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This series presents information based in part on theory and conjecture.

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The producer's purpose is to suggest some possible explanations but not necessarily

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the only ones to the mysteries we will examine.

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Are we going to experience some form of ultimate disaster?

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Will we have worldwide floods, major earthquakes?

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Perhaps an unexpected collision with planetary debris will trigger the ultimate catastrophe.

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These things happen.

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We have happened in the past.

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We could expect them to happen again and it may be that the timing is that we're going

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to see an event such as this.

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Is it possible that a cataclysmic event could occur that would affect the entire human race?

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Could this ultimate disaster happen in our lifetime?

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We tend to think of catastrophic events occurring on a limited regional basis, not worldwide.

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Yet the yearly toll of destruction by earth, air, fire and water is immense.

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Earthquakes have been on the increase around the globe since 1976.

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In that year alone more than 800,000 people lost their lives and millions of dollars worth

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of property was destroyed.

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In one day in 1974, tornadoes killed or injured 6,300 people and left $600 million worth of

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damage in 13 states.

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Serious volcanic eruptions have occurred in four regions of our planet so far this past

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year.

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200 square miles of the Pacific Northwest were devastated by the eruption of Mount St.

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Helens in 1980.

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Nearly 300 people were caught by a tidal wave at Hilo, Hawaii in 1960.

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Property damage amounted to more than $40 million.

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In 1979, 200 people were killed by a giant wave in Indonesia.

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Are these disasters merely a prelude to larger events that may occur?

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Experts were asked if an ultimate disaster could be a part of our future.

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Some find this a very real possibility.

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Archaeologist, geologist Jeffrey Goodman, author of We Are the Earthquake Generation.

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What is coming up for the future?

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This has always been a theme.

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The Bible has talked about it.

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It seems that in the close of every millennium people are particularly concerned.

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At the end of when 1000 AD was coming up people were concerned that that was going to be the

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end of the world.

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And since then, I think Western society has particularly sprinkled with ideas about there's

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going to be a big event.

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It may be that as we're moving towards an ice age, which a lot of climatologists believe

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we are, that the amount of ice and snow cover in the North Pole area will get so great,

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and also in the South Pole, that it will contribute to the instability of the Earth.

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And we know that large earthquakes do move the Earth on its axis.

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And it may be a combination of forces of the instability from the ice and snow cover,

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striking of a meteor, large quakes causing jostling, a number of factors coming together

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to produce what I think has been referred to as the ultimate event.

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And that's the Earth actually turning over in space, turning on its hinges.

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The Stel Group is a new community established in the farmland south of Chicago under the

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leadership of Richard Kinninger.

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One of their concerns is how to deal with the catastrophe they feel may occur at the

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turn of the century.

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Physicist Tim Wilhelm, Stel's vice president, describes the three factors they feel could

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cause the ultimate disaster.

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The South Polar Ice Mask would begin increasing in size and weight, and would do so in an

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off-center fashion.

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In other words, it would not all be equally balanced around the axis, rotational axis

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of the Earth, but it would be offset.

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And just like putting balancing weights on a tire, if your tire on your car is out of

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balance it tends to make it jump and bounce.

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And this supposedly would have the same effect.

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This off-center mass of ice would cause what's called the Earth's processional wobble.

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The Earth processes as it rotates, it also wobbles slightly.

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And with this heavy weight on one side it would cause that to exaggerate slightly.

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That exaggerated wobble would put a stress force on the crust of the Earth.

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The second factor is the cooling in the core of the Earth.

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As with all physical matter, as it cools it shrinks.

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Now the plastic underlayment, the mantle of the Earth, being more fluid-like or plastic-like

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can shrink at a continual rate.

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But the crust of the Earth is rigid and cannot readily conform to this shrinking mantle.

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And what happens is, is the underlayment is shrinking away, you get sort of a buckling

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of the crust, which along fault lines there are instabilities.

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And to equalize the crust will shift and that is what an earthquake is.

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Fault lines form a web covering every area of the Earth.

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The third factor.

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The predicted planetary alignment, which is to occur on or near the date May 5 of the

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year 2000.

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Now this planetary alignment will not be a super straight line of all the planets through

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space.

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There will be several of the farther out planets off at about 90 degrees.

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But most of what are termed the visible planets will be in a fairly straight line shot through

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the heavens.

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Now it's been calculated many times over that when all the planets line up, the gravitational

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distortion that's created, the added gravitational pull, is not necessarily strong enough to

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have any major effect.

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But there have been studies done which show that the Sun and the Moon lining up alone

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can cause the Earth's crust to heave by more than a foot, up and down.

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And it creates literal tides in the crust of the Earth.

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So gravitation does have some effect.

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So with the instability caused by this added wobble due to the ice mass being off center

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and growing, plus the instability of the crustal arches being somewhat buckled due to the cooling

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and shrinking of the Earth, you add this final hair trigger at the right point in time.

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And that would trigger a chain of geological, geophysical events which could be termed a

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cataclysm.

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The interesting thing in the last 10 years within the professional field of geology,

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geologists are resorting more and more to catastrophic explanations to explain how the

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Earth got to be the way it is, to explain why mountain ranges are there and why there

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changes and why there are certain river basins and such.

