End of the World?

I was talking to someone at work today and he mentioned something he planned to do in about five years to which I replied that according to the Discovery Channel, the world may come to an end as we know it on December 21, 2012, so maybe he should revise his time-line, lol. It seems that all the ancient calendars end on that day even though the people who created them were in different parts of the world and had no contact with each other. Spooky! There was some discussion about the flip-flop of the magnetic poles and the fact that this has happened before and may happen again with catastrophic results and that this may be the reason for the end of the calendars. Nothing you can do to prepare for such an event. Maybe I should give some thought to retiring earlier than six years from now, lol, or I may never get a chance.