Mark 13:32
Matthew 24:36
No one knows, however, when that day or hour will come - neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son; only the Father knows.

Frankly, you mentioned in your early post that your relative truly believe in the event of 2012. And you claim she is religious. To date, I have not found any religion that told us the world will end at 2012. If your relative is a Christian, do tell her that if even the Son of Man does not know when the day or hour will come, why should she be worried that it will happen at 2012?

This time's better though. They claim the cause will be solar storm, yet scientist has already proved that even if there's a solar storm, it will have little effect on earth. Yet, there are still so many believers.

Natural disasters has happened over the course of the world. There's worse disasters than those happened in 2010/2011. So, I doubt it indicates syntom of "end of the world".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_natural_disasters
You can see that there's many other years with higher death toll than 2010/2011.

This post has been edited by Searingmage: Jan 19 2011, 11:47 AM

Well, that's simply because the 2012 movie makes it sound so scientific by using solar storm (which actually won't do any damage to us). Hence, people think there's scientific proof that the end of the world is coming. Also, there are some website who use "science" to "prove" that 2012 will happen.