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We now talk about how the glaciers once careened across the state of Washington to scour out

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the topography of lakes and scablands that we see in the central part of the state.

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We talk about periods of time when there were volcanic eruptions going around the Earth,

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the whole planet at once.

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All the volcanoes were spouting during the same period of time.

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We're talking about how meteors have periodically hit the Earth.

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The latest current theory is from Dr. Alvarez at UCLA, a Nobel Prize winning physicist

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who says that the Earth was hit by a meteor or an asteroid 65 million years ago.

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This more or less turned the lights out on the Earth.

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There was a big cloud of dust.

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We know that was so because we have the element of ridium that is only comes from outer space

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found in all the geological layers around the Earth.

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We think that this event was responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs that suddenly

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the dinosaurs didn't slowly die out but they suddenly catastrophically died out and there

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was a great event that took place.

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The thing that is a little unnerving to me is that we're seeing that it's much more

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the rule now and we're seeing more and more catastrophic events having to explain things.

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In our space shots we've gone off to Mars what we greeted with.

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Earthquakes.

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Since then we thought all the volcanoes on Mars were extinct.

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Turns out they're active volcanoes on Mars.

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We went by Saturn and we passed by its little satellite, its little moon Io.

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There were seven volcanic eruptions going off at once.

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So I think we in professional geology have woefully underplayed the role of catastrophic

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events and as we're finding out about the realities events it makes the traditional views,

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the psychic views, the intuitive views that much more real, that much more possible.

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Could a catastrophic event be already building in our own western United States in the form

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of a major earthquake?

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Scientists are studying new information hoping to find the answer before it is too late.

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We know that there's bulging going up and down in the Palmdale area of California.

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We know there have been swarms of earthquakes there.

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We know that San Diego has recently experienced earthquakes and the fault lines that we thought

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stopped along the coastline actually come on and go right through downtown San Diego.

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The San Andreas Fault slashes across 700 miles of California.

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It creates a volatile earthquake zone stretching between San Diego and San Francisco.

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Up in San Francisco there's a great deal of change that has taken place within the last

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two years and that the San Andreas Fault in that area has now changed the nature of its

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pressure.

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It's been on the compression.

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That means the two parts of the fault have been pressing against each other and it's

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been very hard to have an earthquake there while they're pressing against because for

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an earthquake you need one chunk of rock to slide past another very quickly and this

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gives you a tremendous energy release.

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But right now they have noticed that the fault is actually an expansion.

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The two halves are coming apart and that's going to make it much, much easier to have

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a big earthquake occur there.

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Some scientists believe in the interconnection of geophysical events.

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Earthquake activity may release power from deep within the earth resulting in volcanic

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eruption.

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We just had the eruption of Mount St. Helens and we have always known that the Cascade Range

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is a very dangerous range.

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It's a very young mountain range.

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We've looked at St. Helens which was really a pipsqueak of volcanic eruption.

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There have been eruptions at Tambora that have been hundreds of times as large.

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And indeed just 6,000 years ago there was a Mount Mazzama.

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Remember Mount Mazzama?

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Well it was where Crater Lake is now and literally the whole mountain blew up and threw ash as

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far east as into the plain states of Kansas and Nebraska.

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Given the very real possibility of a catastrophic event, will we be given time to react to an

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approaching global disaster?

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Dr. Goodman believes there will be a series of events which serve as a warning sequence.

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It begins with a great deal of destruction to Japan.

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Earthquakes in the island of Japan being really ravaged over.

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And then activity in Italy.

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Vesuvius, the volcano, interrupting.

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And then the activity moving over across the ocean to the Caribbean where Mount Pelé

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is on the isle of Martinique.

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And then the west coast of the United States, California being hit.

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And then the burners of the earth so to speak being turned up to high gear.

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We'd see the California coastline start to be crumbling away and be pushed back inland.

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And we'd see even warning earthquakes in such areas that we don't normally think of

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earthquakes as such as St. Louis, New York City, increasingly harsh weather patterns,

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food shortages in the U.S.

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And then by 1990 to 2000 would be the really devastating period.

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And here we're talking about earthquakes that would be literally over 10 on the Richter

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scale bigger than anything anybody imagined.

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Beyond the advent of the geological changes and hazards already identified, could it be

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that the ultimate catastrophe will come from outside the earth itself?

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Zechariah Sitchin is the author of The Twelfth Planet and The Stairway to Heaven.

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He believes that the writings of ancient Sumerians which tell a story of prehistoric catastrophe

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may in fact foretell our future.

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Fortunately, the Sumerians have left us not only very detailed writings which speak for

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themselves, but also pictorial evidence.

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This seal is very interesting.

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It actually depicts the whole solar system with the sun in the center, not the earth,

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showing all the planets that are known to us today, plus one more between Mars and Jupiter,

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of which we are not aware.

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The planet which I call The Twelfth Planet and which the ancient peoples called Marduk

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was caught in sun orbit into our solar system by having come out from outer space, was pulled

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in by the gravity force of all the other planets into the solar system and collided with another

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ancient member of the solar system called Tiamat.

