End of the world?

[mythrealwriter]

Ok, I've heard a lot of things about how the world is going to end and when, I used to know a guy who said that the world was going to end in the year 2000, ok, well 2000 has come and gone, it was gone five years ago, nothing unusual there, I read an article in achristian magazine (can't remember the name unfortunatly) about a guy who convinced 2000+ people that the world was going to end in the year 1999 huh, well it hasn't ended as far as I know. I have another friend who believes that instead of ending the world is going to experiance a 'magical upheaval' where in the year 2012 all human beings are going to revert to their magic counterparts, a tall slim graceful human might become an elf, a short stocky human might become and dwarf and so on. What I want to know is what are your theories as to when and how the earth is going to end.

[Gullible Jones]

I have another friend who believes that instead of ending the world is going to experiance a 'magical upheaval' where in the year 2012 all human beings are going to revert to their magic counterparts, a tall slim graceful human might become an elf, a short stocky human might become and dwarf and so on.

Whoah. I know not what to say... :o

[TravisM]

:-? :o 8-[

[Frog march]

I'm tall AND stocky, what will I become?

[Captain Kidd]

I'm tall AND stocky, what will I become?
Orc?

[Maksutov]

mythrealwriter, what part of California is Northfield located in? I couldn't find it using MapQuest.

Or are you in Texas? Or IL, MN, NJ, CT (!), KY, MA, ME, NH, or OH? :D

[Sock puppet]

I have another friend who believes that instead of ending the world is going to experiance a 'magical upheaval' where in the year 2012 all human beings are going to revert to their magic counterparts, a tall slim graceful human might become an elf, a short stocky human might become and dwarf and so on. What I want to know is what are your theories as to when and how the earth is going to end.
SHADOWRUN! I loved that game when I was a kid. Actually believing it though, sheesh. :o
BTW, what do you mean by "earth is going to end"? Do you mean the extinction of humanity? Extinction of all life on earth? The physical destruction of the planet? Or any of a dozen others?

edited because I can't spell "dozen" on my first try.

[Messenger]

The Bible has a line in it that states that "no man knoweth the day" that the end will come. My sister and I have a joke that any day someone declares "the end of the world" we can assume will definitely not be the day. It's confusing how many people who claim to be Christian ignore that part of the Bible.

[Frog march]

The Bible has a line in it that states that "no man knoweth the day" that the end will come. My sister and I have a joke that any day someone declares "the end of the world" we can assume will definitely not be the day. It's confusing how many people who claim to be Christian ignore that part of the Bible.


But it says "knoweth", not "guessuth, because one is a nut,".

.

[Messenger]

:lol: True enough.[/b]

[TriangleMan]

SHADOWRUN! I loved that game when I was a kid. Actually believing it though, sheesh.
That was exactly what I thought when reading it. I loved Shadowrun as well, but in that game didn't the transformation happen in 2018? Anyway, I would be interested in seeing the evidence that supports the notion that were going to become elves . . . etc in 2012 because otherwise it sounds like someone needs to get away from the Shadowrun books.

[TriangleMan]

Sorry, back to the actual topic. Pollution and other human activities could cause severe environmental damage but I don't think it would cause a complete destruction of civilization (well, maybe if there was a big nuclear war . . .) In the near future we will be able to deal with small asteroids so it would have to be a massive one to wipe us out. This would occur long before the Sun increases in size.

[Manchurian Taikonaut]

You often get a lot of false idea, babbling and crackpots on this topic
there is much on the web
but there is also some rational debate

http://space.about.com/cs/asteroids/tp/nonficasteroid.htm
http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4433
http://www.thespacesite.com/community/index.php?showtopic=1381
http://www.surfingtheapocalypse.net/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?noframes;read=4815


A lot of talk on Comets, GRBs, Blackholes & Asteroids
Mankind can also be stupid take for instance Chernobyl
some major danger comes from Mother Earth... Volcano, Earthquakes, Tsunami....
very sad news about those people killed from the Tsunami

[Cougar]

The sun going out/exploding.
On a board dedicated to astronomy, it would be wise to be a little more accurate about this. The sun will neither go out nor explode. I expect what you meant to say is that the sun will go red giant, a rather long and complex process that will eventually turn earth into toast, so to speak.

