Though Russians are panicking about the upcoming doomsday and Gail Collins is writing her column about zombies, it's important to note that according to a survey from the Public Religion Research Institute and the Religion News Service only 2 percent of Americans think the world is going to end come December 21. In case you'd forgotten, that's supposedly the day when the Maya long-count calendar will end, and maybe possibly something disastrous will happen. (Or not.) 

But at least most of the 1,018 Americans surveyed aren't that concerned. Which is good because reasonable, scholarly people — like the folks over at NASA and Yale College Dean and Maya scholar Mary Miller — are spreading the world that nothing's going to happen. 

Still, according to the survey Americans aren't ruling out doomsday scenarios completely: 15 percent think the end of the world as foreseen by the Book of Revelation will come before they die.

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Esther Zuckerman