Prophetic Profits: Making Money off Doomsday Dread.

Bruce Maiman discusses how dire prophecies help some people make money off doomsday dread.

There's an old riddle: What is always coming but never arrives? Tomorrow, because when tomorrow comes it will be today.

That works for predictions about the end of the world, too, yet apocalyptic prophets are convinced the year 2012 marks our global demise when the Mayan "Long Count" calendar – 5,125 years long – expires Thursday at midnight. On the 21st, the winter solstice, the calendar starts over. Twelve percent of Americans believe that's when the world will end, according to a recent Reuters survey. More benignly, some think we'll enter some sort of "new era." The rest of us will wait until New Year's Day to "start over."

Today's vision of Armageddon takes many forms: natural disasters, economic collapse, power grid failure, religious conviction, cosmic phenomena, nuclear war, terrorist attack, viral infection, alien invasion, government takeover, FEMA camps and, of course, zombies. Read more