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Apocalypse Now. . .Or Later?
EARTH BASHING
In August 1992, Hurricane Andrew left a swath of death and devastation fifty miles widethrough the Caribbean, south Florida and up into Louisiana. Entire communities weredestroyed, others immobilized by unheard-of Aeolian forces. This “act of God” was just arun-of-the-mill disaster, though, compared to the potential lethal capabilities of an angryearth in upheaval.Billions of dollars in property damages were incurred, and 250,000 were left homeless inthe wake of Hurricane Andrew. But the human toll of the tragedy was amazingly low.Life went on for most. Those who faced the wrath of the Bangladesh cyclone a year  before in April 1991 were not so lucky—100,000 people were torn limb from limb anddrowned by vicious killer winds and monstrous waves. In the previous thirty years in thatwind-ravaged country, nearly a half million people have perished from cyclonic activity(300,000 alone in 1970). And in August of 1931, an unbelievable 3,700,000 people losttheir lives in tempestuous floods and tidal waves when the Huang He River in Chinaswallowed up the countryside.Our planet has been wracked lately by a series of natural and human-created disastersapproaching a magnitude unknown during this century. In the 1990s alone, HurricaneAndrew was quickly followed by the merciless typhoon named Omar that slammed intoGuam packing 150-miles-per-hour winds. Hurricane Iniki then blasted into Hawaii withthe strongest winds of the century, wrecking the paradise isle of Kauai. At the same time,a monstrous tornado cut a path of destruction through Wisconsin, killing two and causingmillions of dollars in property losses. The very next day, an offshore earthquake created atidal wave that bashed Nicaragua’s Pacific coast and killed over 100 and wiped out 300miles of coastal villages. Who can forget the Great Flood of 1993 in our nation’sheartland, when the Mississippi River swelled to unprecedented heights and forever altered the landscape—physical and psychological—of the area? In late 1996, vast portions of the western United States suffered repeated major flooding, landslides, andmudslides. The Noachian drenching contributed to the Merced River in Californiaaltering its course, causing multi-million dollar damage to Yosemite National Park,forcing its closure for nearly three months, and prompting park Superintendent B.J.Griffin to lament, “This was our Hurricane Andrew without the wind.”Each summer in the drought-plagued West, forest fires rage out of control for days onend, charring hundreds of thousands of acres of woodlands, and creating hazards for humans who have built their abodes in dry, wind-swept canyons. In 1992 in thePhilippines, Mt. Pinatubo, dormant for centuries, exploded with unimaginable fury. Theinfernal blast, more devastating than the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens, killed 800,displaced thousands, destroyed entire towns, and like Krakatau in 1883, altered weather  patterns worldwide. Mt. Pinatubo flared up again shortly afterwards, this time withsteaming mudflows that sent 50,000 fleeing in an already deluged area affecting nearly1,000,000 people. Weary and battered residents in Japan experienced frightfully similar 
 
encounters in 1993 as Mt. Unzen darkened skies with ashy plumes. No doubt about it, theRing of Fire is alive and well, expected to spit lava and brimstone on an increasinglyviolent scale in the years to come, from Alaska to Chile and throughout the South Pacific,Japan and Siberia.Earthquakes are perhaps the most feared of all natural calamities. In a few horrendouslytumultuous minutes they can instantly transform and sculpt hundreds of square miles of the earth’s surface. What other disaster, save a nuclear war or meteoric collision, cansnuff out 830,000 lives in just several seconds, as happened in China in 1556? A mega-temblor in Alaska in 1964 measured 8.5 on the Richter scale and raised parts of the oceanfloor more than fifty feet. Felt over an area of 500,000 square miles, an earthquake of thismagnitude in a more populated region would herald apocalyptic destruction on anunimaginable scale. In 1972, Managua, Nicaragua was virtually leveled. The year 1976was a legendary year for serial killer quakes. Guatemala suffered severely with 25,000casualties; New Guinea, 9000; countless thousands died in the old Soviet Union; anduntold hundreds of thousands died in a single earthquake in Tangshan, China. The 1985Mexico City earthquake killed, by various estimates, anywhere from ten to fifty thousand people in a few minutes. In Armenia in 1988, a colossal earth movement razed cities andkilled nearly 30,000. In 1989, the San Francisco Bay Area, site of one of the world’s mostfamous faults (San Andreas), received but a mild taste of things to come. Seismologists predict earthquakes within three decades up to four times as devastating as the most powerful ever registered on the Richter Scale: the Chilean monster of 1960, an 8.6 ripper that packed the energy release equivalent of three million Hiroshima-type