Less than a decade after the big Y2K scare, Hollywood has once again capitalized on another doomsday scenario: 2012.

“2012” is a new disaster film directed by Roland Emmerich, of “Independence Day” and “The Day After Tomorrow” fame. Emmerich’s latest thriller is expected to be released worldwide on Nov. 13. The movie includes a cast of many familiar names, including John Cusack, Danny Glover and Woody Harrelson.

According to Wikipedia and IMDB (Internet Movie Data Base), the film explores the idea of a global doomsday event coinciding with the end of the Mayan Long Count Calendar’s current cycle. The movie centers on a divorced father, his ex-wife and children, and their survival.

According to the film’s plotline, in Guatamala, there is word that hundreds of people have committed suicide, believing the 2012 hypothesis is true. As a reaction, the “IHC” - or Institute for Human Continuity – is formed. It’s a secret organization that embraces the doomsday myth as fact and begins construction on massive space arks in preparation. The governments of the world charge IHC with the task of saving the human race.

Some New Age adherents believe the ancient Mayans had insight to the “end of the world” through the development of their Long Count calendar.

Mayan urban culture, known as the Classic Period, flourished from about 300 A.D. until around 900 A.D. in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula and parts of Central America. During this period, the Maya built temples and monuments, created numerous works of art and writings, continued their astronomical observations and built a network of cities, which lay buried under jungle growth for centuries.

Arguably one of the most important discoveries from the ruins is that the Maya had several calendars. One of them, the Long Count calendar, is reset to day zero every 1,872,000 days, a period known as The Great Circle. According to some calculations, the next reset date is Dec. 21, 2012.

While this may no longer hold any interest for the Maya, as their civilization collapsed over 1,000 years ago, it has become a keen interest for many doomsday prophets, New Age astrologers, and of course, Hollywood producers.

Many people dismiss these theories as just that – theories. But others are cautious.

At Cornell University, Ann Martin, who runs the “Curious? Ask an Astronomer” website, says some people are scared.

“It’s too bad that we’re getting e-mails from fourth-graders who are saying that they’re too young to die,” said Martin in a recent interview. “We had a mother of two young children who was afraid she wouldn’t live to see them grow up.”

Research indicates, however, that the outcome of Dec. 21, 2012, is unclear, as the Mayan glyphs and hieroglyphs aren’t exactly explicit about what the calendar means.

According to Jared Diamond, a professor of geography and environmental health sciences at UCLA, the Maya Long Count calendar begins on Aug. 11, 3114 B.C., just as our own calendar begins on Jan. 1 of the first year of the Christian era. Presumably, the Maya attached some significance to their own day zero, but researchers don’t know what it was.

The Daily Press asked over a dozen regular contributors their thoughts on the doomsday scenario, and evidently, nobody seems too bothered about it, as only two responses were received.

Isabel Baker, longtime Tahlequah resident and retired educator, confessed her ignorance of the Mayan doomsday prediction.