Why do people make bold predictions of doom?

[cronus]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazin ... r-24432491

Why do people make bold predictions of doom?

Bob Geldof has said the human race might have as little as 17 more years before "a mass extinction event". Why do people make such bold predictions of doom, asks Ben Milne.

The End is Nigh - it's a simple message, and it gets the attention (if not necessarily the belief) of the passer-by. But Live Aid organiser Geldof - who made his remark at a youth summit in South Africa - is not the first person to walk the streets with this sandwich board.

In fact, predicting the end of the world may be one of its inhabitants' oldest pastimes. It's only a matter of months since the ancient Mayan "prophecy" of 21 December 2012 passed without event. The world - and last-minute Christmas shopping - continued uninterrupted.

Religions are particularly prone to this sort of prediction. In Matthew's gospel, Jesus talks of the "return of the Son of Man", and says "but of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only".

It's a line which has proved too tempting for second-guessing believers ever since. Jehovah's Witnesses have been accused of having made predictions for 1878, 1881, 1914, 1918, 1925, and 1975 as dates for Judgement Day. The US radio evangelist Harold Camping built up a ministry worth millions of dollars predicting that 21 May 2011 would be the big one. Camping later admitted he was probably mistaken, and donations to his ministry suffered an apocalyptic fall themselves.

But in this age of nuclear power and climate change warnings, end-of-days predictions come from all manner of sources. Independent scientist James Lovelock made apocalyptic warnings about the climate in 2006, saying that by the end of the 21st Century, billions of people would be wiped out, and the Arctic would be one of the few places remaining habitable. He later said he might have been "alarmist".



(continued)

[mistermack]

Can't sing. Can't play. Full of shit. What a gigantic arse.

Saint Bob has spoken, and it seems that we're all going to die within the next 17 years :

Bob Geldof has claimed that the Earth as we know it could end by 2030 thanks to the ravages of climate change.

"We may not get to 2030. We need to address the problem of climate change urgently. What are you going to do about it? Get serious. Some of the nations that arrived here so proudly will not be there to meet us."

But in this age of nuclear power and climate change warnings, end-of-days predictions come from all manner of sources. Independent scientist James Lovelock made apocalyptic warnings about the climate in 2006, saying that by the end of the 21st Century, billions of people would be wiped out, and the Arctic would be one of the few places remaining habitable. He later said he might have been "alarmist".

[Kristie]

This bottle of wine is doomed. Nearly extinct.

[pErvinalia]

This log in my bowels is doomed.

[cronus]

Make's me appear a optimist. I'd give humanity at least a couple of hundred years albeit the final hundred would be the dregs in small communities like at the start only with no megabeast to eat.

[Ian]

Pessimists are doomed.

[That Alien Guy.]

Doomsayers are common amongst those who do not devour their runts. Like Fargel and the giant Meteorite, Chicken Little or the Boy who Cried Wolf, they do it to seek attention.

[cronus]

Doomsayers are common amongst those who do not devour their runts. Like Fargel and the giant Meteorite, Chicken Little or the Boy who Cried Wolf, they do it to seek attention.

Well, no point trying to attract attention after the event is there?

[rainbow]

Doomsayers are common amongst those who do not devour their runts. Like Fargel and the giant Meteorite, Chicken Little or the Boy who Cried Wolf, they do it to seek attention.

Who cares?
We will all be dead anyway.

[mistermack]

This log in my bowels is doomed.

That's a pessimist view.
But in reality, it's just starting out on an adventure. It will go to the sewage works, get processed, get sprayed onto a field, and gain new life in the soil, then grow up, reaching for the sun, only to be grazed and end up as cowshit.

But that's just the start of a new adventure, as a dung beetle, and then as a crow, flying through the air and going caw caw.

It's a great life, being a lump of shit.