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Hoaxes That Try To End The World

Page history last edited by Capri 8 years, 10 months ago

 

Hoaxes That Try To End The World

So, there was of course no end of the world/rapture in 2000, 2003, May 21, 2011., or Dec. 21, 2012. I could've told ya. Man has a lousy track-record when it comes to trying to predict when the world would end.

And now there's another whacko hoax in place of the 2012 one as this this site shows.

Will people never learn?

Remember all the human-caused climate alarmism hoaxes? remember the Y2k hysteria?

Are We Going To Die In 2013 or 2036?

Some of us, certainly, people die every day of every year.

But the prediction of end of the world in 2012/2036 or any other date thing is just a hoax.even if the History Channel says otherwise.

There is no Zombie apocalypse, face-eating, LPQ79 virus.

December 2012 Three-day Blackout, Universe Alignment Hoax

The drilling to hell sounds story is a hoax.

In previous years and right up to the present, whenever that silly Money Bags hoax circulated, everybody suddenly thought they believed in Feng Shui. Then when this Mayan calendar business, propping up the Armageddon 2012 hoax, came up, they thought it was their best bet to turn Mayan.

Well, the Mayans never predicted the end of the world, on Dec 12, 2012, Dec. 21, 2012 or at any time. This whole thing was a bunch of wild speculations based on something someone said in an obscure book. Before and since then, there have been many dooms day prediction hoaxes as several answers mention here.

What next? Fringe baptists?

The strange sounds around the world thing goes hand in hand with the end of the world in 2012 hoax, and the culprit behind this effort seems to be Paul Begley, a religious fraud and head of a cultist church calling itself baptist.

Videos are faked up, and other people simply say they've heard strange sounds when they haven't. Still others con themselves into thinking they've heard strange sounds because they saw a Youtube or Ghost Hunter show and believe it must absolutely be real, besides, so many other people are making this claim, so by golly, it must be true, right?

This is nothing more than a huge hoax, and people are reacting to it in a weird combination of "Emperor's New Clothes" and "War Of The Worlds" style.

The viral Youtube videos do not make these bollox predictions any truer. They are there for one purpose, to hoax people into panicking over nothing. Anybody with video-editing software can make videos about supposed strange sky sounds and strange flashing lights from clips of traffic noise, lights, and other common sources, modify pitch and ambience, superimpose any images they like, dub in a serious sounding voice-over and call it real.

They are debunked by fact, and by other sensible Youtube videos that people should be listening to instead.

Nibiru is a hoax.

People have been predicting the end of the world for a long time. But they, (especially any who consider themselves Christian,) seem to be forgetting this:

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Matthew 24:36-37 But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone. For the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah....

Mark 13:32-33 But of that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone. Take heed, keep on the alert; for you do not know when the appointed time is.

--

This is why you should never take these false predictions and speculations seriously if you are a Christian.

There are a bunch of tales woven into the 2012 end of the world hoax, fake planets, lethal solar flares, the Mayan calendar thing, the planetary alignment bollox, and Nasa debunks it all here.

and no, there is no Nasa cover-up. that is yet another conspiracy theory woven into the continually mutating hoax, desperately trying to keep people panicking over a pile of nonsense.

* * *

More information:

Contributed by Raymond on this Yahoo Answers page

The Big 2012 Hoax (the doomsday prediction for December 21, 2012) is just a re-run of the Planet-X hoax (the end of the world on May 13, 2003).

Not to be confused with the end of the world of December 12, 2012 (yes, 12, not 21), which is a re-run of the September 9, 2009 end of the world (itself a re-run of June 6, 2006).

The Big 2012 Hoax is, in fact, a rerun of the 2003 end-of-the-world PLUS a collection of much older hoaxes, lies and stories. It contains, for example, the "planetary alignment" hoax called "The Jupiter Effect" which had been invented in 1974, for the planetary alignment of March 1982. The planetary alignment did happen (for real) but, apparently, the world failed to end. There is no planetary alignment in December 2012.

