Throughout history, human beings have been foretelling the end of the world, but nothing out of the ordinary has so far come to pass. So what makes the date December 21, 2012 any different? Controversy continues to build around that date fueled by the one thing that all other similar occurrences appear to have in common, fear, a necessary component in mass hysteria. According to theAmerican Heritage Medical Dictionary, mass hysteria is defined as “a socially contagious frenzy of irrational behavior in a group of people as a reaction to an event.”

The operative word is “irrational” as proven by previous events in history such as the unrivaled hysteria that claimed innocent lives at the hands of supposedly educated men during the Salem Witch hunts. There was also the too-realistic radio broadcast of an adaptation of H.G. Well’s “War of the Worlds” where listening audiences actually believed that their country was being attacked by aliens, and more recently, the Y2K scare that had the entire world waiting breathlessly for the computer crash that never came.

Armageddon and mass hysteria go hand in hand. As bad news continues to pour in regarding the collapse of world economies, the wars in the Middle East, China rising up as a major financial center, and other unprecedented events, people are convinced that the prophesies foretold in the book of Revelations are indeed coming true. Pair that with the more recent hype surrounding theMayan Calendarpredicting an exact date for the end of the world, i.e. December 12, 2012, and you have a perfect recipe for mass hysteria.

Writer Ray Villard on the online channel, Discovery News, wrote an article entitled “Top Ten Reasons Why the World Won’t End in 2012.” In it he states, “Apparently the Mayans knew something about the heavens we don’t, according to numerous hot-selling 2012 doomsday books on the market. Our multi-billion dollar telescopes, space probes, and 6,000 professional astronomers somehow just can’t keep up with the mystic knowledge of an ancient superstitious culture.”