A baktun is a period of 144,000 days and it is a unit in the Mayan “long count” of days from some date in their legendary past. Nobody knows exactly what that date in their legendary past the count started. If one guess is correct, and nobody including the ancient Mayans made any mistakes, then the end of the 13th baktun will be about 21 or 23 December 2012 by our count. The Mayans had a number of city states which were often at war with each other and what was believed in one city might not have been believed in the next. And they did not predict World War 1 or anything else.

1A. The addle brained ex-hippie who first claimed that this stuff about gods was significant believes he is a reincarnated Mayan. But even he did not say “end of the world” and he didn’t invent all the garbage about planetary and galactic line ups.

2. The planets X and Nibiru do not exist. If either was due to be near the Earth in late 2012 they would be visible with binoculars now, or even to the naked eye. Why can’t anyone see them? Don’t talk about them being only visible in the southern hemisphere, I live in Australia and there are three astronomical observatories within a dozen miles of my house.

3. The other real planets will not line up. The positions of the planets have been known with great precision for centuries and where they will be on any day in the next tens of thousands of years can be calculated fairly easily. Despite the fact that a few can get almost in a line it cannot happen with all of them. Even when most get lined up they are never in a single line and they have no effect on us. The only other planet that does is Venus, which is by far the closest sometimes and is thought to raise a tide in the middle of the Pacific Ocean a couple of millimetres high. It does that on a very frequent basis, like a few times every five years and has done since the beginning of the solar system. Big freaking deal.

4. The galactic line up claims are false. There are at least three versions of this, the only one that is close to true was closest to true in 1998 and it has been getting more and more away from a line up as the years pass, and it happens twice every year. Another big deal.

5. A peak in sun spots is expected in March – May 2013. Yes, that is 2013, not 2012. These peaks do not equate to solar storms. Solar storms and similar events can happen at any time. There was a big one a couple of years ago. Notice anything? I thought not. Yep. a third big deal.

6. Bibles predict it. Which Bibles? Who claims it and which Bible predicts it? We want the details of this. That’s how life works. You make a claim, you back it up with facts, You are aware I suppose that Harold Camping used the Bible to predict the rapture on 21 May 2011. Well it didn’t happen, just like the hundreds or thousands of other Bible predictions that did not happen since 320AD when the first Bibles were compiled.

7. If you believe that tsunamis, earthquakes, storms and hurricanes are signs of the end of the world, then you have swallowed the nonsense preached by religious cranks who have been saying this sort of thing for 1980 years and have always been wrong. That superstitious garbage has only to do with a crank version of Christianity and has nothing to do with supposed prophecies of doom supposedly based on a single damaged Mayan inscription. Tsunamis, earthquakes and hurricanes have always happened and always will.

8. This is not a joke. It is a fraud. A few dozen people make money out of this sort of thing and write books filled with lies and create web sites and video clips by the dozen promoting it. Maybe you have seen a “lot” of web sites. How do you know that they are not created by the same few dozen people? Do you see any advertising of these books etc on those sites? How do you know that the tens of thousands of questions about doom in 2012 on Yahoo Answers since 2006 were not put here by people promoting this junk? It does not matter exactly what is on the doom site or the question, since it is all lies anyway, just as long as it says “doom in 2012″ which might lead to you or someone else buying a book or a DVD.

Now do you understand what this is all about? Three dozen confidence men and a few loonies.

Much more detail from people who actually know what they are talking about at

http://www.2012hoax.org/start