[Cougar]

The Bible has a line in it....
Apocalyptic religions... what's up with that? Seems to me that's a pretty dysfunctional concept. Has certainly led to a lot of mass suicides, voluntary or otherwise.

On the other hand, "He drank the kool-aid" has become a popular expression of extreme gullibility.

[Messenger]

The idea of there being an end to the world is not in and of itself, unhealthy; this thread is an example of the concept existing, without being destructive.

However, it can be a terrifying prospect for some sensitive people; my daughter saw a disney movie when she was eight where a comet wiped out the dinosaurs, and was so terrified it took her months to get over it. Adults may not feel the same degree of fear, but many are concerned about it to the degree that they will build bomb shelters, talk about asteroids, etc. They may smoke like a chimney while they do it, scarfing back trans-fat laden foods, and deciding not to join a gym in the process, but they still do it. So I don't know if it is a control issue or a death issue, or merely a wish for security.

Religiously speaking, end of the world scenarios are common. As in science, most religions postulate an end to the world. Doomsday predictions are only dangerous when they are the primary reason for obedience to the religion (i.e. fear rather than love being the motivation), when they are used as a threat (you will languish with the unbelievers), and when active, physical participation is required in either staving off the end or bringing it about. For most religions, end of the world conflicts are spiritual, not physical conflicts. For some experts, this last point is the crucial one in determining whether or not one is dealing with a cult.

An excellent site in looking at the role of end-times scenarios in religion is religioustolerance.org. It has a number of essays, and overviews of various groups.

[Frog march]

People talk about getting started on having bases on Mars etc so that mankind can survive a world disaster.

But I thought that it would be easier and cheaper to build a base on this planet.
You could build a whole city which could, in the event of a catastrophe, pull up the drawbridge, seal itself off and then survive nuclear wars, deadly viruses, massive volcanoes, meteor impacts that blot out the sun etc
The city/s could be sealable, self contained( in energy and food) structures that were part of the world with people coming and going, just that they had the ability to seal themselves off from the environment "outside".

far cheaper and more likely to happen than going to mars(in the immediate future).

[papageno]

People talk about getting started on having bases on Mars etc so that mankind can survive a world disaster.

But I thought that it would be easier and cheaper to build a base on this planet.
You could build a whole city which could, in the event of a catastrophe, pull up the drawbridge, seal itself off and then survive nuclear wars, deadly viruses, massive volcanoes, meteor impacts that blot out the sun etc
The city/s could be sealable, self contained( in energy and food) structures that were part of the world with people coming and going, just that they had the ability to seal themselves off from the environment "outside".

far cheaper and more likely to happen than going to mars(in the immediate future).

I prefer spreading to other planets.
If a big honkin' asteroid hits the Earth, there not much we can do.

A self-contained city is an interesting idea, but how long can it last?

[Sock puppet]

I prefer spreading to other planets.
If a big honkin' asteroid hits the Earth, there not much we can do.

A self-contained city is an interesting idea, but how long can it last?

I also prefer the idea of spreading to other planets. But I don't think self contained cities on earth are a bad medium term idea, either. (Although if it were to be done, I think we'd want to have 2 or 3 at least. We'd look pretty silly if the civilization-destroying asteroid landed smack on top of the city).

As for how long a city can last- If it has:
A nuclear power plant (electricity for lighting, growing crops, water purification, carbon scrubbers?)
Water purification plant and associated water supply
Air filtration (possibly scrubbers?)
Enough space to grow crops, and food to keep the people going until crops are grown.
Medical supplies.
Sufficient size to support all the necessary specialists and avoid inbreeding, either now or in the immediate future

I see no reason why it wouldn't last the lifetime of the power plant(30+ years), barring misfortune.
Actually, that last one is not necessary for immediate survival. It would just give the survivors a head start on the way back to a large, technological civilization.

