history, and the United States will not be able to function as an independent nation any more. A very bold statement for a prominent figure in the Church. What should be noted is that he specifically mentioned that the in the fall of 2008 is where the main collapse would happen. If you’re staying on top of this, you will remember that this is exactly when the economic crash began to take a downward turn. But the Church is notorious for making these kind of statements every few years, so they are bound to have a few predictions to appear true.

2) Y2K. Everyone knows about Y2K. The whole panic about computers worldwide becoming useless due to the millennium change. Granted, this worldwide ‘scare’ can’t be linked to one specific person, but it can be said with reasonable confidence that the majority of people at 11:59, December 31, 1999 felt a little bit nervous as they watched the big countdown clocks hit zero.

1) 6/6/06. About 6 years ago, some lunatics, for lack of a better word, somehow got the idea of the world ending on this date to spread like wildfire. Because the Devil’s number is 666, this was bound to pop up in end of the world talks. There mere idea of the number 666 is enough to bring out fear in some people. The fact that it is tied to the Number of the Beast has the effect on people. Granted this should have gone last in our list, because it was arguably the least exciting of the three. However it was still worth a mention due its quick, wildfire-like spread. These are just three of the many attempts at predicting the end of the world. Countless have tried, and clearly none have succeeded. Will someone finally guess right one of these days? We might not have to wait long.

There are only few cultures that have had the same cultural effect in our society as the Mayan civilization has. They were the harbingers that brought the many Central American civilizations together by creating a written language that can be understood throughout the region which brought about a unity in understanding for these people. They are also credited for largely influencing the arts and architecture of the classical period where they were recognized to have reached the peak of their culture. It could be argued that these concepts did not originate from the Mayans themselves, but it is widely accepted that the Mayans were the ones who developed these concepts to its fullest extent. They are also known for having created the most accurate calendar in its time as it had measured a year in time to exactly 365 days, which is only off by one day every four years or so. It is this very calendar that is considered to depict the end of days. The Mayan calendar, thought to be the most accurate calendar in its time, had clearly specified that at the year 2012, everything would end. They believed that in 2012, time would stop for humanity, as destruction and ruin would dawn on them.

This concept of end of days is deeply profound that must be taken very seriously. This is because at the height of their civilization, the Mayans had created some of the most modern forms of mathematical and astronomical ideas. The Mayan Calendar is the most poignant of them all. The Mayan Calendar has been accepted as having an almost uncannily prophetic power in seeing the movement of the stars and the planets. It has shown through many of its prophesized astronomical happenings that it is precise nature of the calendar. To the Mayans, their calendar is a tool that they use to chart not only the passing seasons or time. They also consider their calendars to be dictating the coming of great energy shifts. This celebration is used by their kings and shamans to prophesize the significance of the shifting energy and the meaning behind this phenomenon. Many have also pointed out that following the Mayan Calendar, it would seem that on December 21, 2012, the sun would be in zenith in Izapa, which marks the end of the Mayan Calendar. This phenomenon has also been considered the end of time, the end of the world. There are also a lot of other uses for the calendar that the Mayans used, such as to keep track of the energies that were around on specific days, To infer the energies of birth in the populace, to mark the celebration of holidays, for prophecy, and to divine the individual fates of people. The bases for these are actually very much aligned with the thought of charting and basic mathematical principles.

There really is something special in the Mayan Calendar and their culture. They have given so much, not only to their culture and civilization in their days, but also in our world today. Due to their precise charting of the sun, moon, and planets, we are able to correctly distinguish time, to a level of detail that could never have come to pass if we had otherwise forgotten the Mayans. They have allowed us to see that there is a cosmic pattern and it defines the prophetical rotations of our planet and galaxy. It had helped us create the basic tenets that define time in itself, and without it, the very prospect of time would be folly. They have contributed the concept of time to our society, and for that, they deserve to be considered as one of the most influential civilizations in history.

Does anyone truly want the world to end in 2012? Is it crazy to suggest that some people are actually hoping for the Mayan’s prophecy to come true? If so, why?

It might be due to their yearning for a change. It could be that they do not truly believe that the world will end, but nevertheless will undergo an enormous change. As mentioned countless times before on our website, the Mayan calendar never directly alludes to the fact that when the world ends, the Earth is actually turned into an apocalyptic wasteland. Despite this rather accepted model for the world after 2012, this has never been what the Mayans have believed.

So if the world doesn’t end, but undergoes a change, what kind of change will it be? Well last time this change happened thousands of years ago, it was a major climate change. Certainly an Ice Age is cause for a bit of panic, but to put it simply, it doesn’t make sense. What could cause the Earth’s climate to dip so suddenly down into an Ice Age level of climate?

