Mayan Calendar Runs Out In One Year; What True Believers Are Doing

And a lot of people could make big bucks by capitalizing on the folks who are concerned enough about perceived threats, real or imagined, to make a change in their life, such as Robert Richardson, who runs Off Grid Survival, a website that helps people prepare for worst-case scenarios such as, well, the end of human civilization as we know it.

Richardson's business caters to all sorts of survivalists, but admits that he's seen increased traffic as the calendar comes closer to the Mayan Calendar end date.

"It's going to be a huge year in the preparedness market," Richardson told HuffPost Weird news. "It will be bigger than Y2K."

Richardson doesn't claim to be a full-on 2012 believer, but thinks there may be something to the claims that it will cause a big change on Earth.

"There is something to it," he said. "It's interesting that strange things are converging -- political tensions, weird weather, economic problems -- but it may all be a self-fullfilling prophecy."

On the other hand, some people are making prophecies that they don't believe are self-fullfilling such as Peter Kling, a 2012 survival advocate and author of "Letter to Earth: You Can Survive Armageddon!" (Eloquent Press).

Kling, whose website calls him "The Einstein of Biblical Prophecies," wants people to understand that nothing is going to happen on Dec. 21, 2012.

"No, it's the end of a cycle. The coldest day of the year isn't the shortest day of the year, it takes time for things to happen," Kling said.

What kind of things? Well, Kling says the end of the Mayan Calendar marks the end of a 5,000-year cycle that he claims is associated with big floods. In addition, the date also loosely corresponds with the return of Elenin, a comet that takes thousands of years to orbit that recently came within 22 million miles of Earth.

The possible effects have been the subject of debate among many 2012 conspiracy theorists -- including Kling -- even though NASA experts like Don Yeomans of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., insist any effects of the comet are minimal at best.

"My subcompact automobile exerts a greater influence on the ocean’s tides than comet Elenin ever will,” Yeomans said.

"NASA insists it's nothing but an ice ball, but every time it's been aligned with Earth, we've had a major earthquake," Kling said.

Kling also claims NASA scientists ares predicting there will be major solar storms that could collapse the power grid for weeks and months.

To be fair to NASA, the special doomsday FAQ they set up to dispel 2012 fears says that while solar storms could have an effect on communications, they promise to warn electric companies and other appropriate busineses when if they get intense enough to affect the power grid.

It looks like NASA will have its hands full dealing with doomsday predictions based on the reaction to the upcoming calendar date by Kling and Betsy Balaga, a psychic near Toronto.

"It's not the end of the world, but there will be tsunamis, earthquakes and volcanoes where people don't expect," she told HuffPost Weird News. "Part of this is because of a pole shift caused by the arrival of a planet Nibiru."

Some would say it's the same for NASA scientists who have had to answer questions about the mysterious planet Nibiru for years , only to run into new believers. Their response can be summarized by this explanation from a doomsday FAQ page on their website.

"There is no factual basis for these claims," according to NASA. "If Nibiru or Planet X were real and headed for an encounter with the Earth in 2012, astronomers would have been tracking it for at least the past decade, and it would be visible by now to the naked eye. Obviously, it does not exist."

Balaga sees it differently.

"I believe that the Mayans knew all of this," she said. "I think a lot of ancient knowledge has been ignored."

Since natural disasters seem to be the big fear behind 2012 -- and those, admittedly, are hard to predict -- preparing for the worst makes sense to people like John Kehne, who runs December212012.com, a "clearinghouse" for all the doomsday-related data.

"We do have a shelter here in Louisville that is built for tornadoes just in case anything does happen," Kehne told HuffPost Weird News. "I do think some sort of change is coming. There's been a dramatic increase in the intensity and frequency of earthquakes this year. Based on my records, we've had more intense disasters than any time in memory."

Keith L. Seitter, executive director of the American Meteorological Society, admits it's been an unusual year weather-wise, but bases it on various factors.

"We've had several record-setting events, such as the earthquake on the East Coast, the drought in Texas and the tornadoes earlier this Spring, but that's consistent with a warming planet," Seitter told HuffPost Weird News. "in addition, there was a confluence of events on, say 50-year cycles and 25-year cycles and sometimes those events will happen at the same time.

"However, no legitimate scientist would credit these things to the end of the Mayan Calendar."

Meanwhile, if you're unsure of who to believe about how to deal with the end of the Mayan Calendar one year from now, you could always do what travel writer Joshua Berman did: Ask the Mayans themselves.

He's the author of Maya 2012: A Guide To Celebrations In Mexico, Guatemala, Belize & Honduras (Moon Publishing), and says there are 10 million Mayans still living in the region and most of them are looking at the next year, not as the end of the world, but as the beginning of a cash cow.

"I haven't spoken with a single Mayan or Mayan expert who believes there will be an apocalypse," Berman told HuffPost Weird News. "Instead, there is going to be a lot of celebrating and parties. They hope to increase tourism by 10 percent this year.