Countdown to 2012 Apocalypse hysteria: Are you a believer? (Video)

Movies, television series, books, conspiracy theories, websites, million-dollar catastrophe-proof settlements and bunkers all lead to one highly controversial topic: 2012 apocalypse and surviving it.

Are you a believer in the much-hyped Mayan end-of-world doomsday scenario many ascribe to and which some are profiting highly from?

MSNBC had a fascinating program on the mass hysteria involved with the predicted end date: December, 21, 2012. Many, including scientists, believe in our pending destruction and others say it is a whole lot of nothing: crazy rantings hyped by those who want to exploit others' hysteria.

From ordinary citizens with bunkers in their basements to corporations and astronomers investing in million-dollar shelters, believers around the globe are frenziedly preparing for doomsday. One scientist is even looking to construct his shelter 2,000 feet above sea level to avoid the massive waves that are sure to crash, he says, and is currently shopping for real estate to construct his million dollar "Survivor City." As with anything else, lots of money is being spent and made.

So does this mean like everything else, only the ".35 percenters" will be able to outlive the apocalypse? Will it come down to survival of the richest?

Some of these "shelters" cost a million dollars for one "floor" replete with all the comforts we have grown accustomed to in our developed world. Those providing the amenities say corporations are sparing no expense on these "pods" or subterranean bunkers. No need to emerge after the cataclysmic destruction to a planet thrown back into the dark ages, when there is so much money flowing, is there?

But the rest of the 99.65 percent of us cannot afford a million dollar "survival suite" so I guess we'll be going the ways of the dinosaurs. Yikes!

The Mayans, a great civilization, which incidentally vanished and whose disappearance might be shrouded in even more mystery than the Dinos, operated under two calenders. The long calender like ours, counted a 365-day year and the Holy calender, which comprised 260 days.

Now here is where it's starting to get fuzzy, and some believers are now saying that the apocalypse might be further away than the originally predicted Dec. 21, 2012 due to some miscalculations.

Whew! That is some good news, isn't it? According to Professor and Author Gerardo Aldano, seen on MSNBC in 2010, the long calender might be off 50 or more years.

Other theorists dispute Gerardo, choosing to believe in our impending doom. Still other conspiracy theories abound, such as signs of the times, Biblical prophecies and scientific explanations.

Some theories steeped in science claim the other rational reasons for the 2012 finale is a "geomagnetic reversal" which may occur in 2012. To condense the long version and in the interest of simplifying the complicated--a geomagnetic reversal is a pole shift, where the North and South poles quickly and briefly interchange positions, causing earthquakes, floods, fatalities and throwing us all out of sync, including animals.

Many have attributed this to the thousands of mysterious birds and fish deaths recorded late 2010. Remember all those dead birds falling from the sky New Years Eve 2010 and into 2011? All those dead fishes washing up around the U.S. and beyond?

Believers say those are just some of the "signs of the times." Still other scenarios abound--like intense giant solar flares which may knock out all our electrical grids, throwing the world in chaos, frying everything with the intense heat and the nightmarish Black Hole gravitational pull which will suck us all into oblivion. The conspiracy theories are endless. Some are too fantastical to even entertain or mention and I haven't touched on the religious angle as yet.

Religious folks say 2012 will simply be Biblical prophesies unfolding--God's "Second Coming." Evangelicals, Catholics believe that Jesus Christ, Son of God, will be making his second and final appearance to destroy the "wicked" and gather up all the good folks for the "Light-Years" travel to Heaven.

What do you believe?

Click on the above attached video for more on the cataclysmic end of days predicted.