Ends of the World
This is Steven Petrick posting.
The Mayan calendar is scheduled to run out this Friday, 21 Dec 2012. Some have taken this to be a sign that the Maya knew, somehow, that 21 Dec 2012 would be the day the world ended.
I fall into the category that believes the Mayan calendar, like every other calendar, would simply roll over and start a new cycle. So, no, I do not believe the world will end this Friday. (I have hedged my bet here, however, but buying some lottery tickets, and if the winning number shows up on one of my tickets . . . head for the hills!)
I think there have been about a half dozen "end of the world" events that were widely circulated in my 56 years of life to date. So far the world is still here. And of course I know that the next "end of the world" event is already being hyped (I think it is set for 2028, and unlike the Maya "prediction" which was non-specific, i.e., no event is associated with the date although some say that disaster will come from the galactic core, 2028 is a "big rock fall from sky kill us all" event).
Even so, there are other alarming possibilities in the wings.
For example, the Yellowstone Mega/Super Volcano is past due to erupt, and if it does it will pretty much put paid to the United States and may cause enough atmospheric chaos to wreck human civilization, perhaps fatally.
Yellowstone or a big rock are both massive extinction events that could destroy not just humanity, but eliminate a lot of other species, allowing mother nature to wipe the board and start over again. Perhaps a new intelligence will arise and find us as fossils, perhaps mother nature will be done with her dalliance with intelligent life on this planet for all time. Perhaps she will done with life period.
Of course, there is the other option. Our civilization is so linked by travel that perhaps a major pandemic could destroy us. To a certain extent our civilization is very fragile. If enough key people with knowledge of how things work die, the rest of us could starve or freeze even if we survived the plague. Too much of our society depends on things being created in one area and moved to another. Fertilizer to grow enough food in to feed the people in an area is not generally created in that area, but trucked in from the factory. Further, we have already gleaned the easy to recover resources, and now need our advanced technologies simply to reach the resources we need to maintain the same technology. A major pandemic shutting down access to deep mines and deep water drilling and other operations could leave us in position where it is, after the plague burns itself out, impossible to access those resources any more. The resultant struggle for resources that are available will only make things worse, leading to a spiral of declining quality of life and further disease outbreaks decimating the survivors even more as medical technologies are lost. Hungry people ravaging the countryside for things to eat could see the extinction of various species before we ourselves are reduced to a sustainable population.
The more advanced and interconnected our civilization becomes, the more possible that it might all collapse like a chain of dominoes if the right blow is struck at the right place.
The Mayan calendar is scheduled to run out this Friday, 21 Dec 2012. Some have taken this to be a sign that the Maya knew, somehow, that 21 Dec 2012 would be the day the world ended.
I fall into the category that believes the Mayan calendar, like every other calendar, would simply roll over and start a new cycle. So, no, I do not believe the world will end this Friday. (I have hedged my bet here, however, but buying some lottery tickets, and if the winning number shows up on one of my tickets . . . head for the hills!)
I think there have been about a half dozen "end of the world" events that were widely circulated in my 56 years of life to date. So far the world is still here. And of course I know that the next "end of the world" event is already being hyped (I think it is set for 2028, and unlike the Maya "prediction" which was non-specific, i.e., no event is associated with the date although some say that disaster will come from the galactic core, 2028 is a "big rock fall from sky kill us all" event).
Even so, there are other alarming possibilities in the wings.
For example, the Yellowstone Mega/Super Volcano is past due to erupt, and if it does it will pretty much put paid to the United States and may cause enough atmospheric chaos to wreck human civilization, perhaps fatally.
Yellowstone or a big rock are both massive extinction events that could destroy not just humanity, but eliminate a lot of other species, allowing mother nature to wipe the board and start over again. Perhaps a new intelligence will arise and find us as fossils, perhaps mother nature will be done with her dalliance with intelligent life on this planet for all time. Perhaps she will done with life period.
Of course, there is the other option. Our civilization is so linked by travel that perhaps a major pandemic could destroy us. To a certain extent our civilization is very fragile. If enough key people with knowledge of how things work die, the rest of us could starve or freeze even if we survived the plague. Too much of our society depends on things being created in one area and moved to another. Fertilizer to grow enough food in to feed the people in an area is not generally created in that area, but trucked in from the factory. Further, we have already gleaned the easy to recover resources, and now need our advanced technologies simply to reach the resources we need to maintain the same technology. A major pandemic shutting down access to deep mines and deep water drilling and other operations could leave us in position where it is, after the plague burns itself out, impossible to access those resources any more. The resultant struggle for resources that are available will only make things worse, leading to a spiral of declining quality of life and further disease outbreaks decimating the survivors even more as medical technologies are lost. Hungry people ravaging the countryside for things to eat could see the extinction of various species before we ourselves are reduced to a sustainable population.
The more advanced and interconnected our civilization becomes, the more possible that it might all collapse like a chain of dominoes if the right blow is struck at the right place.
posted by Federation Commander at 12:53 PM
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