What have I left out? (there's bound to be plenty). What did I include (if anything) that is pointless, or could be done better or easier?

[LarryOldtimer]

Have to define what is meant by "end of the world". If it is the extinction, or near extinction of human life, then it could be relatively near. I saw recently that some scientists had determined that there is a mass extinction . . . 80% to 95% of species gone . . . on average of 62 million years, and it is 65 million years since the last mass extinction. No one has been able to figure out exact what causes these mass extinctions, but they have happened on a fairly regular cycle. Also, we don't know whether or not whatever happens would affect only the earth, or other planets as well. At my age, I am not going to worry about it a whole lot though. :wink:

[Frog march]

That young, are you? :wink:

[Sam5]

I have another friend who believes that instead of ending the world is going to experiance a 'magical upheaval' where in the year 2012....

I think the 2012 thing has something to do with the Mayan calendar rolling over to a new cycle. Someone made up a story about it and the internet picked it up and ran with it. But the Mayan calendar rolls over about every 600 years anyway.

[TriangleMan]

I have another friend who believes that instead of ending the world is going to experiance a 'magical upheaval' where in the year 2012....

I think the 2012 thing has something to do with the Mayan calendar rolling over to a new cycle. Someone made up a story about it and the internet picked it up and ran with it. But the Mayan calendar rolls over about every 600 years anyway.
That reminds me, Shadowrun timed it with a mesoamerican calendar as well so it still sounds like the person got the idea from a role-playing game.

[fossilnut2]

People talk about getting started on having bases on Mars etc so that mankind can survive a world disaster.

But I thought that it would be easier and cheaper to build a base on this planet.
You could build a whole city which could, in the event of a catastrophe, pull up the drawbridge, seal itself off and then survive nuclear wars, deadly viruses, massive volcanoes, meteor impacts that blot out the sun etc
The city/s could be sealable, self contained( in energy and food) structures that were part of the world with people coming and going, just that they had the ability to seal themselves off from the environment "outside".

far cheaper and more likely to happen than going to mars(in the immediate future).

I've always thought the same. There might be a cataclysmic activity but you want 'me' to build bases for 'you' elsewhere? Sorry, if I thought the threat imminent then I save my own children first...screw everything else. My children come first.

As per extinctions. I'm a geologist and paleontologist and can't think of any event in the last billion years that would have even come close to wiping out man in his present state. Killed billions? Yes. Wiped out humans...not even remotely. If a tenth of 1% of humans survive it's still more humans than were on the planet 10 thousand tears ago...there's so many permutation and scenarios for survival of small pockets of humans that anything short of 'the mother of all asteroids' hitting us just wouldn't do it. There's no internal forces that could do it. The Earth is too stable. It's unlikey that 'mother asteroid' will ever hit us..especially with less and less activity as our solar system ages. Perhaps some nearby super nova could steralize the planet but is that realistic? I don't know enough about the subject.

The end of the world (what does that mean?) No. The end of life. Absolutely no. The end of man. I don't see how.

[Swift]

As Sock Puppet asked, which "end" do you mean? Ok, I'll answer the three with my best, wild guesses

Extinction of humanity - Millions of years in the future. My guess is that in spite of our efforts, humans won't wipe themselves out. Over the next few thousand years we will spread out across the solar system and then the galaxy. Seeds of humanity will eventually be planted across a variety of planets across the galaxy. There they will separately evolve to the point, much in the future, that they won't be quite "human" any more. It becomes a question of what is the definition of "human".

Extinction of life on Earth and Physical Destruction of the planet - I suspect this will happen at about the same time, when the sun goes into its red giant phase. Life might snuff at a little before the planet itself does ("a little" in geological terms, which might be 100,000 to 1,000,000 years earlier); it depends on how quickly the sun changes. There is a small possiblity that in the billions of years before this happens that a large enough asteroid hit happens that all life is eliminated, but it would have to be large enough that the surface of the Earth is melted (such as the hit that created the moon).

