The world is going to end and I need you to know about it
 

....eh, not really.

Armageddon, the story of how the world ends, is the most important story of all. It's the basis of all religions, and one of the most common themes in storytelling.

As God is losing respect as a force for complete destruction, now we turn to other stories about how we will all die. Meteor from outer space, atomic winter, Y2K, robots taking over, technology going awry, genetic engineering, global warming, overfishing, overpopulation, and other forms of ecological disaster.

It's whatever seems plausible at the time. In the 50s, technology going crazy became a common theme. On December 31, 1999, technology failing due to a simple rounding error was more plausible.

:yeldead: :yeldead: :yeldead: :yeldead: :yeldead:

But the reaction I think you should always have is:

NAHHHHHHHHH.

Armageddon has been predicted SO MUCH, and has NEVER come about, for a reason: when you add the end of the world to a story, people listen a lot harder, and share that story a lot harder.

That's all. It's a thing: ideas spread when they are considered important, and here is the most important thing of all. But so far, so good: after millions of predictions of armageddon, all seeming plausible, it has never actually happened. (Duh.)

And now that we have more educated experts than at any time throughout history, it's more likely that we can plan around or fix things, well before things are going desperately wrong. But as stories go, the story where mankind uses its hard-fought knowledge to fix everything is not a story we enjoy repeating. So you won't hear that prediction.

Remember this as you go about the Internets, and you will notice the predictions happening... and the world will be much less scary!

But scary is a good thing... look at how kids love ghost stories

Knock, knock.
Who's there?
Armageddon.
Armageddon, who?
Armageddon tired of all these apocalypse fails.

According to Bart Ehrman in his lecture on "Lost Christianities" the book of revelations was just one of many examples of the apocalyptic genre that was popular at the time.
Perhaps it was proto slasher flick

Destruction of the world and the human race? Yes, that's silly.

Collapse of society and a return to a much simpler life before the human race figures its shit out and climbs back once again? I'd say that's inevitable. Unlike real Armageddon, societal collapse and turnover has happened many, many times throughout history.

Not saying I think we're on the brink of it at this exact moment. But I believe the cycle will continue as a cycle, not a forever-forward march.

One should live one's life as if today is the last day for people on Earth.

I wonder if the dinosaurs told apocalyptic stories.

Shoulda made a different wish on that last falling star...

Dinosaurs had Walnut brains, but maybe they had just gotten so advanced, that they could think more with less Grey matter. Computer chips keep getting smaller. Maybe their brains had evolved towards miniaturization.

Those fancy dinosaur scientists saw the asteroid coming, but the dinosaur astronomers told them that the nearest galaxy was still too far away, they didn't have enough rocket fuel to get them all the way there. So they devised a cunning plan to transfer all their personalities into tiny bird bodies, and convert their giant dinosaur bodies into rocket fuel for the trip. And it would have worked, too! But they just couldn't get off-planet in time. Now they're trapped in bird bodies, watching us burn up all their precious fuel that they worked so hard to make, unable to warn us that they made it for a reason. And when our asteroid comes, we too will not have enough resources to get away, and the birds will laugh, and laugh.

holy shit! You figured it all out.

Yes, that's a great story line for a movie...

Armageddon has actually come and gone a few times. In ancient times, when most people were likely to live and die without having traveled more than 50 miles from home, a regional event was 'the end of the world'.

Usually, this involved a volcano, but it could be from an earthquake or even a comet, either directly or from tsunami or flood.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_myth

All of this would seem like ancient history if it weren't for the natural disasters we encountered this year as well the meteor near miss in Russia

http://news.discovery.com/space/aste...ely-131107.htm

or the discovery of large undersea volcanoes that come close to matching the largest in our solar system

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/...n-earth-found/

(sorry for the FoxNews science link, but they can't be wrong all of the time);)

So if you have an event that affects an area of 100 to 1000 miles, that qualifies as 'the end of the world'.

:lol:

Now we know that the moral of Armageddon is: Bird is the Word!

That's fantastic! :)

Is this why the caged bird sings?