I do agree of the stupidity in predicting the end of days. In my own humble opinion the end of days will just sort of happen in an unplanned way with a meteor or such. That is if we don't get off our behinds and start to build colonies elsewere... and fast!

My own reason for having a numeric "end of days" date is just to encourage myself to be more creative and more of an "artist". I trick myself. And if I do happen to be right and a meteor destroys earth in 30-40 years I can always say "I told you so" the day before the comet hits and be smug about it.

Other ways for the world to end is the current economic trends of course. Someone might just go triggerhappy and think: "ah, the economy is out of control! Might as well set off some atomics". Then: Boom all over or globe and we can all go on living happily ever after in a typical before-1989 sciencefiction novel with mutated humans, radioactivity and thunderdome tournaments. Yay!

The empire never began.