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The End Of The World '92/'93

But I did carve the date 2126 into a desk in 1992, as this was the predicted date (by many Tabloid papers) that the Swift Tuttle comet (source of the Perseid Shower) would wipe out life on Earth.

. . . not that humans need any help wiping out life on Earth.
 
RaM - could it have been the Dark Day of July 2, 1968?

https://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/nostalgia/dark-day-gone-down-teesside-4805244

Apparently the cloud layers piled up one on top of another until they were seven miles thick.
A family story of ours was me grandad and his work mates, who were working on the roads, shook each other hands because they thought the world was ending. The sky went unusually dark…. This must have been the day…. The dates seem about right.
 
I remember some similar thing at my school in the UK in the 80s. I think this is something that probably does the rounds regularly as kids start to become aware of threats more at this age. Add the hormones to the mix and whispers/hysteria...and you have a wave of excitement to liven up an otherwise boring school day.

In the 80s I think nuclear weapons were the thing feared the most. Now you could add in some sort of viral threat, zombie apocalypse or whatever to the mix.
 
It's been going around longer than that. In the 60's there was a girl who was very friendly.
Her father was a Christadelphian minister and she gave me a pamphlet about the world ending.
Next morning she eagerly asked me about it and I said that it was interesting but that I had a pamphlet from some other lot and the dates were different.
She never spoke to me again.
 
It's been going around longer than that. In the 60's there was a girl who was very friendly.
Her father was a Christadelphian minister and she gave me a pamphlet about the world ending.
Next morning she eagerly asked me about it and I said that it was interesting but that I had a pamphlet from some other lot and the dates were different.
She never spoke to me again.

I know it has been a thing for a long long time, I agree.

What is interesting is that you have a recollection of a specific religious group/a pamphlet.

My experience at school was not related to a religious group or pamphlet (as far as I know). At my school religious families were rare. Most of them sent their kids to church schools to avoid coming into contact with heathens/bad influences of the kids at my school etc. In fact even the non-religious families would attend church for long enough to get their kids into the church school, rather than the school I went to (if they couldn't afford a private school).

Noone seemed to know who had started the rumour or what it was based on, in my experience. It was just a vague rumour that the world was going to end at a specific time - with no explanation as to how for why....and why our parents or other adults hadn't told us.....

And it happened on more than one occasion. I think the first time it might have bothered a few students but after a couple more I don't think anyone really believed the story any more and noone bothered starting it again.

I suspect it is something kids do every so often to scare each other, and probably happens all over the world in different schools. Humans do some funny things.....
 
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The only end of world that I know of was the was the completion of the 5,126 Mayan year calendar on December 21, 2012.

Then all the world’s computers were supposed to crash on January 1, 2000 or Y2K.

The company I worked for was so worried about a computer crash, employees were to be on call to come back if there were problems.

Nothing happened.
 
In the late 1990s, the colourful fashion designer Paco Rabanne had annonced the end of the fashion world (e.g. Paris) for August 11th, 1999, after he had a vision of people in flames jumping into the river Seine, and after reading too much Nostradamus. According to him, the space station Mir was to fall on Paris and destroy everything.

Most people made fun of his predictions, and rightly so. A group of skepdics even organized a public cocktail for the "survivors" on August 11th, at 11 o'clock, just in front of Paco Rabanne's shop, in the middle of Paris. 200 people attended the meeting.


Regarding the recurring "end of times" fears, I'd like to share the reflexions of a taoist monk I met in China 4 years ago. His position is interesting because of the tension between traditionalism and modernism which underpins it.

First of all, this man believed very much in UFOs and space-made crop circles (due to an overexposition to YouTube videos, which is a Fortean phenomenon in itself given that he lived in the wilderness of a country who strictly controls the Internet) ! In this regard, he was rather a man of his times. In spite of the large number of apocalyptic predictions told in the Taoist Canon (= compilation of sacred texts), he did not believe in the end of the world. And here is why : according to him the spiritual world was overcrowded with beings waiting to take on physical bodies. In order to provide them with these bodies, the world had to endure. Otherwise, all these roaming, embryonic spirits would have to remain homeless forever.

So, although eccentric, his argument could be seen as a variation of Lavoisier's law (in chemistry) as sumarized by the sentence "nothing is created, nor destroyed, everything transforms".
 
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... Then all the world’s computers were supposed to crash on January 1, 2000 or Y2K ... The company I worked for was so worried about a computer crash, employees were to be on call to come back if there were problems ... Nothing happened.
understatement of the decade !
 
I worked for a local authority which had to have an emergency plan to help Police, fire, military, health services deal with any local/national emergencies.

Fair enough; however they were so concerned with mass graves, temporary hospitals, water supplies, press releases etc. that they missed the obvious.

I was asked to be a representative, i.e one who would turn out to help manage the response. There was an in office exercise.

There was a map but no gazetteer so it was impossible to find streets if you didn’t know where they were anyway. We were asked if there were any Community Centres and or halls near the area and how many could it shelter overnight. We had a list but with no gazetteer had trouble finding them and had no indication of how big they were. The response? Ask X he’s on the team, he’ll know!