It also contains the "end of the Mayan calendar", a lie invented in 1987 (by José Argüelles, a self-proclaimed reincarnated Mayan God -- even though some of us still remember that he was really from Minnesota). The Mayan calendar he described really did exist, but it does not end (it is only a day-count calendar). It could not end even if it tried.

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From this Yahoo Answers page

Contributed by bikenbee…

Let's just have a recap on the accuracy of these types of prediction.

May 21st 2011: Date of Harold Camping's worldwide earthquake. Prediction failed.
September 26th 2011: Comet Elenin to cause huge earthquake. Prediction failed.
October 21st 2011: Harold Camping's follow-up doomsday. Prediction failed.
October 28th 2011: Carl Calleman's Mayan calendar rollover date. Nothing happened.
November 8th 2011: Asteroid 2005 YU55 to hit the Earth. Prediction failed
November 9th 2011: Emergency test is cover for a real disaster. Prediction failed.
11/11/11: Hoover Dam to be blown up. Prediction failed.
December 24th 2011: Michael Coe's original Mayan calendar rollover date. Nothing happened.

How many more failures do you need to come to the conclusion that this is all garbage? And that includes 21st December 2012.
Source(s):
2012hoax.org

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Contributed by Raymond

Some of us do worry about how such an obvious hoax can still scare some people.

We know that it is a re-run of the Planet-X hoax (we all died on May 13, 2003), which has been "improved" with other lies, stories and older hoaxes (modified to fit this new date).

The lie about the end of the Mayan calendar was invented by José Argüelles for a book he wrote about ancient calendars (1987). José is NOT part of the people who started the hoax, but he did eventually play along.

Planet-X (the one used in the hoax, because there are many planets called "X") was invented by Nancy Leider in the 1990s, for her story about being abducted by aliens, then made the official messenger for all humanity. Nancy was part of the gang who developed the hoaxes (2003 and 2012), however in her case, I think she actually believes her own story.

Nibiru is a totally different fake planet, invented by Zechariah Sitchin in the 1960s, for a totally different hoax. Zechariah was definitely NOT part of the creation of the Big 2012 Hoax. In fact, he tried to take them to court when they started using stuff (and the name Nibiru) from his story, but he did not have the money nor the health to keep going. After his death, someone took over his web site and made it look as if he had agreed with the charlatans.

Nibiru is a fake planet** invented in 1967 by Zechariah Stichin, for his fake theory that humans had been created as slaves, by a race living on this strange planet in orbit around the Sun.. In the original story written by Zechariah, Nibiru comes close to Earth every 3700 and they come here to collect the gold that were are mining for them (they need the gold for their survival). In the original story, the next pick-up is scheduled for the year 2085.

If you bother to read the story (it is called the Twelveth Planet), you see that Zechariah had his reasons to pick that date. Changing the date ruins the story.

** Nibiru was an ancient Sumerian name for the planet we call Jupiter. Zechariah had claimed (back in 1967) that his story was translated from Sumerian documents. Turns out it was false. But at least, he used a real Sumerian name for his fake planet.

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Planet-X is a totally different fake planet. It was invented by Nancy Leider for her claim that aliens abducted her, then made her the messenger for the whole human race. According to her claim, the aliens told her about a rogue planet (rogue = not in orbit around the Sun) that was going to kill most of us on May 13, 2003.

"Friends" of Nancy used her story to scare gullible people, then these charlatans made money by selling books on How-to-Survive.

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After May 2003, they decided to re-run their Planet-X hoax. To make it more "believable" they stole ideas from Zechariah's story (including the name Nibiru) and they used this new "combo" fake planet for the Big 2012 Hoax. The date they picked comes from another lie: the end of the Mayan calendar (invented by José Argüelles, for a book about calendars, in 1987). José was also "famous" for his claim about being a reincarnated Mayan god (1972).

The planetary alignment doomsday predictions were created in 1974 (under the name The Jupiter Effect) for the alignment of March 1982. The alignment of 1982 really took place, but it would appear that the world did not end (but better check on that -- if the world DID end in 1982, then it could end again in 2012).

There is no special planetary alignment in December 2012.

And so on...

