Mini Ice Age Happened Rapidly

Just like the movie helmed by 2012 director, The Day After Tomorrow, our planet's climate is capable of rapid change, according to scientists from the University of Saskatchewan.

Around 12,800 years ago the northern hemisphere was hit by the Younger Dryas mini ice age, or "Big Freeze"...and lasted around 1300 years.

Until now, it was thought that the mini ice age took a decade or so to take hold, on the evidence provided by Greenland ice cores.

...The group studied a mud core from an ancient lake, Lough Monreagh, in western Ireland. Using a scalpel they sliced off layers 0.5 to 1 millimetre thick, each representing up to three months of time. No other measurements from the period have approached this level of detail.

...They show that at the start of the Big Freeze, temperatures plummeted and lake productivity stopped within months, or a year at most. "It would be like taking Ireland today and moving it up to Svalbard" in the Arctic, says Patterson.

The drop in temperatures averaged 5 degrees globally, but as much as 15 degrees in Greenland. The date of the mini ice age, and the rapid onset, suggest a global cataclysm caused by a pole shift or asteroid/comet. Numerous books have been recently hypothesising either scenario, and this new evidence makes their ideas even more compelling.

Patrick Geryl Discovers Labyrinth in Egypt

With financial support from Louis De Cordier, 2012 author Patrick Geryl has used ground-penetrating radar to provide evidence for the legendary "labyrinth" and possible home of the Hall of Records to be located in Hawara, Egypt. Zahi Hawass is now involved and excavations have begun.

The situation is starting to look a little embrassing for Egyptian authorities, given that English author Andrew Collins is publicizing a relatively undiscovered series of tunnels and chambers below the Giza plateau, which he just found from taking an educated wander.

Could independent researchers be close to discovering some remarkably secret places?

Apocalyptic Entertainment Cranks Up A Notch

Here's some evidence that whichever way you work it, Hollywood is giving us what we are into, or writers are feeling the vibe, the "end of the world" is really, deeply, seriously in vogue:

Len Wiseman (Underworld, Die Hard 4.0), has in development - "Nocturne" which centers on a handful of survivors following a wide-scale apocalyptic event and how each of them arrived at their current dilemma.

2013 TV Series - Roland Emmerich (producer of the current 2012 movie) is involved in a tv show that will focus on the survivors of a 2012 doomsday, and he suggests it will appeal to the same niche audience as Lost.

A documentary series is in development for the History Channel, with a title of Seekers 2012. A reality show, it will be very much based on the X Files concept:

Ideal Investigators would already be a team (husband and wife, co-workers) who fall somewhere between the FBI Agents on “The X Files” and “Indiana Jones”. One is a believer, the other a skeptic. One is driven by reason, science and empirical evidence, the other by feelings, intuitions and faith.

Ideally, the woman would be the skeptic and the man the believer.

Opinions I have read suggest that there will be significantly more applicants for the "Mulder" role.

Cormac McCarthy's The Road is now a movie, and the story starts like this:

The world is in ruins after an apocalyptic event that is never described. A father and his son are walking south in an attempt to escape the increasingly cold, endless winter. Along the way they have to avoid gangs of lawless killers. Their only weapon is a pistol with 2 bullets.

And that's just a sample...

Rob on Nat Geo - Sneak Peek

I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed for a documentary regarding a pole shift in 2012. The title is a little misleading, 2012 - Countdown to Armageddon, but hopefully will encourage many people to listen to the science behind the pole shift scenario. I'm in the preview below, if you want to check out my accent and our fireplace.

The documentary screens on National Geographic channel this Sunday at 8pm, USA only at this stage.

2012 Survival Conference - Arizona - Oct 17 2009

Dennis McClung of 2012Supplies.com has organised what I believe is the first ever 2012 conference focussed on survival. If you can make it to Scottsdale, AZ just over a week from now, you'll be part of history.

Keynote speaker is Cory Lundin, author of the excellent When All Hell Breaks Loose: Stuff You Need to Survive When Disaster Strikes.

More info and bookings at Eventbrite
(Use code survive2012 for a 10% discount)

Check out Cory's beautiful, unique home:

SHTF = Climate Change = Suitable Crops

Survivalists tend to focus on coping without access to the luxuries of the current era. An aspect that is often neglected is that, whether it is due to global warming, cosmic rays, volcanic eruptions or a pole shift, you could find yourself suddenly in a new climate.

Consequently the crops of today might not prosper. A smart survivalist will make preparations for local climate change, and be ready to deploy crops that suit the new environment. Given that nobody knows if or how drastically the climate might change, this would require storing the seeds of a wide variety of crops.

Over in Peru there is a currently an initiative that is attempting to ensure, no matter what the climate, we will always have potatoes:

The Peruvian farmers will be paid to look after the most diverse collection of potatoes in the world. They will try growing varieties at different altitudes and in different climatic conditions so that if today's commercially available potato varieties start to fail anywhere in the world, replacement varieties will be ready and waiting.