[Frog march]

What about when schools are no longer able to teach evolution or even geology because it has been outlawed buy the then creationist run government.

science will decline, then technology and then they won't know how to look for oil fields or drill for them, then they wont know how to make the tools to drill for them even if they did know where to drill, power stations will explode because the government appointed inspectors all got 1 class degrees in "creationist science" and couldn't change the fuse in a plug.

and when they finally get back to witch burning.

that will be the end.

[Swift]

What about when schools are no longer able to teach evolution or even geology because it has been outlawed buy the then creationist run government.

science will decline, then technology and then they won't know how to look for oil fields or drill for them, then they wont know how to make the tools to drill for them even if they did know where to drill, power stations will explode because the government appointed inspectors all got 1 class degrees in "creationist science" and couldn't change the fuse in a plug.

and when they finally get back to witch burning.

that will be the end.
That will be the end of the United States as a technological power (and I don't argue with your implication that it could happen), but the rest of the world doesn't not seem to sufer from this nonsense. Not even close to End of The World.

[Human]

I voted "The sun going out/exploding", because that's what I have read most places.

[Messenger]

Assuming that we aren't hit by a colossal asteroid, or blow ourselves up, wouldn't evolution just keep ticking along? In the millions of years before the sun makes our planet uninhabitable, might we not have evolved into something that we wouldn't recognize as human? Will it even matter to us what happens to the planet?

I read a well-written but horrible fiction book about this recently; can't remember the name of it, but I was so depressed by the author's idea of what we would become. Basically, it was a de-evolution, to a less intelligent state.

[Dgennero]

Hard to vote, because I think (if "end of the world" means "end of the world as we know it") an advanced humanity or their successors might eventually just abandon (but not destroy) this planet and make it some kind of museum.

[Grey]

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Robert Frost

[Cougar]

Assuming that we aren't hit by a colossal asteroid, or blow ourselves up, wouldn't evolution just keep ticking along?
Yep.
In the millions of years before the sun makes our planet uninhabitable...
Of course, that's billions.
...might we not have evolved into something that we wouldn't recognize as human?
It's hard to say where evolution is going to go. But judging from the fact that only about 10 million years ago there was nothing even close to modern humans on this planet, it seems in the long term we can expect significant change. Look at how different the biosphere on this planet was just 65 million years ago. Yes, in 4 or 5 billion years, it seems certain that evolution will have gone somewhere.
Will it even matter to us what happens to the planet?
Well, it'll matter to somebody. Maybe by then we (or they) will have the technology to modify earth's orbit and avoid getting enveloped by the expanding red giant sun.

[Messenger]

You had to read this book. I think it was called Evolution, and if I wasn't so terribly lazy, I'd google it to be sure. The idea was that intelligence wasn't a given in evolution; we evolved to intelligence, but then humans de-evolved. We were virtually plants by the end. No, if there were something that cared, it was long gone...as I suggest we should be...

I would think, though, that as the sun changed, the nature of life on this planet would also; the plants will change, everything will change. We might as well go somewhere more Earth-like (as in this period), as opposed to staying here when the environment changes to something we would experience as utterly alien. Is there any reason to try to stay here?

[Frog march]

You had to read this book. I think it was called Evolution, and if I wasn't so terribly lazy, I'd google it to be sure. The idea was that intelligence wasn't a given in evolution; we evolved to intelligence, but then humans de-evolved. We were virtually plants by the end. No, if there were something that cared, it was long gone...as I suggest we should be...

I would think, though, that as the sun changed, the nature of life on this planet would also; the plants will change, everything will change. We might as well go somewhere more Earth-like (as in this period), as opposed to staying here when the environment changes to something we would experience as utterly alien. Is there any reason to try to stay here?

perhaps as people travel more and more around the world and experiece more of the sun, maybe the whole H.race will be black or at least brown as are the american indians.

