Oh yes, the world is totally going to end. Just like they've been saying for thousands of years.

Honestly, just to end civilization as we know it would take the destructive force of thousands of Japanese earthquakes all over the world. Bar a massive stray asteroid impact (rather rare as it is, and now we are looking for them) or nuclear war, I don't think it is going to happen. Unless soon is a couple of billion years for you, then the sun will swallow us up.

where is that end of the world flash video with all the nukes and stuff when you need it.

You know, I really hate the phase "end civilization as we know it". It's not because of any specificity with the people who use it.

It's because the phrase is SO [CENSORED] AMBIGUOUS! Because civilization as we know it could end if we suddenly had a giant computer singularity in 3 minutes, that decided that the only way for it to survive was to micromanage human's lives.

Or random dudes&dudettes J through P all get locked in cryostasis or some other wierd top-secret "does not officially exist" government project, and then they get warmed up seven hundred years from now, only to find civilization as they knew it has "ended", because it now is radically different to what they knew, despite being in cryo-sleep or hibernation or whatever for seven hundred years.

Incidentally, the second situation is somewhat of a plotline to some movie I remember glimpsing the first five or ten minutes of.

But yeah, the term has no implicitly negative or positive connotations, and it wouldn't take much to end civilization as we know it. I mean, really, if we were to facilitate a rapid (less than six months), total switch to nuclear power generation, then civilization as we knew it would end, because it would no longer be dependant on a primarily oil and coal based power economy.

Or the concept of the end of an age.

True, but an age can end due to a massive catastrophe such as the age of dinosaurs

World NO

World as we know it and are used to YES

I hope it does end, that way I'll get to re-roll my character as another class. Wait, what are we talking about?

It's theeeeeee ennnd offff the woorrrrrrld as-we-KNOW-it.....

Annnnddd IIIIIII feeeeeeeel fiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnneeeeeeeeeee!

Hey guys , if the world is going to end , we'll die. I'm afraid of death ...     Aren't you afraid of  it?

Damn right I am afraid of death. But i would be afraid to be a survivor too. has anyone ever watched jo rogans stand up? In one video he talks about where the pyramids and other wonders of the world came from.  Its pretty funny. If you smoke some pot it will likely make sense too! haha  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIubSGIRPbM

Not much point in being afraid of the inevitable is there?  No disrespect (I don't actually know how old you are) but it seems to me that the younger generation is often at the head of such statements seeing as they've grown up in a world of buttons and functions.  (ie. UNDO, UNSEND EMAIL (thanks GOOGLE! ) or features like AUTOSAVE, CHECKPOINTS (in games) etc. etc. )  Today with the power of Facebook's "like" button one can ostensibly help people in africa or japan etc.  Technology often (in my opinion) has the nasty side-effect of causing people to lose focus of our real life (the living and breathing part of life).  The part of life that is born, grows until it dies.  If that were how I had grown up I might also be afraid of death.  As it is, I grew up working/playing in the garden whose only technology (planting, growing, harvest/dying) clearly imprints even to the young mind that there is a natural life-death cycle which needs to be embraced.

My children are no different, I'm sure if I asked any one of them (and the oldest has already moved out on his own) they would all say "yes" they're afraid.  I guess I should have had them do more gardening instead of website building as chores eh?  hehe 

the Monk