If you're waiting for the impending doomsday and failed to reach France's Pic de Bugarach before authorities cut off public access to it, you're in luck. Serbia's Mount Rtanj is receiving a lot of attention after British sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke identified it as a place of "special energy" and called it "the navel of the world," the Telegraph reported on Monday.
According to the prophecies, Mount Rtanj hides a pyramidal building left behind aliens thousands of years ago. The mountain, which measures 5,100ft-high, supposedly emits special energy that is believed to protect humans from the apocalypse.
Village hotel owners told the Telegraph that visitors are flocking to the mountainside in hopes to be saved on December 21, 2012. Obrad Blecic, a hotel manager, told the British newspaper, "In one day we had 500 people trying to book rooms. People wan to bring their whole families."
Serbia's Mount Rtanj is not the first mountain to get international attention for its doomsday saving abilities. In November, French authorities were forced to block access to the southwestern mountain called Pic de Bugarach after doomsday preppers began flooding the area. According to legend, the picturesque mountain is supposed to open up to reveal an alien spaceship that will save nearby humans from the Earth's destruction.
People the world over have been gripped by doomsday hysteria. In Russia, authorities have had to address the widespread panic caused by a series of bizarre doomsday-related events occurring throughout the country. Here in the United States, NASA has waged an all out campaign to dispel any apocalyptic rumors.
The apocalyptic conspiracies are based on misconceptions over the Mayan calendar, which is supposed to end its thirteenth 349-year cycle on December 21. According to the beliefs the end of the thirteenth cycle, called a b'ak'tun, signifies the end of the world through cataclysmic events. However, scientists assert that the calendar will just enter its fourteenth b'ak'tun instead. There is mounting evidence that the calendar's end predicts a "New Era" after December 21, rather than the end of the world.