Only the object wasn't an asteroid....

For thirty-two years archaeologist Julius Gabriel has investigated the Mayan calendar, a 2500-year-old enigma of time and space that predicts humanity will perish at the winter solstice of 2012. Julius believes the Great Pyramid of Giza, Stonehenge, the desert drawings of Nazca, the sites of Angor Wat, Teotihuacan, and the Kukulcan Pyramid in the Yucatan Peninsula -- the site of the ancient asteroid impact -- all represent ancient pieces of a global puzzle linked to the salvation of our species.

Ridiculed by his peers, Julius dies before he can solve the doomsday prophecy. Now, only one person can prevent our annihilation -- Julius's son, Michael, a patient locked up in a Miami mental asylum.

Miami.

Psychiatry major Dominique Vazquez reports to the Miami asylum to complete her graduate internship. The new director assigns her to a special patient -- Mick Gabriel, a paranoid schizophrenic with a high IQ who attempts to charm her into believing his father's theory of the Apocalypse so he can escape. What Dominique doesn't realize is that she represents Mick's last hope of saving humanity.

Fall Equinox.

As it has done for a thousand years, a serpent's shadow appears on the northern balustrade of the Kukulcan Pyramid...then as a rare galactic alignment occurs, a deep space radio transmission reaches Earth, activating the remnants of an object buried in the Gulf of Mexico. It is the beginning of the end....