'The world will end in 2012' - Many Dutch prepare for 2012 apocalypse

This is just going to be like the Y2K scare: fake

Make enough outrageous predictions one will eventually come true and people will no doubt chant, "I told you so."

i guarantee you the world will end for many people in 2012

Is Vegas giving odds? I'm taking the over.

Could it be the manufacture of the apocalypse is a self fulfilling prophecy? This entire doomsday scenario is more a reflection of our own culture's psychology than any ancient prediction. For the ancient Maya, from my understanding, it was a huge celebration to make it to the end of a whole cycle.

Three figures within the New Age, the artist and theorist José Argüelles, John Major Jenkins, and the late ethnobotanist and psychonaut Terence McKenna, have publicized theories concerning the significance of the end of the cycle. (They arrived at their conclusions separately from one another.) They have jointly inspired a number of articles and books that this will be the end of this creation, the next pole shift or, as McKenna speculated in his theories, the end of history and events as "novel" as the origin of life on Earth, which we could not possibly imagine. Jenkins has focused on the occurance of a Galactic Alignment in the "era of 2012". Other, more mundane speculations involve a worldwide catastrophe, such as a pole shift. The idea of the significance of the date has also increasingly passed into popular culture.

The scholarly refutation of these views is that in this age we are approaching the same count again, only there is a common misconception of the Maya's practice of abbreviating their dates to five vigesimal places. According to the Maya there will be a baktun ending in 2012, a significant event being the end of the 13th 394 year period, but not the end of the world

For at least two millennia a number of religions have, in various ways, and to somewhat varying degrees, been predicting that there will a great cataclysm or great cataclysms which will befall mankind, planet Earth or both. This idea seems now to be being framed in more secular ways, through the mantras of "Global Warming", "Climate Change", resource depletion and the threat of "Nuclear International Terrorism" or a renewed threat of global nuclear warfare, bio-terrorism or widespread disease such as "avian flu" (which has seemingly existed for hundreds of years, but has never been a significant threat to humans). In some quarters, even the threat of an alien intervention or alien contact (which the evidence suggests has been ongoing for some time) is being mooted as yet another reason for global upheaval or catastrophe.

I've been hearing about this a lot. I think you can take any ancient text and make it say anything.

I want people to stop predicting when we will die because when you predict your own demise you don't live to your full potential. You doing what these people are doing waiting and preparing for your death. That is a waste of time and life. When I was born my mother never said Tan you will die when you are this age because then I will be worrying how I am going to live and what I should do before the big D comes around, being scared to make mistakes and learn from them, being scared to even look life in its eye because I was too busy worrying about death all the damn time. Embrace death people and live life not waiting for death. I am done with my poetic moment.

Hahahaha, Why u people are bothered with the apocalypse. Don't wait it to come, just live your life (everyday like the last day) Apocalypse will come one day sooner or later but not in 2012 - "it will be much later" "but only the strong will make it to continue the human race hahahahahaha" Please!!! Don't be funny

When the year 2012 comes we can live every day like it was our last day of our lives. How our days will be full of greatness for using a phrase to inspire people as literal as possible.

I'm waiting for the one in 2024. I here its gonna be a blast.

So if we only have 4 years left why are we all sitting in front of our computers? We should probably be out doing something? Hmm, maybe tomorrow.

Please don't think everyone in the Netherlands is this stupid, i have yet come to meet someone that actually thinks we are 'sinking' because we build more houses.

I hear even Fox News is covering this story.

Believing that the world will end during the short time you are on it is unbelievably egotistical.

So they're giving up? Crap. But it makes good tv.

Will Prince tell us to party like it's 2012?

This isn't news, it's an unproven (and not sourced) prediction about the future. A lot of people are saying the next four years will move the human race in a much more positive direction. With cell phones and the internet becoming more accessible, humanity will connect like never before. Ultimately.. who cares. You can't predict the weather next week, and you certainly can't predict 2012.

The polar shift is suppose to occur then.

Abby, that's what I believe. I have always been amazed by the Mayan culture and have studied them from time to time. I feel that 21 December 2012 is not the end of the world in literal terms, but the end of the world "as we know it." It's to new beginnings, a renewed life, per say. Let's look at how we are progressing as a human race. The rise of "going green," the rise of solar energy, a more enlightened race, nay informed race. Technology is changing every time we blink, and it's not always for the worse anymore (nuclear energy, war, government) it's a benefit to us now.

Lets hope we stay around long enough for London to host a very successful 2012 Olympics.

No one will care about the spiralling budget after civilization is wiped out, will they?

its all gonna be some bullshit.
for those who may have heard of the recent book: 2012 The Return of Quetzalcoatl
dont read it if you are looking for any interesting theories or even much history on the ominous date. it is mostly an autobiographical trip-fest for the author where he seems to use the idea of writing this book as motivation to take all kinds of weird mind altering drugs that he is hesitant to take otherwise. he then makes far fetched assumptions and blathers on about crop circles for entirely too long.
sorry just got done wasting my time reading it

Some 2,000 odd years ago Jesus said that no one knows the day nor the hour but the Father...

That never stopped some folks..even Christians from forecasting.

But, I will say this...

With Gas prices high and the price of crude about $140 a barrel, news that it's likely the artic will be ice free at the end of the summer and the great loss of honeybees and of course the global warming weather.

It should make everyone pause, just a little.

Not a bad idea to make peace with God, everyday because you never know when you will personally say goodbye to the world.

Prayer is a way to open yourself to God's grace.

Personally, I say the "Chaplet of Divine Mercy" everyday.Say the Chaplet of Divine Mercy once and you will receive enough grace to merit heaven.

Keep saying it and you will receive additional graces.

If people knew what eternity really meant, they would do everything they could to get to heaven.

yeah, Y2K part II.

The Age of Revealing.

Y2k the sequel? you people better wise up and do some research. The world isn't going to end, there is going to be some type of transformation, be it as it may mental spiritual or otherwise you can find correlations with the Mayan revelation of 2012 with such texts as the I-Ching that according to Terrance Mckenna when quantified and plotted out as a Calendrical graph ends at the year 2012. Do your research, anyone know about the Photon Belt? um, yeah

DREAM CHANGE and its 'WAKING OUR WORLD' Movement:

Inspire Earth-Honoring Changes in Consciousness
Utilize Indigenous Wisdom to Effect Social and Environmental Change
Conserve Forests and Preserve Traditional Cultures and Values
Encourage Sustainable Ways of Living

It is not the end of the world. Thats a total complete misconception made by the paranoid apocalyptists hoping for an end.

What the Maya mean is a change of an era. The Maya were extremely focused on the time, which gave them the power to look back and forward in time.
An era (or sun) for the Maya is like, 12.000 years.

Welcome to the new era. Thats all it means. Theres no end of the world. If theres anything you want to look forward to, its probably a pretty big cosmical date, for something. I guess only the people into meditation and cosmic unification would probably understand this well.

the only thing we have to look forward to in terms of events is perhaps the end to perrenial ice in the arctic, which is bad news for the atmosphere that sustains human life.

If we'd just wise up and stop pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, we could avert it.
But we're not wise. we're greedy idiots incapable of seeing with the kind of scope and depth that the Maya did.

The whole 2012 concept is stupid. Everyone thinks its trendy to believe in it, so you get a ton of bandwagoners who like to sound hip and worldly by talking about how they know the secret to the end of the world.

Come up with a new conspiracy theory already.

If the Maya were so smart and could see the future, why didn't they forecast their own doom and flee? Or at least prepare for their own apocalyspe!
Their calendar must not have been attuned to our time zone.