Either YouTube or Hulu (I don't remember which) has the whole National Geographic thing that played on the History Channel about it. I didn't know that through the centuries different cultures had oracles and prophets that predicted the same date without having knowledge of the others. Creepy.
I'm a skeptic, but it's still an entertaining piece.
ETA:
Supposedly, that's when our galaxy will line up in a way that only happened once so far (and NASA concurs based on current study)...the unusual gravitational pulls will flip flop our poles. The planet's crust and plates will shift violently and cause MASSIVE tidal waves, fires, and earthquakes. MEGA destruction in the matter of days or even hours. We'll all be thrown into the wrong hemispheres and then suffer instant ice age effects. Total annihilation. COOL!!
By all accounts we are approaching the end of the world.
but so will the sense of EPIC FAIL when it comes and goes without incident.
Not by my account. The hype surrounding the "2012" thing is going to make Y2K pale in comparison, but so will the sense of EPIC FAIL when it comes and goes without incident.
The Myan calender is what most people refer to. Just because a calender stops doesn't mean it's the end. Watch the Pen and Teller episode about it. It's probably on Hulu or Youtube.
+1 Y2K was a human created problem, that humans corrected before it happened. The end of the Mayan calendar, if real, is not a human created problem, and likely cannot be stopped or corrected by humans. Y2K was nothing compared the 12-21-12. prophecy.What people forget is the MASSIVE amount of work that went into making Y2K not be a disaster. I mean, the IT community was put through the wringer after the fact. No "Thanks! You did a great job!". It was just complaining that nothing major went wrong and it was all "hype". It wasn't hype. The problems were real.
I'd say it was far from an epic fail. It was an epic success, but like in any other field you never hear the good stuff.
The way I look at it, we've destroyed this world. It's time for it to destroy us....