Jim:
It was funny that the majority of the criticism to my last writing had to do with the Mayan calendar and the Bible Code since I didn’t consider that my main focus and was meant as a lead in. I will say most prophecy is simply too vague to be useful, and the only time it really catches my attention is when separate sources, separated by thousands of miles, hundreds or thousands of years, and of different religions and cultures, somehow reach the same conclusion. My real intent was more so to play “connect the dots” with what NASA and the US Federal Government are doing along these lines. Do you realize that Yucca Mountain is a $48 Billion dollar project, meaning of course it will actually cost several times that (private sector utilities can only dream of that cash outlay). The drilling machine doing it is like the one that made the Chunnel between England and France, and the initial tunnel is 10 miles long. Since the US government won’t allow the reclaiming of spent nuclear material (like France does and we should too IMHO), presently all nuclear “waste” is stored on site with each reactor (a method which seems to have been working). If anyone would ask the private sector, I’m sure an above-ground facility on government land in Nevada (since nobody wants it in there back yard and the Federal government owns most of Nevada) could be done for a couple hundred million, and it could then be watched. Bury and forget for 10,000 years doesn’t sound like a good strategy, but it does allow for justification of building such a deep and gigantic underground system which could be used for other things. Presently we know about NORAD [4] and Weather Mountain, and presume there are other such huge underground secret government facilities. (http://www.sauderzone.com/ubtlinks.htm [5] -that one is the least UFO-based, so don’t start in on that please) Thanks in particular to Michael Williamson for that great link, which really makes the point it happened before, thus it will happen again. Remember, those are just the land strikes. Since the Earth is 2/3 water, statistically twice as many as shown on that site on land – have hit water and no doubt made tsunamis that made the 2005 tsunami one look like nothing. This should be a concern to anyone living anywhere near the ocean, and not on very high ground. Also, I am aware of the propulsion ideas, where land craft would land on an inbound asteroid and then apply thrust to send it off course. The problem there is we currently we lack the technology to do this to a sufficient extent. Comets (or “giant dirty snow balls”) are real wild cards, and according to many scientists impossible to stop (but they’ve been wrong). Remember the Near Earth Object Program has a stated goal of identifying 90% of objects one kilometer or larger, though they are identifying basically everything they can find. The fear is one sneaking up from behind the sun, or some viewpoint we can’t see very well, thus giving us almost no warning. The only thing I hope people take away is two fold: 1.) This is a serious threat with a long term proven history of catastrophes, and 2.) Keep an eye on what NASA is doing. If you knew, would you tell people? I agree with the comments that the general pubic (especially considering world wide) would probably not be as cooperative and well-behaved as portrayed in the movie Deep Impact. I’ll close this with another movie reference: Remember Close Encounters of the Third Kind? When the Piggly Wiggly semi-trucks start pulling into Yucca Mountain, worry and prepare.- Rourke http://groups.yahoo.com/group/survivalretreat [6]