It's clear that there are changes of some sort knocking at the door, be-it mother nature waiting to play a mean trick, Mayan calender voodoo or whatever. There's some serious shit coming for many geographical locations around the world.
Will it be an empirical date, i.e. 12/21/12, probably not, but I;m 58 and fully expect to witness more crazy stuff than we've already seen in my life.
If you think about it, we've been witness to a gradual build-up of crazy economics, politicians, weather, wars, space stuff. If all this had happened in an instant we might be saying to ourselves that the Mayans were spot on. All we have is this gradualism perspective, until BANG something does happen all at once.