It is a myth in my opinion, as we have all heard many times that the world is going to end, in 99 they said that the computers were going to crash for y2k before that there was another scare a few years before, I don't remember exactly when.
We as a society just need to stop wondering when it is going to happen and just live each day to it's fullest it could end tomorrow or it could end in 100 years, there have been 10 movies that I know of that predicts the end of the world and yet none of them have come true.