140 million people worldwide strongly agree that the Mayan prophecy means the world will end this year

I’ve been thinking about that poll, the one done by IPSOS for Reuters News. They surveyed 16,262 people in 21 countries and found out that:

One in ten (10%) respondents in 21 countries agree ‘the Mayan calendar, which some say ‘ends’ in 2012, marks the end of the world’ – 2% strongly agree, 8% somewhat agree. 

One in seven (14%) global citizens believe end of the world is coming in their lifetime

So, today I looked up the population of the earth and it was 6,840,507,003  in 2010 (and steadily rising so it’s more now) according to the World Bank.

That means that 10% of approximately 7 billion people or 700 million people worldwide believe that the Mayan calendar ends in 2012 and therefore the world will end. 

Even if you just take the 2% that, according to the IPSOS survey, “strongly agree,” you’re still talking about 140 million people.

That’s a lot of people believing the world is going to end this year!

A whole lot of people.