Supposing X is amongst the dead or still trying to get here? Ring his mobile. What if there’s no signal, will he still answer if he’s dead?

I suggested, lists, gazetteers, etc. for each member and the control room. I think they acted on it but I was politely told that I was no longer required on the emergency team. :)
 
The only end of world that I know of was the was the completion of the 5,126 Mayan year calendar on December 21, 2012.

Then all the world’s computers were supposed to crash on January 1, 2000 or Y2K.

The company I worked for was so worried about a computer crash, employees were to be on call to come back if there were problems.

Nothing happened.
The In-House GP was in computing at the time and said that there was a much bigger potential problem about six months later on? Fortunately they all coded their way out of that and the public were none the wiser.
 
When I was 10 (in the 60's) my aunt, that I was staying with for a week, sent me down the street to play with some girls my age. The one who's house we were playing at suddenly exclaimed "The world is going to end in 2000 and I won't get to see my grandchildren!" I was shocked and for some reason felt I knew she was wrong. "I told her, that is not how it works." but I was ignored. The other girls and I went home shortly after that. Apparently the girl's grandmother had been talking about bible predictions and how we would all die in the year 2000. I never played with those girls again, found books to read instead.
 
When I was 10 (in the 60's) my aunt, that I was staying with for a week, sent me down the street to play with some girls my age. The one who's house we were playing at suddenly exclaimed "The world is going to end in 2000 and I won't get to see my grandchildren!" I was shocked and for some reason felt I knew she was wrong. "I told her, that is not how it works." but I was ignored. The other girls and I went home shortly after that. Apparently the girl's grandmother had been talking about bible predictions and how we would all die in the year 2000. I never played with those girls again, found books to read instead.
Had they read 'The Late Great Planet Earth'?
 
Then all the world’s computers were supposed to crash on January 1, 2000 or Y2K.

The company I worked for was so worried about a computer crash, employees were to be on call to come back if there were problems.

Nothing happened.
Ah - say Tech Support - the reason why the world's computers didn't crash was the $300-600 billion (wisely) spent on preventitive measures in the years leading up to 2000.
But I heard that at least one big company did suffer badly after the Y2K event (or was that dinosaurs ?) but cannot find any story now. Bad memory ? Matrix glitch ?
 
Ah - say Tech Support - the reason why the world's computers didn't crash was the $300-600 billion (wisely) spent on preventitive measures in the years leading up to 2000.
But I heard that at least one big company did suffer badly after the Y2K event (or was that dinosaurs ?) but cannot find any story now. Bad memory ? Matrix glitch ?
I only encountered 1 device that suffered from the Y2K bug, and I had to throw it away (date couldn't be reset and it kept beeping).
 
I think there was something that happened more recently that was related to the Y2K thing. I can't remember now if it meant peoples' devices had the wrong date or time on them............
 
Ah - say Tech Support - the reason why the world's computers didn't crash was the $300-600 billion (wisely) spent on preventitive measures in the years leading up to 2000.
But I heard that at least one big company did suffer badly after the Y2K event (or was that dinosaurs ?) but cannot find any story now. Bad memory ? Matrix glitch ?
:hahazebs: The only software/databases that would have been affected were really old financial databases that were still using 6 digit dates. Most operating systems by the 80's were using better stategies to store dates. Any one who made money going business to business to sell them the services of fixing their computer systems to not crash because of Y2K were scammers and con men. The systems would not have crashed, the financial data (banking and accounting) would have been messed up.
 
How about the girl's grandma, who gave them this idea?
When was that book published? Did you notice I said "in the 60's"? Not to mention, I never met the grandmother so how could I know what she read? Are you recommending the book or are you saying it claimed that the world would end in 2000? I have never read that book either.
 
When was that book published? Did you notice I said "in the 60's"? Not to mention, I never met the grandmother so how could I know what she read? Are you recommending the book or are you saying it claimed that the world would end in 2000? I have never read that book either.
Well, OK, when in the 1960s? Was it 1969? The book came out in 1970. Is your memory so good that you can remember the exact year, day, month, time of day etc.? I wish I had that ability, I really do.
No, I don't recommend that book.
 
Well, OK, when in the 1960s? Was it 1969? The book came out in 1970. Is your memory so good that you can remember the exact year, day, month, time of day etc.? I wish I had that ability, I really do.
No, I don't recommend that book.
1966, if you need the exact year. If the book was published in 1970 it was not published in 1969. I have a very good memory so I do remember the exact year and approximate month if you want that (summer 1966). Even so, you don't need that detail, because, as you say, the book was published in 1970. It seems like now we are both beating a dead horse.
 
the crux of this thread for me is the playground rumour aspect of it, rather than any serious or published attempts at pinning down a date for the extinction of mankind/all life ... as someone who attended a uk primary in the 70s and grammar school in the 80s i reckon 2 or 3 times during then, word got around that "the end of the world" was upon us at some specific day and date ... maybe a reflection of world events seeping into young minds for the first time, or the impact of some zeitgeist disaster movie or just increased awareness of the wider world
 
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