Various doomsday scenarios, including a meteor strike and the end of the Mayan calendar, indicate that the world will end on Dec. 21, 2012.
The rumors, while baseless, have compelled some Americans to go to extreme lengths — like stockpiling food and building bomb shelters — to prepare for the coming Apocalypse. Even the Australian prime minister has bought into the madness.
In an attempt to exterminate the hysteria, the USA.gov website published a blog post on Monday stating that "the world will not end on December 21, 2012, or any day in 2012."
Phew.
Confirmation that we'll all live to see another Christmas and New Year's Day follows a bunch of videos and articles put out by NASA debunking end-of-the-world scenarios.
It turns out that a lot of undue panic stems from a misinterpretation of the Mayan calender.
"Just as the calendar you have on your kitchen wall does not cease to exist after December 31, the Mayan calendar does not cease to exist on December 21, 2012. This date is the end of the Mayan long-count period but then — just as your calendar begins again on January 1 — another long-count period begins for the Mayan calendar,"NASA explains in a post titled "Beyond 2012."