The Big 2012 Hoax worked for a while, but the attention span of today's people is getting shorter. The popularity of the Big 2012 Hoax had already started to fade when Sony Pictures was getting ready to release Roland's movie "2012" (loosely based on the 2003 version of the hoax). So they invented fake documentaries (the ones that the Hysteric Channel is still showing as if they were real documentaries) to revive the popularity of the Big 2012 Hoax.

It must have worked, since the movie grossed over 700 million at the box office (Sony had invested a little over 200 million).

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Most of us already knew (before May 2003) that both Nancy's Planet-X and Zechariah's Nibiru were fake planets. Combining them does not create a real planet. It is still fake.

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As for the Sun, it is your eyes. Millions of real astronomers (professionals and amateurs) observed the Sun in great detail during the transit of Venus. If it had changed so much for you to detect it naked eye, we would have known.

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Much more detail of the scam and the frauds running it at -
Source(s):
2012hoax.org

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Contributed by Brigalow Bloke

it's not a theory, it's a set of lies intended to make money from the gullible just like the end of the world on 31 December 1999.

What you first have to understand is that the orbits of planets are totally predictable and are governed by an "iron law" of gravity. We can tell where the Sun, Moon and all the planets will be in a thousand years from now to within an umpteenth of a degree. This has been known with greater and greater accuracy for many centuries.

There is no prediction of doom from the Maya, Aztecs, Toltecs, Chinese, Indians, Islam or any other person, tribe, clan, ancient or modern civilization, including the old French fraud, Nostradamus. for 21 December. What does happen is that the first cycle of the Mesoamerican count of 1,872,000 days ends and another begins. This has to do with their counting systems and nothing more. The date is no more significant than 31 December 1999 was. Less, in fact, since no computer problems are anticipated.

There is no error in this caused by with leap years, because it is a count of DAYS. 21 December was calculated in the 20th century on the basis that the Maya said the world began on 11 August 3114BC by the western or Gregorian calendar which the Maya obviously did not use. There are other ideas about what day the Maya believed, but that is the one most usually quoted

There is no planet X or Nibiru. If there was it would be the third brightest thing in the night sky and would have been for several months. Planet X was supposed to be here in May 2003 according to the original version of this garbage. When it didn't happen, the frauds running the 2003 scam just postponed it to 21 December 2012.

The planets will not line up and it would not matter if they did. Their combined gravitational pull at the Earth would not take the skin off a rice pudding.

Solar flares happen about 5 times a week on average over the past 50 years, more when the Sun is very active, but they are rare when it isn't. Coronal mass ejections can happen at any time and can knock out power and communications on Earth, in a few places for several hours. The last time this happened it affected only the north eastern USA and eastern Canada. Europe, Australia, Africa, Asia was not affected much or at all. These are totally unpredictable but do tend to happen more often at solar peak activity. The last one was in October or November 2011 as far as I recall, but there might have been one since.

The supposed alignment with the centre of the galaxy is only very, very approximate, it happens twice every year in June and December but not on the 21st of December. More like the 18th.

We will not be crossing the central plane of the galaxy and it would not matter if we did.

There are no known large asteroids scheduled to pass near the Earth in December 2012.

The photon belt business is an old German fraud and was supposed to happen by 1958. In any case photons cannot form a "belt" and our solar system is slowly moving away from the place where it was supposed to happen as well.

* * *

In addition, here is a wonderful article that certainly explains the 2012 hoopla. It is called 2012 and how good viral marketing can go bad

But virals are generally bad from the get-go as far as I'm concerned. Well, nevermind that, if you've been reading much of this site, you should be pretty aware of my opinion of virals AKA chain letter style campaigns.

This article shows how they can go badly wrong, even beyond my imaginings.

War of the Worlds again, seriously? Yes, apparently so, because people are actually scared the world will end in 2012, and all because of a movie!

-- Start of article --

2012 and how good viral marketing can go bad

Disaster movie 2012 inspired panic in the States with Nasa having to reassure Americans that the world wasn't about to end. Is movie viral marketing getting too clever for its own good?

Stuart McGurk The Guardian, Saturday 14 November 2009

2012, and the Earth finally crumbles. Relax, it's just a movie.