As many of these possible 2012 scenario predictions end up, there is no way to tell to absolutely know what will happen. We can only speculate, and this is what makes the idea exciting. Nobody knows what will happen, no matter what your stance on the issue is.

December 21, 2012 isn’t the only date that has got people nervous in our history. Remember Y2K? The turn of the century, and many people believed that the computers would get confused about the new millennium, obviously being its first millennium change in the history of computers. In the middle of the 20th century, records of hospital patients were written as MM/DD/YY. This way ensured no confusion because it could only go from 0 to 99. But once it hit 2000, people realized that if you write a date as 03/24/01, this could refer to 1901 or 2001. So if computers were unable to differentiate between the two, it could crash.

Similar things could happen to banks – if you deposited 500 dollars in 1999 then withdrew it in 2001, would it have been in there for 2 years or negative 98 years? Interest charges would be chaotic, and the stock market would crumble. Thankfully, these doomsday predictions seemed to be based purely speculations.

Some thought that computers worldwide would crash, thus causing planes flying to the ground, ships crashing into rocks, and global communication devices being rendered useless. People around the world began buying into the hype, and they over prepared for a disaster. The result was nothing. Companies made the simple fix of changing the MM/DD/YY format to MM/DD/YYYY, and the world was saved.

The Mayans are no doubt among the most fascinating people to read about. Their advances in technology so far ahead of the rest of the world are still a mystery even today, and the purpose of their many inventions still remain unknown. We’ve comprised 10 interesting tidbits of information about the Mayans here, in order to better understand what they were all about.

10. Nobody knows how their culture vanished. Although some evidence points to climate issues such as a possible drough, for a civilization as advanced as the Mayayns, this seems unlikely.

9. They used somthing called sweat baths to “purify” their body. In modern day terms, these would be considered saunas.

8. Every day of the Mayan Calendar had a specific name for both boys and girls. Thus, parents followed this and named their children based off of the calendar.

7. The Mayans believed that December 21, 2012 would be the day that the inner cosmos reconnected to the outer cosmos. Due to this, the Sun will form a special position with the universe to form a ‘gateway’ for every soul on Earth. This was part of their idea of purification.

6. The Mayan calendar had different cycles. For example, the third and fourth cycle ended in fire and flood, respectively. The cycle we are currently in is predicted to end in earthquakes.

5. The Mayans had amazing artwork. Even today, it is still considered one of the most sophisticated and appreciated art forms in history. An example is shown below.

4. The Mayan’s deep understanding of astronomy is the reason why their calendars are so advanced. Their understanding of the position of stars led to the creation of their calendar.

3. As mentioned above, the Mayan’s artwork is incredible. But their best artwork comes in the form of architecture. A picture is worth a thousand words, so a photograph of a Mayan temple is shown below.

2. The Mayan civilization lasted for over 3500 years. As mentioned above, the reason for the collapse of their culture is unknown.

1. The Mayan form of sacrifice was to paint the victim blue and remove their heart while it was still beating. A priest would simply dig in with a knife by their left breast and reach inside to grab it.

The most fascinating piece of evidence behind the 2012 doomsday theories is the Mayan Calendar. For obvious reasons, people are excited by the idea that people living thousands of years ago were able to so accurately build calendars and create advanced architecture so far ahead of the rest of the world.

It is amazing that in 3114 BC the calendar began, and it ends in 2012. Such a long cycle, and the fact that it ends this year is enough to make people very interested to read what the Mayans are about.

The end of the Mayan Calendar this year does not specifically point to the end of the world, but more the end of a cycle. Obviously this can be easily interpreted as the end of the world, but it is still useful to note.

The end of a cycle. What does that mean? It could mean many things, and when it last happened over 5000 years ago, the Earth underwent severe climate changes. For anyone who likes to watch the news or read the newspaper, it isn’t difficult to find out that the world has quickly become a dangerous place. From natural disasters destroying nations to plane and cruise ship crashes, the end of the world doesn’t seem like such a distant idea.

With the seemingly exponential rise in such events over the last few years, it seems a bit of a reach to say the Mayans could have predicted this thousands of years ago. That’s true, but there is no denying that they held the year 2012 in significance and only time will tell if this had any grounds to it.

Everyone has heard about Nostradamus: the man who has supposedly predicted world wars and the rise of world leaders centuries before they occurred. One of his most famous predictions was about Adolf Hitler, and his eerily accurate description of him captured a lot of peoples’ attention.

Among his descriptions for Hitler was saying he would be born to poor parents, win over crowds with his personality, be a larger fighting force than their Eastern counterpart, and successfully trick a nation into supporting him. If it isn’t apparent yet, each one of the above descriptions matches Hitler perfectly. Too accurate to be chance, considering he made this prophecy centuries before Hitler was even born.

