Someone mentioned 2000... at least the y2k bug had some technical basis.
The whole 2012 thing, OTOH, is a bunch of crap. Every Mayan scholar in the world says its a load of baloney. So what if their huge calendar is looping around to zero? Ours does it every 365 days. The only people believing and disseminating this nonsense are new age hippies, crystal jockeys and conspiracy tools. Oh and charlatans squeezing a buck out of the aforementioned nutburgers.
Seriously, the less people believe this rubbish, the less it'll become a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Besides, the Mayans didn't even predict their own messy demise. What makes anyone think they could predict someone else's?