So, three days to go til the end of the world, right?

Well that's if you're counting down on your novelty Mayan advent calendar. (What's behind December 21? An atom bomb? A squirrel with a switchblade? Sweet FA? Perhaps jolly things up with artist Darren Cullen's Topless Mayan Calendar - Final Edition.)

Citizens of Russia are sufficiently concerned to have began stockpiling food, matches, candles and torches in preparation for the big day.

mayan apocalypse

It's the end of the world as we know it... possibly

As The Guardian points out, the apocalypse is surely near when Chechnyan President Ramzan Kadyrov emerges as the voice of reason.

On his official website, he wrote: "People are buying candles, saying the end of the world is coming.

"Does no one realise that once the end of the world comes, candles won't help them?"

Meanwhile in China, over 100 people have been detained by police for spreading rumours about the end of the world, The Independent reported.

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Many of those held are believed to be members of the fringe Christian group Almighty God.

According to the South China Morning Press, the sect has denounced the Communist Party as the "great red dragon" and is listed as an "evil cult" by the government.

In America, business is booming for Ron Hubbard, a manufacturer of hi-tech underground survival shelters.

He told The Telegraph: "We've gone from one a month to one a day.

"I don't have an opinion on the Mayan calendar, but when astrophysicists come to me, buy my shelters and tell me to be prepared for solar fires, radiation, EMPs (electromagnetic pulses)...I'm going underground on the 19th and coming out on the 23rd. It's just in case anybody's right."

So, Huff Po UK readers, how are you preparing for the end of the world?

Take a look at some past predictions from around the world here:

1806
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As the Christian Science Monitor reports, the "Prophet Hen of Leeds," a domesticated fowl in England, began laying eggs that bore the message "Christ is coming" in 1806, leading locals to believe the end of the world was upon them.

Charles Mackay's 1841 book, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, describes it thus:

"Great numbers visited the spot, and examined these wondrous eggs, convinced that the day of judgment was near at hand. Like sailors in a storm, expecting every instant to go to the bottom, the believers suddenly became religious, prayed violently, and flattered themselves that they repented them of their evil courses. But a plain tale soon put them down, and quenched their religion entirely. Some gentlemen, hearing of the matter, went one fine morning, and caught the poor hen in the act of laying one of her miraculous eggs. They soon ascertained beyond doubt that the egg had been inscribed with some corrosive ink, and cruelly forced up again into the bird's body. At this explanation, those who had prayed, now laughed, and the world wagged as merrily as of yore."
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