Culture
According to a new survey, almost 15 percent of people around the world believe the world will end in their lifetime, and 10 percent believe that the Mayan calendar indicates that this will happen in 2012.
The 5,125-year Mayan calendar ends on December 21, 2012, prompting many interpretations and suggestions that this marks the end of the world.
“Whatever the reason, whether it's God's hands or a natural disaster or a political event, one in seven believes the world will end,” says Keren Gottfried, who conducted a global survey. “This may have been due to media attention, which interpreted the Mayan prediction as the end of the world in 2012,” Gottfried added, noting that some Maya scientists They dispute this interpretation.
Responses to the international survey of 16,262 people in more than 20 countries varied quite widely. At the same time, only 6 percent of French people believed in the impending apocalypse that would come in their lifetime, compared to 22 percent of people in Turkey and the US, and slightly fewer in South Africa and Argentina. Also, only 7 per cent of people in Belgium and 8 per cent of Britons feared the end of the world.
One in ten people on Earth was afraid or anxious about the end of the world in 2012. The largest number of those who feared the end of the world were in Russia and Poland, and the fewest in the UK.
Scientists believe that people with lower levels of education and income, as well as those under 35, are more likely to believe or worry about the end of the world.
“Perhaps older people have lived long enough not to worry about what will happen in the future,” Keren Gottfried explained.
The survey was conducted in China, Turkey, Russia, Mexico, South Korea, Japan, the United States, Argentina, Hungary, Poland, Sweden, France, Spain, Belgium, Canada, Australia, Italy, South Africa, Great Britain, Indonesia and Germany.