Long long ago, so long ago, there lived innumerable dinosaurs. They roamed the earth, careless and free. They came in all shapes and sizes, tall and handsome, short and fearless, round and cute 
. Some ruled the skies, some the land and some the water. Based on food habits, there were herbivores, carnivores and omnivores. They marked and lived in their own territories (locality), some built their own nests, some in caves and holes.
And one fine day they all vanished. This as we know happened over 65 million years ago! Based on fossil records multiple theories are suggested as reason for their extinction. The oldest being a meteor impact in the gulf of mexico and a recent theory that heavy volcanic activity in the deccan traps (Western India) causing significant climatic changes. This period is known as K-T extinction, but this is no where compared to the P-T extinction that happened 250 million years ago, when almost 90% of life on water and 75% on land was vanquished. Seems like it was the only period with record of insect extinction.
Humans have always had the question about life on earth and wondered about how “the end” will come. For those who are wondering, the question of the end comes, because in my opinion, there is hard evidence (like the dinosaurs above), and people see a lot of chaos that unsettles them.
Scientific thinking has identified a meteorite or asteroid collision, or the sun dying out, or a heavy solar wind, or movement of geological plates, or a pole reversal, or global warming and setting of ice age as possible ways the life on earth could face extinction.
Almost all religious scriptures have dealt with the end in some form or the other. The Biblical documents refer to the apocalypse and how the savior will come to save humans. References to how devastation over devastation will begin the final chapter are mentioned. Harbingers of the dooms-day have not stopped at linking any negative news they find with the end.
It started with Nostradamus, most of us would have heard about his famous quatrains. He wrote them in a cryptic form mixing, french, german and greek. Followers of Nostradamus have been linking anything and everything that happens to his quatrains. They have even linked the twin tower destruction to President Obama’s election. But they always find the link after the incident has happened. This is akin to the stock market analysts who look around and identify the “Global cues” that they can link with why the index ended in green or red 
Some insist that the end will be in a third world war started by the anti-christ. There are others who cite other indicators and insist that dooms day is true. There are plenty of material in the internet, so we’ll skip it and let you google them.
The group that is getting more attention now, claims that Dec 21, 2012 is the end. How? ‘Mayan calender ends precise on that day’ they say. Maya was one of the sophosticated civilizations that lived in the America’s. They developed a system of inter-locking calender that ends in 2012 A lot of people believe that something or the other will happen in 2012 and the world as we know it will collapse, the recent economic downturn is also attributed as a step towards the mayhem that is supposed to follow.
With the global warming showing signs of unpredictable climatic conditions ranging from severe droughts to sudden floods, earth quakes and tsunamis, there is definitely a jitter in everybody’s mind.
What more the scientific community has identified that polar reversal (geo-magnetic reversals) happens once in 700 thousand years, and that the last one happened over 700 thousand years ago. This mean, as acknowledged by scientists, that we are over due for a polar reversal. But nobody knows when. Polar reversal triggers a huge change in earths climatic conditions.
Well, we havent even talked about Planet X. May be its just a myth. The deep space probes pioneer 10 and 11 could have shed more light, but those missions have ended.
Based on historical evidences, it looks like extinction of life forms has been the norm on earth, but then life has survived. Humans, I think are more capable of surviving, compared to the dinosaurs.
A spiritual guru once told me, “Maya (illusion in hindu scriptures) is nothing but the collective imagination of all life forms. When the life forms imagine the end, the end of maya will happen. But then, life will want to surive and the maya will reappear”. I didnt understand head or tail, but it sounded nice!
So now is the time to forget all your problems, quit working hard for nothing and have fun, while time lasts
