Why has 2012 been increasingly called the date of future Armageddon lately? What do the prophecies of the Mayan priests, the medieval alchemist Nostradamus, and the Bulgarian fortuneteller Vanga say? What real dangers for all living things have already been encountered in the history of our planet and what else awaits the Earth in the coming years? The author examines all these difficult questions through the prism of modern scientific knowledge, analyzing many controversial theories of the future of the Earth. On the pages of the book, readers will encounter hypotheses about the coming ice age and learn the latest news about solar flares, appreciate the power of ancient supervolcanoes and the unpredictability of the Apophis asteroid, and realize the destructive potential of the grand experiment with the Large Hadron Collider.