Yeah, though I think the only other really significant one that received any kind of media hype was 1999. Y2k and all that but most people, if I recall correctly, simply thought that computers might go wonky for a few. Tech ending but not necessarily world ending. Counter y2k against 2012, which has had repeated hyping, over and over again for the past few years (even a movie) and that could supplant a pretty hefty subconscious fear or unease.

I look at it this way. If the recent mermaid mockumentary had people believing that that was real, then good grief, how bright is it to tell people that the world is going to end in some cataclysm this year? I think that's where McKenna, Sheldrake and Abraham kind of hit home with the idea that a date that perhaps is meaningless can become almost a self fulfilling prophecy. Not that people are going to be thinking the world into geological cataclysm a la Hancock and Emmerich. That's not going to happen, lol. But, a time of tumult (change) almost more like what the Mayans actually believed. That could be what we are kind of seeing out there.

In every man there is something wherein I may learn of him, and in that I am his pupil.--Ralph Waldo Emerson