User blog comment:Avery FireFlame/Fire Rants about December 21st 2012/@comment-1874924-20121210031555

Consider this: can we really trust the ancient Mayans to predict the end of the world when they failed to predict their own downfall? (From a plague, if memory serves, that killed about 85% of the population.)

I read somewhere (where, I don't recall, since it was probably more than a year ago) that the people who study such things aren't that certain of their facts, and that the supposed apocalypse date actually has a margin of error of +/- 50 years or so. In other words, there's a distinct possibility that the supposed apocalypse may have already come and gone without anyone noticing.

The fact that 12/21/12 happens to correspond to the end date on the Mayan calendar really just means, "if you're a Mayan, it's time to get a new calendar". Imagine what Y2K would have been like in a pre-industrial society with no electronic systems to disrupt, and you have a pretty good idea of what will happen on the 21st.