When Columbia Pictures launched a marketing campaign for 2012 ñ the latest disaster movie from serial Earth molester Roland Emmerich, where the planet, played by America, is set for impending doom ñ they didn't do it by halves.

2012 Production year: 2009 Country: USA Cert (UK): 12A Runtime: 157 mins Directors: Roland Emmerich Cast: Amanda Peet, Chin Han, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Danny Glover, Jimi Mistry, John Cusack, Liam James, Morgan Lily, Oliver Platt, Thandie Newton, Tom McCarthy, Woody Harrelson More on this film First, there was a teaser trailer showing a tsunami crashing over the Himalayas. The Earth was going to end in 2012, it said, and the world's governments aren't doing enough to prepare us. Search "2012", it said, for "the truth" (the "truth" turned out to be over 1,000 real websites and 175 real books obsessed with 2012 as the end of time).

Then, there was a fake website ñ the "Institute for Human Continuity" ñ which consisted of a screen stating that for 25 years they'd been assessing threats to the continuation of mankind, and the results were in.

The "odds of global destruction" in 2012 had been confirmed at 94% (goodbye mortgage) and "to ensure your chance of survival, register for the lottery". In other words, it was a web campaign that seemed to say: "Look, the end of time might actually be coming, so enjoy a film about it why you still can, yeah?"

Many didn't get the joke. Tens of thousands from all over the world panicked, called Nasa, wrote letters ñ couldn't they do some saving of people too?

'People are really, really worried about the world coming to an end. Kids are contemplating suicide. Adults tell me they can't sleep'

"I think people are really, really worried about the world coming to an end," said David Morrison of Nasa. "Kids are contemplating suicide. Adults tell me they can't sleep and can't stop crying."

Indeed, Nasa got so many queries, they set up a specific site to deal with them. Yet perhaps even more worryingly, 2012 is not alone. Following the success of Blair Witch, nearly every film worth its celluloid now has its own teaser campaign, web mystery, and viral marketing push, and even the simplest promotional campaign can have unexpected consequences.

For the independently made 2008 animated fantasy Delgo ñ featuring the voices of Freddie Prinze Jr and Jennifer Love Hewitt ñ they hit upon the idea of launching "Digital Dailies", where a crack team of animators would whet the public appetite by posting their handiwork as they went. It seemed to work: the videos were getting up to half a million hits a month. Yet, sadly, it seemed most of those were in the industry; they liked what they saw, and began poaching the film's best talent. The director, Marc F Adler, was forced to resort to hiding their identities with aliases.

"It was brilliant as viral marketing," says Adler, "but terrible for making a film."

The "brilliance" of the viral marketing also proved questionable. On a reported budget of $40m, the film's box-office taking was one the worst ever for widely released film (it opened on 2,160 screens), taking just $694,782. According to Yahoo Movies, that works out as roughly two viewers for every screening.

To be fair, their teaser trailer ñ "From a Studio Nowhere Near Hollywood Ö From People You've Never Heard of Ö Comes a Myth for the New Millennium Ö Delgo" ñ probably didn't help either.

Yet if that was unexpected, some campaigns just cry out for trouble. Take the case of 2008 indie horror film A Beautiful Day. Set for its debut at an independent film festival in Muskogee, Oklahoma, the makers posted a teaser on YouTube, which featured a sinister synthesized voice saying: "People of Muskogee. Open your eyes. April 25th is a day you'll come to remember", including the message "the end is coming". But 25 April was also the prom night for the local high school. The scared students called the Muskogee police, who assumed it was a terrorist threat, and called in the FBI. Outcome: their film was swiftly booted out of the festival.

And in the world of suspect virals and dodgy publicity stunts, it seems terror threats can come from anywhere. The Cartoon Network's guerilla marketing for cartoon Aqua Teen Hunger Force saw them install LED displays depicting the show's "Moonieites" ñ 2D aliens from the moon ñ in 10 major cities across America. In Boston, however, they didn't get the gimmick. Authorities considered the Moonieites suspect devices, which sparked a major bomb scare, caused the closure of roads and posed the question: would al-Qaida really plant bombs that glowed in the dark?

