2012: What will happen?
 

So, 2012 is almost upon us, and the Mayan "Long Count" draws to a close. Solar storms are (perhaps) forecast, Icelandic volcanoes are rumbling, a dozen earthquake zones are "overdue", stray asteroids are zooming around, and no one has seen a dinosaur for ages (outside the Republican primaries, but I digress). The (alleged) anti-christ is in the white house, but revolution is sweeping the world and tyrants are toppling left, right and ... well, mostly left and right. Economies are creaking and alliances are strained.

Will 2012 mark the End of Days? :tinfoil: What do you think?

Personally i think it's all bullshit. I don't think the world will end.

It's possible that it might be the end of life as we know it (if I can be naive for a minute) due to the fall of so many evil leaders recently.

I'm not going to do anything differently with my life though. I'll just keep plodding along, come what may.

If Sarah Connor is right, can it please please please be the Sam Worthington type of Terminator and NOT the Arnie one!!

Its not much to ask really.

Things are gonna change, I can feel it.

Not really, it'll be more of the same.

Merc will explode when Obama is re-elected.

Incendiaryally or orgasmically?

Thermally or spermally?

Like a big Christmas pinata filled with hot air!

It would be too easy if the world was doomed. We and/or all the other living organisms on earth are going to have to muddle through one way or another. I still think Homo sapiens will ultimately go extinct, but that will be a blessing for the world - not a disaster. And its highly unlikely to happen in 2012.

Of course, the sun might go anova which would be interesting for a micro-second or two.

In seriousness, I think things will go on pretty much as for the last decade or so, a few natural disasters, a few wars, the odd economic SNAFU, and the Mayans will have to make a new calendar.

Come on man, a good asteroid hit might do us all some good.

Maybe the magnetic poles will switch. They say its about time for them to flip north for south and visa versa. I wonder if GPS's would still work?

I doubt the poles will switch, but if they do, we're screwed. The switch takes many years to establish the new field, and without that field the earth gets the full brunt of solar magnetic storms. Kiss goodbye to anything involving microcircuits. This would include the GPS satellites and your receiver. And the factories that make them. And the power station that runs the factories that .. uh ohh.

Not likely to happen. At least, not in 2012. Unless SandyPossum keeps fooling around with those accursed soul-stones!

What makes you say this? Everything I've read indicates we are way, way overdue for a switch.

Yeah, that's what they said on NPR today. Of course, it could just be something they picked up on the Fox newswire.

Just going from memory here, but...

1. Before each flip, there is a substantial weakening of the strength of the field. We've seen a few little dips lately, but nothing taking us anywhere near the ranges associated with a full flip.

2. I've become convinced that there is a significant problem with the way "due" is interpreted for things like this.
Recall our discussion in the Interesting Laws thread and how this touched on human heights which cluster closely around certain values, against river lengths which are distributed randomly, but seem to have more beginning with low first digits.

People with brains less awesome than Clodfobble's might like to read this http://www.dichotomistic.com/hierarchies_fractals.html for preparation, especially the bits about power laws and scale free networks.

Human heights are not scale free. Imagine getting hundreds of people to lie down head to toe in a straight line. Walk along, and see how regularly you get to a head. About every 1.6 to 1.9 metres, you'll get one. In extreme cases you might range from 0.4 up to maybe 2.3. So once you leave one head the next one is "due" in about 1.7 metres. After 1.8 we're expecting it soon, after 1.9 it should be here really soon, and so on.

Earthquakes, magnetic flips, the lengths of interglacial periods and many other things follow power laws - they range randomly over many orders of magnitude in size and/or interval. You might get ten magnetic flips in a million years, then none for the next nine million. They'd happen at an "average" of one per million years, but after, say, five million years, they'd seem terribly overdue. They're not, really. It's just that average intervals do not work well with phenomena like these.

The current interglacial is a good example. There have been (I think) about 35 interglacial periods since the current ice-age began about 3 or 4 million years ago. The *average* duration of interglacials is about 10 or 11 thousand years, but they are NOT clustered around a bell curve like human heights. Some were only a few hundred years, some were 40 thousand or more. Trying to predict the end of the current interglacial by looking at simple averages like this, well, we're "overdue" for it to end already.

Same with earthquakes. There are LOTS of fault lines that are allegedly "overdue". Same with volcanoes. This is what originally made me suspect there was something wrong with the idea of "due".


Oh and also, if the magnetic field does flip, we're screwed and the only thing we could do is stock up on tinned food and a hand powered can opener!

OK, I'm trying to imagine this.

Are the women naked?

no wai man everything works but you have to plug the plug in upside down

A bunch of sayings will have to change...

He left his debts unpaid and went NORTH

He bats NORTH paw

We watched a repeat of NORTH Park last night

Way down NORTH in the land of cotton...

NORTH of the Mason-Dixon line

Two stars in the big dipper point to the SOUTH star.

Everybody who was on a frequency of 50 hertz will have to change to 60 hertz, and the 60 hertz countries must go to 50. Don't even get me started on what its going to do to alternating versus direct current. :eek:

Dogs and cats - living together!




