The threat of impending doom for the human race is a subject most will never get tired of, even it is merely put forward as a type of ghost story told around a campfire. The History Channel has dissected ancient and modern versions of doomsday prophecy and compiled its findings into one intriguing and informative program, Doomsday 2012: The End of Days.

The drama begins with the Web Bot Project, an Internet program that originally foretold stock futures based on stocks people invested in, that has somehow tapped into the collective subconscious of society and can predict catastrophic events associated with the end of the world.

An explanation as to how the Web Bot predicts future catastrophic events is ambiguous, merely stating that the program scans language found on the Internet, but its creators claim that the Web Bot’s doomsday predictions, like those of the Mayan calendar, extend to the year 2012, and then cease.

The Web Bot is credited with having predicted the anthrax attacks in Washington D.C., the tsunami in Indonesia, and Hurricane Katrina. Through abrupt editing, the program makes a loose, rough transition from the Web Bot to the ancient forms of doomsday prophecy. This is where the intrigue and dramatic re-enactments begin.

The Sybil, an oracle in the Roman Empire during the sixth century, would go into a trance in which the god Apollo would take over her body and she would make predictions that would signify the end of the world. In the first of several dramatic re-enactments, a frail old woman who lives in a cave portrays Sybil. Thick plumes of incense smoke and the worn look of worry on her face lend themselves to the mystery and intensity of her prophecies, which supposedly included the birth of Jesus as a savior.

While the program’s creators primarily play the divine revelation card, they also explore the possibility that it may have been gas, not some all-knowing deity, which sent the oracle into this revelatory trance.