by Marlee Cox In- Depth Editor

It’s 2012, and everyone knows what that means: our days are numbered. This is the year the beast comes to Earth, the oceans spontaneously combust, and canned goods triple in value. Soon, renegade bands of survivors will roam the streets, armed with shivs and Molotov cocktails, eager to add to further the destruction.

Well. Maybe.

This is hardly the first time mankind has been hit with the threat of an impending Armageddon. Just last year, a group of radical Christians, headed by a man called Harold Camping, announced that the world would come to an end by 6 PM on May 21. Interestingly enough, Camping also predicted the rapture back in 1994, which, of course, turned out to be false. As his following grew in 2011 (there were ‘Bible-guaranteed’ ads on billboards), though, Camping assured them that his visions were clearer this time. The world would end on the 21 of May.

It didn’t.

The 2011 rapture was only the most recent of failed end-of-world predictions. Back in the fifth century, a fellow called Montanus started the proud tradition of stating, without conclusive evidence, that the end of times were upon us.

Labeled a heretic and a loony, Montanus was condemned in 431 AD, which, sadly, ended the proud tradition of responding logically to doomsday claims.

Over the next several centuries, the world failed to end dozens of times. Most famously, the Jehovah’s Witnesses claimed the end of the world in 1914, 1915, 1918, 1920, 1925, and several years after that. After the world continued to turn on the original 1914 date of the prediction, followers of the Witness’ prediction concluded that Jesus, their savior, had indeed come to Earth but was no ruling invisibly.

Invisible Jesus.

Religion is not the only thing to have inspired doomsday panic. The passing of Haley’s comet, in 1910, and the Hale-Bopp Comet, late in the twentieth century, spawned ludicrous theories about toxic emissions and certain death.

Haley’s Comet is visible from Earth ever 106 years, and no such circumstances have ever ensued.

And, of course, the reason we all live in fear today: the Mayans. Contrary to popular belief, the Mayan calendar does not ‘end’ in 2012. It merely resets itself to 0, much in the way modern calendars reset themselves from December to January.

Think about it this way: even if the Mayans meant to predict the end of the world, they failed to predict the end of their own civilization.

There is certainly a possibility that life as we know it will cease on 21 December, 2012. Realistically, though, there’s also a possibility that the world will end tomorrow, at 11:43 AM.

With this information in mind, feel free to form your own opinion and prepare accordingly.

And, hey, if everybody else is wrong, at least you nutjobs will be able to say, “I told you so,” while gunning us down and making off with our SPAM.

Photo courtesy of http://msnbcmedia4.msn.com/j/MSNBC/Components/Photo/_new/091021-shaun-zombies-hmed-3p.grid-6×2.jpg