Article Archive for May 2010
Volcanoes Erupt in Guatemala & Ecuador
Guatemala’s Pacaya volcano started spewing lava and rocks on Thursday, blanketing the country’s capital with ash and forcing the closure of the international airport. President Alvaro Colom declared a “state of calamity”.
In Guatemala City, bulldozers scraped the blackened streets while residents used shovels to clean their cars and roofs, carrying out large rubbish bags filled with ash into the streets. City officials pleaded with residents not to dump the ash into sewers. The blanket of ash was 3in thick in some southern parts of the city, and officials imposed limits on trucks and motorcycles to help speed up traffic.
A television reporter who got too close has died, and 3 children are missing. Meanwhile in Ecuador, the Tungurahua volcano has erupted, prompting the evacuation of hundreds of people from nearly villages. Researcher Sandro Vaca has told a radio station that the eruption “seems to be growing rapidly”.
Let’s not forget about Iceland. …
Japanese Movie Features 2012 Comet
I *think* this the first movie to mention a comet heading towards Earth in 2012. A Japanese film that is seeing cinema releases at present (well, in London at least), it has a fractured storyline revolving around a book and then punk song titled “Fish Story” – this is also the name of the movie. Presumably at the end, 3 people are in a record store, listening to the old punk rock track while a comet hurtles towards Earth. Full info at IMDB and a review at Time Out.
Swiss Bunker Stores DNA of Data Formats
One of the fears regarding a possible global cataclysm in 2012, beyond the loss of life and livelihood, is the loss of knowledge. We are well aware of how little knowledge from ancient cultures has survived through to today – that great libraries have disappeared or been destroyed. And of the documents that have been recovered, some have yet to be deciphered.
With so much information stored digitally these days, there is a strong likelihood that post-2012-event cultures will take a very long time to recreate the devices needed to read the digital information of today. And if they do manage to build the devices, it would be extremely useful to have an understanding of how the data is stored on CDs, DVDs and Blu-Ray disks.
A time capsule now stores such information, a kind of DNA for each data format, and has been placed in a vault.
The capsule is the culmination …
SuperVolcanoes: A Very Real Threat
I have a new article at Survive 2012 simply titled Supervolcanoes. If the 2012 event happens to be a supervolcano, or a supervolcanic eruption is triggered in 2012 by something else, then you need to be aware of just how catastrophic it can be…
Scientists have been discussing the possibility of the last supervolcanic eruption nearly wiping out the entire human species. According to New Scientist:
Toba is a supervolcano on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. It has blown its top many times but this eruption, 74,000 years ago, was exceptional. Releasing 2500 cubic kilometres of magma – nearly twice the volume of mount Everest – the eruption was more than 5000 times as large as the 1980 eruption of mount St Helens in the US, making it the largest eruption on Earth in the last 2 million years
Double the volume of Everest is a powerful and memorable statistic!
In theory (which is …
Water Shortages Not Getting the Publicity They Deserve
Scientific American, May 2009:
In China the water table under the North China Plain, an area that produces more than half of the country’s wheat and a third of its corn, is falling fast. Overpumping has used up most of the water in a shallow aquifer there, forcing well drillers to turn to the region’s deep aquifer, which is not replenishable. A report by the World Bank foresees “catastrophic consequences for future generations” unless water use and supply can quickly be brought back into balance.
As water tables have fallen and irrigation wells have gone dry, China’s wheat crop, the world’s largest, has declined by 8 percent since it peaked at 123 million tons in 1997. In that same period China’s rice production dropped 4 percent. The world’s most populous nation may soon be importing massive quantities of grain.
But water shortages are even more worrying in India. There the margin between food …
Katla: The Other Icelandic Volcano To Worry About
I’m quoting an article from Air Cargo World. Obviously their major concern is how Katla could affect flights in Europe. My concern is that a Katla eruption could cause far greater problems. Worst-case scenario is a global plunge in temperature = crop failures = starvation, civil strife and economic meltdown. If you haven’t already being storing food for a possible 2012 event, this is a great excuse to start today. Buy food that you will eat anyway (for example a some 20kg sacks of rice), but get it in bulk now. And never tell anyone.
Following the recent eruption of the nearby Guðnasteinn volcano beneath the Eyjafjallajökull glacier, Icelandic president Ólafur Grímssono commented: “The time for Katla to erupt is coming close. It is high time for European governments and airline authorities all over the world to start planning for the eventual Katla eruption.”
In the past 1,000 years, all three known …
2012 and the Fear of Fear
Often when I mention 2012, people tell me that it’s all about making money, because the general public love to consume anything regarding the end of the world. This statement is true, if you spend a bit more time qualifying it. People love hearing about a future doomsday, if:
you can sum in up in a sentence or two, making it an easy conversation point, just like the weather
it is big + visual, like a supervolcano or a comet
they can say “yeah, but it will probably never happen”
Tell someone that 2012 will really mark the end of the world, and they’ll probably quickly change the topic.
A good indicator of popular memes is books being published. Authors tend to write about things that interest them, and people buy books that interest them. Looking at the ideas presented by 2012 books will give an indication of what people want to know about 2012 …
Latest Earth Changes: Update
Devastating earthquakes in Haiti, Chile and China this year have many new age and end-of-the-world commentators suggesting that such events are on the rise, “earth changes” leading up to a cataclysm in 2012. Last month the Sydney Morning Herald interviewed Trevor Allen and Dan Clark, who are seismologists at Geoscience Australia. They explained that the enormous death toll from recent quakes does not indicate an increase in tremor activity, but is due to rapid population growth in susceptible areas.
“I guess a very important part to remember is that globalisation is a big part in this and as time goes by and population becomes more dense and there is more urbanisation … there are going to be a lot more fatalities from these large events,” Mr Allen said.
Another theory for the extra attention earthquakes are receiving is the increase in technologies monitoring the quakes. According to the United States Geological Society …
Noah’s Ark or Noah’s Bunker?
Even a layperson like myself knows that for our entire planet to be underwater for 40 days is impossible. For a flood to even reach the 5,000 metre height of Mt Ararat is also impossible. This is one of the few things the 2012 movie got wrong. The big news this week is the dating of the timber supposedly found on Mt Ararat by Noah’s Ark Ministries International (ie not real archaeologists, and they have a strong motive for faking the whole thing). The date given is 2800BC, which would date it to the time of Noah’s flood.
Blogger Todd Price gives these reasons for why it wouldn’t be Noah’s Ark:
1. They claim that radiocarbon dates the wood to 4800 years before present, but the Ark was constructed of pre-Flood wood, which would mean that the carbon dating should be much, much older. 2. The modern “Mt. Ararat” (Agri …