Does that help?

Alright, fine, make me interested enough to go do the research. :P

Turns out the most frequent you can get flips is, in fact, 10 in a million years; the shortest periods measured are .1 million years. But you could also get none for as long as not just nine million, but 50 million! And so far our current state of no-flips has lasted only 780,000 years. So that's not too bad.

However, wiki says (with good citations) that we're not seeing "dips" recently as in "in and out again," but rather a single steady and accelerating shift of the north pole moving southward. Still not yet out of the range of normal, it's true, but it also hasn't turned back around yet either.

I don't think it's going to happen in 2012, granted, because it seems to take much longer than a year for the overall weakening effect to happen. But I also won't rule out the possibility that it's already begun. I was getting tired of all my electronics working properly anyway.

Again just from memory ...

That the magnetic north pole is drifting away from the true north pole is, as far as I know, not related to the complete field reversal we're talking about. I suppose it could be part of the process but I haven't seen anything about a connection. Did your research confirm this link?

Do you think we should all print out a hard copy of the cellar, just in case?

Why doesn't somebody just go up to the North Pole and driven in a big spike to keep the thing from moving around?

Well that would kill it.

Do you really want the children running around screaming "Jesus killed Santy Claus!!"?

It did seem to be indicating that significant movement of the pole would be part of the general "instability" that happens before a switch. But what we're seeing right now doesn't classify as significant movement, just part of the general wiggling that happens all the time. So it's like, it would be connected, if it were connected.

I'm not supposed to be here. The aliens were supposed to come get me.

Sigh...here is what will happen in 2012:

Love, loss, birth, death, pain, happiness, successes, failures, good times, bad times, inspiration and aspiration, hope...

Same things that have been happening since the beginning of mankind...only more relevant.

yyyyyeah. that ain't happenin.

Uh...yeah, it's happenin'! Sorry about that.

perhaps. i have my voters registration card so i'm eligible to give my opinion, in texas you can register even if you've done time. and yes i will vote. won't be for him. just sayin.

yes, things are going to happen, and the world is going to change!

mostly because things always happen and the world always changes. but this time around, according to millions of crazy nutbags (no offense), its all going to be because its 2012. sure if you look world wide then you'll find natural disasters every year, but this year if their are any then it will be exactly what the mayans meant. not to mention the people who believe that 2012 is a good turn of events - they really can put anything on the table - even if its a horrible year for the economy and global politics and natural disasters and beloved aunt Marry died, it all brought the families closer together and brought humanity a step closer to peace and harmony on earth.

the result being, in order for the prophecy to not come true in the minds of those who believe in it, this will have to be a remarkably unremarkable year.

what will almost certainly happen: a few cult sucides, a few terrorist attempts, and millions of teenagers will loose their virgnity with the line from independence day.

Maybe the area where the Mayans lived is going to be blown up by a big volcano or something, or even get hit by an asteroid!

The Mayans from SOA?? I'd be happy with that

Perhaps everything will remain just as it is ... FOREVER! Maybe time will come to a standstill thereby alleviating the need for calendars. It would be quaint to have that moment recorded on our watches though I bet people who paid extra for perpetual calendar watches would sure feel foolish; unless, of course, they had one of these ...
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Howdy Traceur! That was a good first post. :welcome:

I don't think the mayans will be any more accurate than Harold Camping was.

G'day to you too, Maineiac, and welcome.

Maineiac of Ohio, no less. Homesick?

Yes. Except for the broken shift key.

The end and beginning of the Tzolkin and the Grand Conjuction will usher in a new era of peace and prosperity for all in which we will bask in the glow of our outer space alien overlords ...

Meh.

The last time the long count completed a cycle, the Spaniards came to the New World ... so in a sense the world did end for the Mayans, by changing it in a such a significant way their world view couldn't contain it.

What does that mean to us? That the aliens that have been joyriding around our planet will finally come to land?

Or does it just mean, like it does to us every 365 days that it's time to get a new check register and a calendar and we'll be good to go until we have to do that again. But, like the ending of every calendar year, it's a good time to reflect on where we've been and what we've done and what we'd like to do better this coming year.

I like the idea of better. And putting a longer term spin on that (like until the dawning of the 7th Sun), well, you've got to plan more carefully.

We're facing the dawning of the Sixth Sun, let's not fuck it up this time around, eh?

Way ahead of you. :D

Also, I'll lay off the Guatemalan insanity peppers. Makes me see foxes who talk with Johnny Cash's voice.

I really like the idea of things changing along with going into a New Age (from Piscean to Aquarius which is supposed to spell more peaceful, harmonic times) I mean, I like that idea a LOT.

Do I think anything will really change?


No.

Sadly.

SSDD. Entropy will eventually win out - but not anytime soon.

Thanks!

I hope to move back to Maine someday.

Enormously good.

Not quite a Johnny Cash voice....but just to show I can find a relevant youtube clip for fucking anything:

What will happen in 2012?


There is some evidence that a lot of stupid people will make themselves huge pains in the backside of intelligent people.

..