Apocalypse-mania is sweeping China. Sichuan locals have been buying up candles in fear of three days of darkness preceding the end of the world, while police in Shanghai reportedly handled 25 "apocalypse-related" fraud cases within a 24-hour stretch. Then there's the guy who spent his life savings building an ark in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, home to the country's most parched terrain.

These fears appear to have been stoked by the end of the ancient Mayan calendar and the popularity of sci-fi disaster film 2012 (2009) in China.

I'm actually quite impressed the Mayans made a calendar that lasted until 2012. Their civilization made the calendar sometime around the 5th century BC. I bought my computer just three years ago, but its calendar only goes up to 2099; so much for the superiority of modern technology.

Presumably, this means we've got 87 years to prepare for the "Windows apocalypse." I'd better get in early and start panic-buying operating systems.

Far be it for me to judge other people's hobbies, but the long and illustrious history of apocalyptic predictions provide much more interesting doomsday scenarios than a few days of darkness.

Wikipedia has an outstanding list of predicted dates for apocalypses, starting with the Romans who apparently were told by 12 eagles that the world was ending in 634 BC.

I suppose by the time a 12th eagle had told me to be worried, I'd probably start listening, too. Some Christians, including Paul the apostle, apparently thought Jesus would be back within a generation, with doom riding at his back. It seems Jesus and his apocalypse were spectacularly lost. If you see him, for God's sake, don't give him the right directions.

In 1524, astrologers predicted that London was going to bring a great flood upon the world. Given London's weather, it certainly made more sense than Noah's desert flood.

But that was downright pedestrian compared to the chicken of doom. In 1806, a hen outside Leeds in England started laying eggs with the phrase "Christ is coming" on them. Sure, later it turned out some fraudster was writing that on the eggs then putting them back in the chicken, but you've got to give him points for creativity.

But not as many points as I'm willing to give George Van Tassel, who in 1967 said that an alien named Ashtar had told him the southeast chunk of the US was going to be nuked by a Soviet attack. I guess Ashtar was probably just messing with him.

It's clear that there are far better apocalypses to choose from than a cheesy disaster movie, a defunct calendar or a few days of darkness.

But I'll stick with Ashtar or the doom chicken, thank you very much.

If you're going to play the apocalypse game, you might as well have fun with it.