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FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. -- The world will end in exactly one year, that is, if you believe in certain interpretations of Mayan "prophecy." Thursday, December 22, 2011.

FacebookDiggTwitterRedditDelicious Link FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. -- The world will end in exactly one year, that is, if you believe in certain interpretations of Mayan "prophecy."

Some people believe that the world will end on Dec. 21, 2012, due to ancient Mayan calendars that have recently become popularized via scholarly works and in mainstream movies or novels.

These ideas are given credence by some in the community when unusual events happen that seem to defy easy explanation. In Arkansas, for example, there has been a spate of mass bird deaths and fish kills plaguing some communities.

The change in worldwide weather patterns and natural catastrophes in the form of earthquakes and tsunamis have caused people all over to wonder if there might be some worthiness to the claims of impending doom.

Doug Krueger is a professor of world religions and a member of a free-thinking skeptic group in Fayetteville. He is also a leader of a UFO investigations group.

"There's always that possibility. Of course, I'm hoping with pretty much everyone else on the planet this isn't going to happen," Krueger said.

The focus of these newer predictions comes from studies on the ancient Mayan culture. Historians said the Mayans created a calendar that started in about 3,100 B.C. and ends one year from Wednesday.

"People started speculating, and this greatly captures the imagination, that ancient people saw something and said, 'We're going to leave clues,' sort of like an Indiana Jones-type plot. And so people thought, 'So I guess this is going to be the end of everything. The Mayans foresaw it,'" Krueger said. "The notion that they would have been able to predict precisely when an asteroid or something would come here is pretty remote. But some people say, 'Hey, you never know, maybe that's what's happening.'"

However, end of the world prophecies are nothing new. Most recently, the United States saw the prophecies of doom from Harold Camping, a pastor and radio host, come and pass -- twice in one year.

In the run up to the millennium, the entire world braced itself for the so-called "Y2K" bug that could have brought computers everywhere to their knees.

Bogus or not, plenty of people are capitalizing on those fears and the overall excitement to the tune of millions of dollars. The Hollywood blockbuster "2012" made $769 million worldwide during its run at theaters.

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