2012 New Year: A prelude to disaster?

http://nma.tv People around the world are preparing to celebrate the 2012 New Year, but some who buy into doomsday theories based on Mayan mythology are preparing for what they believe is the beginning of the end times. According to the Mayan Long Count calendar, December 21, 2012 signifies the end of the 13th Baktun, a unit of time measurement equal to about 394 years. What exactly the Mayans believed will happen when the rollover occurs is being debated among scholars and Internet commenters alike. A prophesy engraved on a slab of rock at the Tortuguero archaeological site in Mexico foretells the Earthly arrival of the Mayan god Bolon Yokte, which some alarmists have linked to other, hotly contested predictions involving natural disasters and cosmic events. Detractors feel December 21 will not mean the end of time. They offer the fact that Mayans made mention of dates past the 13th Baktun as proof. As is the case with all doomsday panics, like Y2K at the start of the 2000s and this year's more recent claims from Harold Camping, only time will tell if the year 2012 is anything to fret.