AAh hell yeah!... I remember the name of doomsday called by the Maya's

GET READY FOR:

ANUNAKI!!! 2012!

Honestly, I don't expect the world to end nearly as much as I expect western society to undergo some serious changes; what forces these changes will not be external forces but will instead be caused by a collapse of the internal structure of society.

I'm not (by most standards) an ultra conservative, and the reason I feel this way is that there are groups of people who are attempting to engineer a perfect society by removing the social structures they dislike and replacing them with more 'ideal' structures. Lots of effort goes into 'marketing' these changes as either you're for the change or you're an evil human being with no heart that should die a horrible death.

Personally, I'm not worried about any particular change as much as I am about the actions that occur after the change has taken place. The groups who worked for the change immediately move on to their next cause, few people ever track the consequences of the change, and any negative consequence that is discovered becomes politically incorrect for anyone to mention.

I expect that (over the next century) you're going to see grass-roots 'Puritan' movements gain steem in most western societies which in turn will clash politically with the existing 'Social Engineering' movements. In some countries this may even degrade to civil war or a collapse in government.

The world will end when george lucas stops releasing remakes of star wars on DVD/blu ray or whatever

 New Zealand actually.

Im going with something radical here. The world will end when I die because Im the centre of the universe. You all know you feel the same way.

Why are people placing so much stock on the Mayan calendar? They may have predicted the end at 2012, but they sure weren't able to foresee the demise of their very own civilization...

your mother: actually they did, the mayas were gone from thier cities long before the spanish took over america

cebrian, that is true, but it is also true that the Mayans went into severe decline well before the civilization "moved". (They practiced mass ritual sacrifices, and when that didn't work, the people eventually turned against the priests and actually sacrificed the priests and their families in order to "appease" the gods in a desperate attempt to reverse the decline.) This decline happened before the Mayans actually left.

About the decline, it seems that based on drilled soil samples and weather patterns during that time, the Mayans were decimated because of a severe and prolonged drought that lasted decades. Perhaps not the only reason, but the fact remains they were decimated before they moved and none of this was predicted in their calendar.

On a quasi-related note, the Aztecs "predicted" the arrival of Cortéz!

Full scale Nuclear or bio war.

Me thinks it'd be a much more interesting topic if people say how the world will end, rather than when. After all, if you know how it ends, it is much easier to guess when, because there will be signs.