What, you haven't heard? It's all over the Internet and in hundreds of books about doomsday 2012. Plus, viral marketing for the $200 million disaster movie 2012, opening Friday, has been spreading alarm and anxiety -- totally tongue-in-cheek -- for months.

There is some disagreement on whether the exact end day is Dec. 21 or 23. Authors of doomsday books say it's the former, with the date falling on the winter solstice. Most scholars don't buy the doomsday bit but say the Maya calendar on which it's based ends on Dec. 23.

No matter what date, we are in an end-of-the-world panic (anyone remember Y2K?), this time amplified by the Internet and the advance buzz for 2012. It's not clear, even to the panicked, what precisely is supposed to happen in three years, but it will be BIG. Or so we've been warned, supposedly by the ancient Maya.

In 2012, star John Cusack, playing a science-fiction writer, scoffs at such predictions. "What are the odds?" he jokes to his kids.

Oops. Cue the rain of fiery meteors.

Yes, the future looks grim, according to 2012. Cusack and company struggle to survive as the Earth's crust collapses in earthquakes and tidal waves flood the continents.

Director Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow) promises 2012 will be his last catastrophe flick. "It's a modern retelling of Noah's ark, with ties to the Mayan calendar," he says. "When writing the script, I always had the Mayan angle. But it wasn't called 2012 until I realized it was an Internet phenomenon and how many people knew about it."

Even before the 2012 trailers began whipping around the online universe, fears were circulating that Earth is about to be swamped by global floods. Or fried by solar flares. Wiped out by an exploding sun. Buffeted by a reversal of the north and south magnetic poles caused by a galactic alignment of the Earth and sun lined up with the Dark Rift-center of the Milky Way.

Or that a wandering planet called Nibiru is going to zoom into our solar system and wreak havoc with Earth (but not until 2087).

"We humans are endlessly fascinated about (the end of the world)," Emmerich says. "My theory is that deep down in our unconscious, we know that a couple times in history we nearly came to extinction." (continued...)

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