A-bombs.Geophysical instability is nothing new to our planet. A molten rock whirling like agyroscope through space at a dizzying velocity would naturally tend to experienceinstability from time to time, if not frequently. If it is any consolation, despite the wideranging disasters of every kind striking almost daily, our earth may be in a lull. Today’searthquakes, volcanic upheavals, floods, firestorms, mud and landslides, and tropicalstorms and tsunami must still be viewed as insignificant disturbances compared to acatastrophist’s (or, for that matter, a conventional geologist’s) interpretation of thegeologic record. From Siberia to Antarctica, the jumbled fossil heaps of animals of allshapes and sizes perished together in four major cataclysmic extinctions; in fact, 90% of all species who have ever lived since the Precambrian have become extinct due togargantuan catastrophes. And yet any one of the “minor” disasters mentioned abovecould potentially disrupt the course of life on earth; in concert, they constitute a very realthreat to the fabric of civilization.As unconscionable human activities like clear-cutting and chlorofluorocarbon pollutioncontinue to adversely affect weather patterns around the world, global warming (possiblya trigger mechanism for Andrew/Omar-type storms) could eventually melt icebergs,inundating vast coastal areas. Earth scientists grimly announced late last year that theozone hole above Antarctica is now the size of Europe. The ebb and flow of our oceanlevels has countless times in the past altered the geo-physiognomy of the earth, in the process destroying and burying former civilizations without a trace. Geologically, it’s asure bet to occur again; it’s just a matter of when.
 
Throughout time, many “legends” have recorded events (“creation myths” or “religiousallegory”) which can easily be interpreted as consequences of a pole shift, or the earth’saxis of rotation suddenly and radically being displaced. Do not underestimate the earth’sacrobatic tendencies: pole displacements have happened several times in geologichistory, as evidenced by tropical plant fossils being found in today’s circumpolar regions. No one yet understands the titanic forces involved or trigger mechanisms responsible for a pole shift, but such an incomprehensible cataclysm would dwarf the mightiest of earthquakes. But it’s hardly an incomprehensible scenario that the mightiest of earthquakes could initiate a pole shift. The unthinkable might not happen for another 2,000 or 20,000 or perhaps 2,000,000 years, but with human intervention skewering the planet’s natural balances and rhythms, it might happen in the next 200, or 20 years. Thenwhat?In the ultimate catastrophic nightmare, earth could conceivably cross orbital paths withan asteroid or comet. The magnitude of such a disaster can only be imagined in made-for-TV movies; perhaps Shoemaker and Levy, discoverers of the comet that pummeledJupiter last year and gouged out craters the size of earth, might have an inkling of an ideawhat a tenth of that impact would do to earth. On a recent NBC National GeographicSpecial, Eugene Shoemaker speculated on the threat of such a thing ever happening— estimated to occur perhaps twice in a million years on earth alone. Sixty-six million yearsago something crashed into the Yucatan peninsula area with enough force to have wipedout most life on earth, including the fabled dinosaurs. More recently, on June 30, 1908, inTunguska, Siberia, a mysterious 30-megaton blast devastated hundreds of square miles of forest; high-altitude glowing clouds were seen over Asia and Europe for days. Twodecades later, when an expedition was finally mounted to the remote region, scientistswere astounded by what they saw: flattened and charred pine trees as far as the eye couldsee, but no trace of the object, having disintegrated upon impact. Most people are notgoing to lose sleep over outer space agents striking the earth and ending life as we knowit. Nonetheless, former Vice President Dan Quayle was advised it was a serious enoughthreat that he set up a commission to investigate just such a scenario and likely solutionsto fend off the extraterrestrial menaces, including using Strategic Defense Initiative (“Star Wars”) technology to deflect and bombard with lasers any asteroids heading our way.
QOYANISSQATSII
According to prophecies and seers, the spate of current and predicted disasters is “proof”that civilization is about to terminate in a series of “end of the millennium” catastropheswhich humans can do very little to prevent. Many sources throughout the ages, amongthem Native American (Hopi, Mayan, Lakota Sioux, Navajo), Biblical, Greek,Zoroastrianism, Chinese, Icelandic, Polynesian, Hindu, Tibetan Buddhist, Edgar Cayce,and Nostradamus, are in consensus that the planet, rather the planet’s inhabitants, aredoomed. And right about now. Unless a coincidence or conspiracy is in the works, how isit that all of these people and traditions concur on their prognostications of globalcataclysms in our time?
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