do you believe that the world will end in 2012 and do you have a reason to back it up?

Question: do you believe that the world will end in 2012 and do you have a reason to back it up?
- Keywords:
  2012,
  apocalypse,
  end of world
Asked by kathsta910lol to Helen, Jenni, Mark, Martin, Stu on 22 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by venusjwh, daleawh, xgeorgiastephx.
- Stuart Mourton answered on 20 Jun 2011:
  
  The short answer is no, i don’t think it will! I hope not anyway, i’ve got big plans for the next 40 years or so!
- Mark Burnley answered on 20 Jun 2011:
  
  The answer is that it is highly unlikely that the world will end in 2012. The reason is that Earth has existed for about 4.6 billion years and, even though it has had some tough times (being hammered by an object big enough to create the Moon can’t have been fun), it is clearly still here. In fact, the onus should be on those people who think it WILL end in 2012 to give a reason as to why they think it will. People saying “I saw it in a film” or “Myan Indians predicted it a thousand years ago” doesn’t really convince me!
- Jenni Tilley answered on 20 Jun 2011:
  
  No, I think it’s highly unlikely. There are lots of people who believe that they can predict the future using ‘sectret codes’ in special books (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_code), or by looking at the stars.
  
  The second one strikes me as odd, given that light from the stars takes so long to reach us, we are actually looking at the past. The first one is just a matter of probability: people have found ‘hidden codes’ in all sorts of books, plays etc because when there are so many letters present there are bound to be a few coincidences.
  
  As humans we have evolved to find patterns in things, but this can be quite detrimental. Some mathmaticians spend their lives looking for patterns and working out the probability of certain things happening – they’re called statisticians. To give you an example, how many people do you think would need to be in your class becfore it becomes very likely you’d share a birthday with one of them? You might think the answer is 365, but it turns out if there are 57 people, you have a 99% chance of sharing your birthday with one of them. The statistics of big numbers is really interesting – have a listen to the ‘Randomness, Probability and Chance’ podcast by Infinate Monkey Cage to see what I mean:
  http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/timc
  
  Finally, the art of suggestion is also a very powerful thing, leading people to find ‘spoken messages’ in songs played backwards. The messages don’t exist – you only hear them once someone has pointed it out to you. Check out Led Zepplin Stairway to Heaven here to see what I mean (listen to the song and then read the suggested lyrics’ http://jeffmilner.com/backmasking/
  
  So, no I don’t think the world will end next year. I do think there are lots of people out there willing to make suggestions and predictions, but they’re either nutters or trying to take people’s money. You only have to look at how bad we are at prediciting next month’s weather to work out that we cannot predict the futurE!
- Helen O'Connor answered on 22 Jun 2011:
  
  No I don’t and I don’t have a reason to back it up either. And also I want to use my Olympic tickets!