The world will end on 21 December 2012, claims ‘web-bot’ technology that has pushed apocalyptic prophecy into the internet age.

According to web’s conspiracy theorists, the bots accurately predicted the September 11 attacks and the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, and now they believe that a cataclysm of some sort will devastate the planet on 21 December, 2012.

Developed in the 1990s to predict stock market movements, the software is similar to the “spiders” that search engines use to index web pages.

The bots crawl through relevant web pages, noting keywords and examining the text around them. The theory is that this gives an insight into the “wisdom of crowds”, as the thoughts of thousands of people are aggregated, as reported.

George Ure, the project’s “co-mind”, says that his system predicted a “world-changing event” in the 60 to 90 days after June 2001, and on 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks happened.

Despite the vagueness of this prediction, many believed it to be genuine.

Now, the latest prediction is that 21 December 2012 signals the end of the world, possibly through a “polar shift” – when the polarity of the Earth’s magnetic field is reversed. Believers claim that as well as the bots, the 2012 apocalypse is predicted by the ancient Mayan calendar, the Book of Revelations, and the Chinese text I Ching.