Ragnarok
A scene from the last phase of Ragnarok, after the world is in fire (by Emil Doepler, 1905). Ragnarok 2014 will cause end of the world on 22 February, according to Viking predictions.

Viking apocalypse will cause end of the world on February 22 with Ragnarok, according to an ancient prediction in Norse mythology.

Vikings, the people of the Norse culture (793 to 1066 AD) in Scandinavia, called their apocalypse prediction Ragnarok, which coincides with the grand finale of York's 30th Jorvik Viking Festival that celebrates the city's Viking heritage.

Ragnarok, or Doom of the Gods, is described in Viking mythology as the catastrophic event where the nine worlds that make up the cosmos are destroyed.

It is a prophecy about the end of the world in which all the Viking gods including Odin, Thor, Tyr, Freyr, Heimdallr, and Loki, will fight in a great battle following which the world will submerge in water to resurface afresh with two human survivors.

Viking Apocalypse
Depiction of the the new world that rises after Ragnarok Wikimedia Commons

Like any other previous mythical doomsday predictions, Viking apocalypse will also see a new sunlight the next morning. Cataclysmic events like floods, bad weather, volcano or earthquake can affect only parts of the world but the end of life on earth is not foreseen for several decades.

According to Nasa, there are no threatening asteroids predicted for the next few decades, none, at least, as large as the one believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

Have a look at some of the End of the World prophecies that never happened.

December 21, 2012 Doomsday

Mayans predicted the end of the world in December 2012. The prediction is a calculation derived from the ending of one of the cycles of the ancient Mayan calendar.

However, in May 2012, archaeologists in Guatemala found what is said to be the oldest known Mayan calendar, which pushed the ancient calendar by 7,000 years further, busting the doomsday myth. The day passed without any apocalyptic events.

Planet Nibiru Collision

According to another Mayan belief as well as several other ancient apocalyptic predictions, a planet called Nibiru is on course to hit the Earth that will cause end of the world. The collision was predicted for May 2003. Scientists deter such convictions.

"If Nibiru or Planet X were real and headed for an encounter with the Earth, astronomers would have been tracking it for at least the past decade, and it would be visible by now to the naked eye. Obviously, it does not exist," Nasa scientists said.

May 21, 2011 Rapture

Harold Camping of the US-based Christian group, Family Radio, predicted May 21, 2011 to be the doomsday through a series of mathematical calculations 7,000 years after Noah's floods. He said that Jesus Christ will return to earth on the day to take with him the good ones to heaven and leave the sinners to face the end of the world.

Camping predicted that the apocalypse will begin with a massive earthquake in New Zealand. Though the US Geological Survey recorded quakes, but of less magnitude, at 12 different locations worldwide on the same day, with one as close as 810 miles (1300km) from New Zealand, the island country in the Pacific didn't get one itself.

He predicted doomsday twice in 1994 and 1995 as well.

1910 Halley's Comet

French astronomer Nicolas Camille Flammarion predicted that the appearance of Halley's Comet in 1910 would fill the earth's atmosphere with toxic gas and kill all life on earth. The rumour flooded markets with comet pills being sold to protect against the gases. Nothing catastrophic happened and the comet appeared again after 76 years in 1986.