Among his other predictions include the 9/11 bombings in New York City, and his quatrain refers to the seventh month of 1999. Obviously he’s two years early, but changes in the calendar 400 years ago and today may be the reason for the discrepancy.

So how does this refer to 2012? Well judging by his past predictions of major events, simply writing his many predictions off as chance is out of the question. Swaying away from his original, more realistic predictions, Nostradamus adds black holes and gravitational waves into this round of prophecies. Apparently, ever couple thousand of years gravitational waves emit from a black hole and could potentially kill us all if they happen in 2012. Sound far-fetched? Understandable.

The man himself.

So it’s difficult to judge whether Nostradamus simply got lucky on his predictions and we are just blindly connecting them to past events, or he really did see something that everyone else could not.
Just over half a year remains until we see what will really happen, and if Nostradamus and the Mayans truly did foresee the end of the world.

I’m sure everyone has a bucket list. It doesn’t have to be a physical list, but more of a list of things that you have always wanted to does in your life.

Usually it consists of interesting, exciting things like skydiving that you’re not quite sure how to achieve, but you convince yourself to try it at least once.

If you have ever needed motivation to live life to the fullest, use the 2012 doomsday theories. You don’t have to believe the hype to transform the peoples’ fear into inspiration.

You can waste time worrying about whether an asteroid or a solar flare will somehow disintegrate the earth, or you can ignore the potentially inevitable and use the limited time to truly experience life.

Would you rather have your life come to end knowing you have truly lived up to its potential, or do you want to never experience the joys that life can give you.

Forget about asteroids and magnetic pole shifts for a second and realize that there is no point worrying. If it happens it happens, and if the world ends then nobody is better off than anybody else. Use the time to see what life can offer you.

Black holes have baffled scientists for over a century, and even today we are not completely certain on what they truly are. They do exist, yet the fact that they literally suck in all surrounding light makes it incredibly hard to discover more about them. Another problem exists in that even if a spacecraft were to investigate it, it would be sucked in an instant. Black holes are essentially a force of nature that is stronger than every other one. Gravity in black holes is so strong that at the center of it, it is literally at infinite gravity. A singularity is what it is called, and it is here where “the space time curvature becomes infinite.” Its density is infinite also, yet it has zero volume. The size of black holes, which is measured by its event horizon, is where the escape velocity is equal to the speed of light. In other words, it is at the point where not even light, the fasted particle in the universe, can escape. Black holes can be up to 20 billion times our solar mass, and the black hole at the center of our galaxy is said to be 10 billion times our solar mass. If a black hole were to somehow appear near Earth, our planet would be sucked in and crushed into a point the size of an atom within seconds.

So how does this relate to the end of the world?
Well it doesn’t, in a way. CERN, and the Large Hadron Collider, are at the forefront of disovering particles and the how the universe was created. Basically what happens is that two sub-atomic particles will race toward each other at nearly the speed of light, then collide. This is supposed to simulate the Big Bang, which in turn will give us clues on how the universe was created. Some people say that when these two particles collide, the result will be a miniature black hole. Leading physicists have said that if black holes were to form, they would only exist for “nano-nano-nano seconds.” In simpler terms, they would would appear then leave with no consequence.

So if the world does end in December 2012, then it will not be because of black holes. The probability of it occuring is so low that it is reported that you have a higher chance of meeting Elvis. Since that is from the mouth of a scientist, it would be wise to trust him. So rest assured, the end of the world resulting from a black hole is not in our future.

The past few years has seen the phrase ‘2012 is the end of the world’ casually passed around in conversation between friends, but not much more than that. Yes a movie did come out, but back in 2008 the year 2012 seemed like a lifetime away.

Now that it’s here and is about 9 months away from actually happening, will we start to see more coverage on the idea? We’ll see, but there’s no denying that when December 1st 2012 comes around the end will seem that much more real. If anything actually happens on the 21st of December is another question, but there’s no denying that the majority of people will have goosebumps on that day.

What makes the idea of the world ending so appealing?

It’s the unknown. The natural curiosity of humans take over and they yearn to know what will happen after the world ends. Would life cease to exist? Would the universe simply carry on without Earth, just have an empty space between Venus and Mars as if nothing had ever been there. Think about it for a moment. How much has the universe changed in the 4.5 billion years that Earth has been around? Yes it has expanded, but in the brief history of humans on the Earth has affected very little in the context of the entire universe.

It’s a fascinating thing to think about, and if 2012 does indeed spell the end of the world, its effect on the universe as a whole might well be insignificant.