[Russ]

People talk about getting started on having bases on Mars etc so that mankind can survive a world disaster.

But I thought that it would be easier and cheaper to build a base on this planet.
You could build a whole city which could, in the event of a catastrophe, pull up the drawbridge, seal itself off and then survive nuclear wars, deadly viruses, massive volcanoes, meteor impacts that blot out the sun etc
The city/s could be sealable, self contained( in energy and food) structures that were part of the world with people coming and going, just that they had the ability to seal themselves off from the environment "outside".

far cheaper and more likely to happen than going to mars(in the immediate future).

This has been tried on a small scale just outside Tucson, AZ. It is called Biosphere II. To date it has been successful in teaching us that we can't do self sustaining "closed" cities.

The goal of Biosphere II was to see if we could build a "city in a bottle" like we would need to travel to other stars, live on Mars, etc. It was a collosal flop. There is a site Biospherics.org (http://www.biospherics.org/) that paints a prettier than life picture of what happened but gives you the jist of it. ;)

[Frog march]

People talk about getting started on having bases on Mars etc so that mankind can survive a world disaster.

But I thought that it would be easier and cheaper to build a base on this planet.
You could build a whole city which could, in the event of a catastrophe, pull up the drawbridge, seal itself off and then survive nuclear wars, deadly viruses, massive volcanoes, meteor impacts that blot out the sun etc
The city/s could be sealable, self contained( in energy and food) structures that were part of the world with people coming and going, just that they had the ability to seal themselves off from the environment "outside".

far cheaper and more likely to happen than going to mars(in the immediate future).

This has been tried on a small scale just outside Tucson, AZ. It is called Biosphere II. To date it has been successful in teaching us that we can't do self sustaining "closed" cities.

The goal of Biosphere II was to see if we could build a "city in a bottle" like we would need to travel to other stars, live on Mars, etc. It was a collosal flop. There is a site Biospherics.org (http://www.biospherics.org/) that paints a prettier than life picture of what happened but gives you the jist of it. ;)


I saw a whole program of this, the concrete in the foundations absorbed a lot of the oxygen and other stuff..

but my point is, that if we cant do it here , we sure as heck ain't going to be able to do it on mars.....
It would cost about 10billion dollars just to get one bulldozer to mars, yet we have them all over the place on earth.

there would be advantages for making a citysphere on earth as opposed to mars. There is plenty of oxygen on Earth already, all you may need to do is filter it

[Psi-less]

I have another friend who believes that instead of ending the world is going to experiance a 'magical upheaval' where in the year 2012....

I think the 2012 thing has something to do with the Mayan calendar rolling over to a new cycle. Someone made up a story about it and the internet picked it up and ran with it. But the Mayan calendar rolls over about every 600 years anyway.

Somebody may have already caught this on the second page, but the Mayan long count calendar rolls over every 5125 years (give or take a partial day).

Psi-less

[kenneth rodman]

well we cant say the earth will end so to speak as an absolute. In 5 billion years or so the sun will expand into a red giant, its outer layers may or may not engulf the earth. either way though the oceans may boil off and the surface of the earth burned to a crisp, it may still exist. after the sun shinks and cools until it stops glowing, the earth may still be orbiting what was once its sun, a cold frozen planet forever locked in the gravitational dance with our sun. Still existing, but not the nice place it used to be to live on.

I think that the Sun will have the final say...We may be capable of ending our-own lives, but I doubt we can extinctify everything, everywhere on our planet...At least, I hope not!! 8-[ 8-[ 8-[ 8-[ 8-[ 8-[

[Ilya]

"End of the world" is far too imprecise a statement. It can mean:

1. End of the entire Universe
2. End of Sun and solar system
3. End of Earth (planet physically destroyed)
4. End of Earth's biosphere
5. End of human species
6. End of civilization

Most people would count global thermonuclear war as "end of the world", even though it could not possibly end all life on Earth, and almost certainly would leave enough humans alive to repopulate the planet within a few centuries.