"It had a very sinister appearance," said Attorney General Martha Coakley, adding "It had a battery behind it and wires."

'There are always going to be problems with unbranded campaigns; people may not get the connection to the film, and people fear the unknown'

Of course, ill-judged glowing figurines are one thing.

But even ill-thought-out poster campaigns can wreak havok. To promote Forgetting Sarah Marshall, unbranded posters were put up all over the US, saying things like "You suck, Sarah Marshall", and "My mother always hated you, Sarah Marshall". Which sounds like great fun ñ unless your name is Sarah Marshall of course, many of whom assumed they were the victim of a hate campaign.

As student Sarah Marshall, of Fort Worth, Texas, told the LA Times: "I got a lot of emails and phone calls asking if my boyfriend and I were OK." Some Sarah Marshalls even struck back with posters of their own: "You suck, Judd Apatow," they responded, citing the film's producer.

Even the obviously fanciful bus-station posters for recent sci-fi hit District 9 ñ featuring a crossed-out alien, text saying "Bench for humans only", and a request for alien sightings ñ saw the marketing team get more that they bargained for. Tens of thousands called the hotline with sightings, assuming it was a real request.

"There are always going to be problems with unbranded campaigns," says Dan Koelsch, managing editor of MovieViral.com, "because people may not get the connection to the film, and people fear the unknown."

Yet with studios looking at ever more innovative ways to market films, it inevitably leads to more innovative ways to cock up.

"Sometimes studios try too hard, to the point where people can smell the desperation," says Sean Dwyer, editor of filmjunk.com. "That's when it doesn't really work."

The desperation ponged when 20th Century Fox, looking for a way to market this year's rom-com I Love You, Beth Cooper, paid a high school student, Kenya Mejia, $1,800 to profess a secret passion for a classmate during her graduation address (which she did, bellowing: "I cannot let this opportunity just pass by. I love you, Jake Minor!").

The idea was that Fox would video the moment ñ which recreates a key scene in the film ñ post it on YouTube, and create viral buzz that the movie was inspiring copycats. It didn't work due to a) Mejia blabbing to the Wall Street Journal, b) Her already having a boyfriend, who wasn't Jake Minor, and c) The film hadn't even been released when she was supposed to have copied it. The film bombed, and a month after the video was posted, it had attracted less than 2,000 views.

If that was treading on suspect moral ground, it didn't come close to New Line's marketing push for 2006 adult crime drama Running Scared starring Paul Walker ñ a tale of the Russian mafia, bent cops, paedophiles, hookers and men being chased around with really big machetes. What did they do? Made a promotional online game from it, of course, in which players re-enacted not just the film's main action scenes ("A man points a .38 revolver at (rest of description nixed, it's adult you get the idea)" notes the Parent's Guide section of IMDb of said action, in a list that goes on for six pages) but the more intimate moments too, including Walker's character performing (description deleted.)

Needless to say, conservative America wasn't too happy when they realised little Timmy was performing online (nausea inducing description deleted,) and pressure from the National Institute on Media and the Family saw the site swiftly shut down.

Still, a really good teaser campaign, well judged, and executed, should work wonders, right? Not always. The campaign behind Mike Myers comedy The Love Guru was brilliant, spot-on, did everything right.

"It was a fully fledged effort to position Myers's character as a real guy, or at least flesh out his backstory," explains Chris Thilk, editor of MovieMarketingMadness.com. "But it wound up being funnier than the movie."

-- end of article. --

* * *

If people won't believe the Bible, Nasa, the 2012hoax.com web site dedicated to debunking this garbage hoax, info on why it is all a pack of lies that came out of a fictitious movie and other quackery, because they would rather go on believing in Planet X, the Mayan Calendar dooms day schlock, the Nasa cover-up hoax etc. etc. put up by some anonymous Youtube trolls with fancy video-editing programs, these people are hopelessly stuck on stupid and might as well believe in unicorns and the flying spaghetti monster.

As so many times before, the supposed dooms day will come and go, and those who were suckered in by this hooey will wake up the next morning to the realization they were played for fools.

One can only hope.

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