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In the collision, Tiamat was split in two.

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One half of it became the asteroid belt and the comet.

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The other half, which was pushed into a new orbit, became the planet on which we live,

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planet Earth.

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Marduk itself, which was now caught into solar orbit, has adopted a very large, long elliptical

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orbit, almost comet-like, which brings it once every 3,600 years between Mars and Jupiter.

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Is this possible?

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Could there be another planet in our system that approaches Earth every 3,600 years?

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This basic tenet in my writings, which was central to the beliefs of the ancient peoples,

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that there is indeed one more planet in our solar system, has been in the past two years

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or so, accepted in a way by astronomers, especially those at the U.S. Naval Observatory

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in Washington, who have concluded that there is indeed one large planet beyond Pluto.

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Dr. Robert Harrington of the U.S. Naval Observatory does confirm the recent appearance of another

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planet orbiting beyond Pluto.

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This planet is believed to be 3 to 5 times larger than Earth.

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Given then that such a planet indeed exists and that it may come and cause havoc in the

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future, it's very interesting to read the Sumerian evidence of what happened on one of

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those previous passages when the deluge had took place on Earth.

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The first effects were a very strong wind and a darkened sky.

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The nearing of that planet and its gravitational pull have shifted the ice cap of Antarctica,

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of the land mass of Antarctica, creating the huge tidal wave that has engulfed our globe

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and that has remained in human memory as the deluge or the great flood of the Bible of

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Noah and of the Sumerian tales.

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Would Sumerian mythology be our history?

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Has our Earth actually been the victim of past global catastrophe?

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Would we be prepared to face an ultimate disaster?

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Dr. Jeffrey Goodman.

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There are a lot of contingencies and ramifications that could take place should these types of

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events start to occur.

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And really, it doesn't need the whole place getting shaken up or torn up.

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One or two earthquakes will do just fine.

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I think this country stood and watched in amazement when we saw the earthquake that

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hit Italy.

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November 23, 1980, an earthquake measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale devastated an area

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of south-central Italy, killing 3,000 people.

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And we watched it on our news broadcast and we were very sympathetic and empathetic.

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When we sent aid and we said, boy, these poor people, they weren't ready, they weren't ready

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to cope with this.

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The Japanese have admitted that they're in a great earthquake threat and in the Tokyo

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area and along that coastline from outside of Tokyo, they already have named the big

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quake.

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They call it the Tokai Quake and they expect it to come soon.

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And they're talking about tremendous loss of life, a quarter of a million homes being

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lost, tremendous destruction from fire, tremendous loss from a resultant tidal wave that would

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come with the event.

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And they're making very, very definite preparations.

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They've put up enough food and water to supply Tokyo for 10 days.

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They're spending a tremendous amount of money on preparedness.

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And similarly now here in this country, we have various groups that have been putting

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out newsletters, monitoring all the information, and getting together to do move to certain

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areas or within the area they are become better prepared for the possibly even event.

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One purpose of the STEL group is to develop a new self-sufficient culture that would survive

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following a catastrophe.

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Tim Wilhelm.

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One of the ways we see of doing that is developing as many capabilities right here within the

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community as we can.

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For example, we have our own water treatment plant, which is a reverse osmosis system,

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a kind use for desalinating seawater.

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We also are working under a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy developing a community

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sized fuel alcohol plant.

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Obviously, a task of this nature is incredible in scope and a very ambitious undertaking

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to say the least.

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And we've looked at alternatives like building concrete bunkers and going underground for

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a while.

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We've also looked at the alternative of lifting above the surface of the earth in some sort

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of an aircraft or hovercraft or hovering aircraft, whatever you choose to call it.

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We don't know what it is yet.

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We're just looking at that as the possible alternative.

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Technological advancement in the last hundred years is remarkable.

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We've developed machinery to aid us in our physical labor, computers to augment our minds.

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There have been incredible advances in communication and medicine.

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We've landed on the moon, on Mars, and on Venus.

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We're sailing into the far reaches of our solar system.

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Modern technology has carried us into an era of wonders.

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Tomorrow holds endless promise, yet it is clouded by a threat.

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Some scientists feel that we may face cataclysmic events in our lifetime.

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Given that possibility, there are those who believe that some of our technological resources

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must be applied toward mankind's survival of the ultimate disaster.

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Apart from a catastrophe on earth limited or due to our own position in the heavens

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and the fact that another planet comes periodically, is there something in the solar system, perhaps

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in the whole universe, that keeps repeating itself?

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That a civilization arises, life can become possible, evolve on a planet, a stage arises,

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there's a very high civilization, but it brought its own ruin, perhaps, on itself.

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And then somebody gets into spaceships and goes to another planet and starts its all

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over again.

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In other words, it's the past, the future.

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Coming up next, 20th century with Mike Wallace reports on the people who live on the edge

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in earthquake zones.

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Then from World War I's Big Bertha to the Iraqi Super Gun, weapons at war takes a look

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at big guns.

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And log on at veterans.com, a new website brought to you by the History Channel.

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Veterans.com, a place where veterans, their families and others can connect, share stories,

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and pass on the legacies of all American veterans.