Stone Circles - Mostly Just Ritual Space?

I was just watching a documentary (Standing With Stones) on the stone circles and burial chambers of Ireland, and they started off with Carrowmore in County Sligo. It seems that the very first standing stones and burial chambers in Ireland were "dolmen circles", and the ones in Carrowmore date to between 4300 and 3500 BC, and possibly even as far back as 5400 BC.

These dolmen circles consist of a dolmen with 5 orthostats and 1 capstone creating a burial chamber in the shape of a pentagon. Enclosing each dolmen is one or two circles of 30-40 boulders.

As the documentary shows, the final dolmen at Carrowmore became fully enclosed, establishing a trend towards bigger & bigger burial mounds and eventually massive passage tombs like Newgrange.

What interests me the most is that these boulder circles are quite likely the first ever stone circles, and that means they originally were used to demarcate burial zones. With time, although plenty of monuments were still enclosed by circles (standing stones, boulders, pits, ditches), most dolmens were not, and most standing circles had nothing within them.

I suggest that originally people used dolmens to bury their dead, and the boulder circle separated the sacred space from the world - and within this space they conducted rituals of burial and/or remembrance. At some point the need arose for a ritual space that was not where ancestors were buried, for purposes other than burying or remembering ancestors. Perhaps this is where fully-fleshed pagan religions began - with a multi-purpose ritual circle?

Modern pagans still revere the pentagon / pentacle. And witches still sweep clear and "cast" a circle for conducting rituals within. Could these be remnants from as long ago as 5400 BC?

After years of looking for more esoteric explanations, I now figure that the primary purpose of stone circles was to mark a ritual space. Their locations, which I also hoped might have significance, could also be explained by something as simple as "it has a nice view", or "it was a flat spot near where we lived".

Pygmy Hippos in Cyprus - Eaten to Extinction?

Once again I suspect that archaeologists are making false assumptions when studying piles of bones.

Half way down a cliff on Cyprus's southern coast, researchers dug up thousands of remains of the animal which is thought to have roamed the island for perhaps a million or more years during the Pleistocene period, and then died out around 12,000 years ago.

Today, nothing remotely resembling a pygmy hippo roams Cyprus. Its largest wild mammals are timid sheep, strictly protected from an army of enthusiastic hunters, and donkeys.

..."There were over 500 individual hippos represented at the site ... for some reason they (humans) stored the bones, instead of throwing them into the sea, perhaps for use as fuel," said Simmons, who has written a book on the subject.

Together with thousands of pygmy hippo bones, as well as several large birds and a few dwarf elephants, the archaeologists discovered man-made implements on the same site, pointing to a link between humans and the animals.

Radiocarbon dating puts the site at around 10,000 BC, some 3,000 years earlier than most scholars had assumed humans had arrived on the island.

Simmons says a small group of humans could have triggered extinction of the animals, which were already under stress from cold and dry climatic changes around 12,000 years ago. Many animals went extinct around the same time.

The article has plenty of ammunition for my scepticism. Halfway down a cliff? Great place to eat dinner. They stored the bones "for some reason". Can't even hazard a guess? Oh, and they mention the sheep that are probably more tasty, but somehow not extinct.

When you have read the work of Delair and Allan - unlikely for most archaeologists - you are made aware of caves full of bones being a worldwide phenomenon. Quite often many species are found all jumbled up, and there is no evidence of humans being behind the slaughter.

However, when there is an indication that humans have also had some activity in a bone cave, the assumption becomes we ate them all. Ignoring the possibility of a global catastrophe that mostly likely occurred circa 12,000 years ago.

John Cusack Impersonates Indiana Jones

Over at MTV is a complete scene from the forthcoming 2012 movie that perhaps provides some clues as to the tone and style it will have. What we see is a roller coaster ride where the hero survives due to some skill but mostly luck. The graphics are great but unbelievable. There are jokes and accents...

Movie Trailers - Movies Blog

GPS Failure in 2012?

It wouldn't be a total catastrophe, but it could certainly cause lots of trouble for transportation systems that rely on GPS, especially passenger airlines.

Existing satellites are ageing, and replacements are behind schedule and over budget, according to a report from the US Government Accountability Office.

Satnavs and other GPS devices calculate their position by comparing time signals from at least four satellites. To keep that many within range at all times requires a fleet of at least 24. For now there are 31 operating, but 13 of them are more than four years past their design lifetime.

The first replacement "block IIF" satellites are not due to launch till November, three years behind schedule, and the GAO predicts a 20 per cent chance that the fleet will drop below 24 at times in 2011 and 2012. That wouldn't cause GPS to shut down, but its accuracy would drop unpredictably.

And you wouldn't want to trust an unreliable GPS...