According to the predictions, the end of the world should have come at least five hundred times. The last prophecy that caused the most excitement was the promise of the Maya Indians, whose calendar was limited to December 21, 2012. Millions of people were preparing to meet this day as the last in the history of mankind, but nothing happened. How real are such predictions, and when will the end of the world come?
Options for the death of the world
There are a huge number of predictions and prophecies that promise mankind about a quick death. People were fond of this kind of theories even in antiquity, but only in the modern world did the number of such forecasts come close to absurd. In 1999 and 2000 alone, the end of the world was supposed to come about twenty times. Various scenarios for the death of human civilization were proposed by religious figures, occultists, prophets, astrologers, historians, sociologists, sectarians, contactees with extraterrestrial civilizations - in general, almost everything.
Popular culture could not help but respond to such a popular topic. A lot of apocalyptic films have been filmed, in colors demonstrating certain scenarios of the end of the world.
Prophecies about the coming end of the world can be divided into several main groups. Thanks to the widespread spread of Christianity, many apocalyptic scenarios are somehow connected with the coming of the Antichrist. A fairly large number of predictions are based on various mathematical calculations: sacred numbers obtained as a result of addition or multiplication of a particular date are declared as indisputable evidence of an imminent apocalypse.
However, some predictors dispense with arithmetic operations, limiting themselves to interpretations of the motion of celestial bodies and their position relative to each other, and sometimes simply referring to divine revelation. Finally, a large group of predictors are pessimistic scientists who fear a meteorite fall, a change in the Earth's magnetic fields, radioactive clouds and nuclear war.
Many pseudoscientists called the Large Hadron Collider one of the culprits of the coming end of the world, the launch of which was supposed to create a black hole capable of engulfing the entire Earth.
Is it worth fearing the end of the world?
Statistically, the probability of the end of the world according to one or another scenario, even the most scientific, is very low. If we discard predictions that cannot be proved by scientific methods (for example, the death of mankind as an unsuccessful experiment by aliens), leaving only real threats: asteroids, comets, war with the use of nuclear and biological weapons, the picture will still turn out to be quite optimistic.
The fact is that the movement of celestial bodies that can cause serious harm to the planet is quite easy to calculate and predict, especially since there are not many objects of this size in space. Therefore, as long as the scientific community does not sound the alarm, there is nothing to worry about.
As for the war of destruction, the likelihood of its beginning is extremely low, since all countries possessing weapons of mass destruction are well aware of how unprofitable and destructive such a war will turn out to be. State interests that could justify a third world war simply do not exist, so the death of humanity from nuclear strikes is very unlikely. Of course, there is always a mystical and unknowable aspect, but in the known history of human civilization there is not a single example of the influence of supernatural forces on the development of mankind.
