Do you think the end of the world is coming?

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So I got to thinking, about the world and all, after reading this article on /. [url] http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/04/1732242 [/url. Now I am not a religious person, but there are at least some indications that a psychic type ability does exist in a rather limited fashion. And I believe there are some prior predictions that have peculiar similarities to actual events. War is also a fundamental part of our history. One might argue that we will grow out of that, but there is nothing to indicate that we will anytime soon. An increasing number of late blooming countries are reaching the nuclear weapons stage, some of them with a grudge against the U.S. Among those countries it might be considered a great coup to launch such a strike. But then I thought: wait a minute, our country has invested a large amount of money in defense of something like this, and thank goid for that! I never liked the huge defense spending before, and it sucks that NASA doesn't have as much money as it needs, but screw that, I want to live. I do not want to be scorched in some freakishly hot explosion, cause I just know that I would end up just far enough away from a blast for the temperature to kill me a bit too slowly.

[note: /. blurb references a Wired.com article: RFID: Sign of the (End) Times?]

My opinion is that most end-of-world fears are projections of people who fear for their own view of reality being threatened. Fears of thier own personal "world" ending are transferred to thoughts of the actual world being threatened.

That said, the following flight of inductive fancy should be at least interesting to end-timers. Consider one appearance of 3 sixes in nature (or "666"): The carbon atom, upon which DNA self-replication is based, being composed of 6 protons, 6 neutrons and 6 electrons. This satisfies the first condition leading to the "mark of the beast" scenario - that the "beast" is identifiable by a number.

The second condition is that people are required to make an "image" to the beast. Requiring submission of a sample to a DNA database would qualify as making an image (analog or copy) of sorts.

And the third - taking the mark itself - would be satisfied if compulsory RFID implants contained the equivalent of a unique checksum derived from each person's DNA.

So if things play out that way, it would be pretty freaky.

It's been a whimsical goal of mine to live to see the end of the world. Not that I've been taking steps to accelerate the process or anything

World end?
God, I hope so...

Don't get me wrong, I would like a little extinction activity to happen. I just don't want it to be a nuclear war. A good plague is cool because I eat a healthy diet, and so I feel prepared to inherit the earth. An asteroid would be OK, I would have time to go to a nice location. I think nuclear weapons are just kind of nasty though. I don't like my odds living near the east coast in that case either.

Yes the world will end for you when you die. But the whole planet no it will keeping going on. And were or if you go on past that well that is a whole new debate by it self.

"Do you think the end of the world is coming?"

Well this is clearly covered in the question of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Trall:
"Is it safe?"
"Yes, it's perfectly safe. We're the ones in trouble."

The planet is not at risk, not a for a good few million years anyway. Human lives, and civilisations, now that's another matter.

I think we are in for a nasty bout of global warming, probably cutting in seriously by the time I cease caring (Unless reincarnation holds, in which case I, too, will be cursing my grandparents)

Subject always to the long odds major meteor strike or supervolcanoe.
In which case we can go out singing Tom Lehrer:
"And we will all go together when we go.
What a comforting thought that is to know..."

I don't think the world is going to end any time soon, but I do think it's quite realistic for a pandemic to wipe out 75% of the population (again!) at some point.

armageddon could be tomorrow

I don't know if time can end, but if it can there is no sense in predicting when because no one will ever have the opportunity to find out if they were right.

I see some pretty scary weather patterns and a lot of stupidity out there.

I think we're in for a rough patch of war and disease which will kill millions of people, but with or without humans the planet will pick up the pieces and carry on.