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Jim:

I noticed that you have remained relatively quiet on the millions of illegal aliens that have been demonstrating in dozens of American cities this past week..was wondering if you considered the Marxist led demonstrations that call for the death, expulsion of Americans on our own soil by foreigners a threat or a concern? I find it disheartening that so many are chiming in about potential asteroid strikes yet no comments about the very real and present threat posed by so many millions right in our own midst. Hope American wake up, its seems that the 12-20 million illegal aliens are quiet awake, hope to see the 280+ million ‘legal’ Americans as well shake themselves from their slumber and start taking this ‘reconquista’ as the threat for what it really is. I myself have contacted my representatives here in Idaho, recounting my experiences of living amongst illegal aliens in California and recounting the utter devastation that their presence has proved to be in California (overcrowded schools, overtaxed hospitals, highways, insurance problems associated with non-legal residents, the travesty of a people that largely refuse to learn our language, do not embrace our culture, except for the basic concept of making money.) I find it odd that so many in the survivalist community have largely ignored this ‘clear and present danger’ and instead are scurrying to renounce supposed racial bigotry when that is not the point. The point is we have been invaded by a foreign people and the flow continues at the rate of a half division of people a day! When I lived in southern California I had several illegal aliens tell me to my face they were planning on ‘taking back’ the southwest. I was hearing this rhetoric nearly 20 years ago! It is now being said rather publicly and MUCH more frequently. The Marxist leaders of these mass demonstrations have even had the Mexican flags removed and replaced with American flags. (Better to fool the gringo with, I’ve been told!) The ‘Plan of San Diego’ has even been trotted out, a plan to ‘kill all males 16 and older’. You can Google that as well as all the other key phrase’s like ‘reconquista’ and see for yourself the seriousness of the threat. I hope that the ‘survivalist’ community decides to comment on this threat and plan accordingly. Best Regards! – JD in Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho

JWR Replies: Thanks for your comments. You summed up the situation very succinctly. OBTW, when Googling “reconquista” , I recommend also doing  a search on “Aztlan.”)

Although I agree with you that illegal immigration is a big issue, you have to consider that not everyone reading SurvivalBlog lives in the United States.(We have readers in 60 countries–see our hit map.) Our readers in England and Australia probably could care less about U.S. domestic political issues. I have noticed that the immigration issue has been well-covered in other media outlets. Trumpeting the illegal immigration issue on SurvivalBlog probably would not accomplish a lot. (Ditto for a lot of other political issues, which I consciously de-emphasize.) You can see that on a gazillion other blogs and web sites, such as The Barnes Review and American Patrol. Instead, I try to cover the survival-related topics that the MSM overlooks. Scroll through the subject lines for the past three or four weeks of SurvivalBlog postings. (Try finding those topics on CNBC or even on WorldNetDaily!)

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 and Weather Mountain, and presume there are other such huge underground secret government facilities. (http://www.sauderzone.com/ubtlinks.htm -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

Jim:

I’d like to add some input to the meteor thread. First, there’s a near complete (based on our knowledge) and growing database at: http://www.unb.ca/passc/ImpactDatabase/ that shows the residual effects of quite a few impacts. Megaton range impacts occur surprisingly frequently–about once a century. Tunguska level events (that killed almost everything in 2000 sq miles) occur about every thousand years.
I don’t like Deep Impact as a scenario, because I cannot for the life of me see 300 million Americans, not to mention the rest of the world, just accepting that a select few will go into a safe cavern, without a global riot that would likely end civilization in the process.
The original and accurate story of this type of impact, involving a comet in this case, was Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s “Lucifer’s Hammer,” which I recommend all survival minded readers check out. It covers panic reaction prior to the event and during, and coping mechanisms for a post-holocaust world, including the problems (in 1976) that many children would have without TV. Add cell phones and computers to that (This is a serious emotional issue for current military recruits denied their cell phones and Internet for a couple of months) and a great many young people who can’t grasp the destruction will still be in psychological shock. Add in food, transport, disease and bandits, and it’s a grim tale without being excessively emotional.
The best way to deal with Earth-grazing asteroids is not to attempt to blow them up, but to use charges to divert them–a subsurface detonation can move enough mass to act as a rocket. This causes the asteroid to divert into another orbit that doesn’t intersect with Earth. Any large enough mass can’t be destroyed, but will gravitationally coalesce back into an effectively solid mass in fairly short order.
Related threats include the potential of Yellowstone every 650,000 years (It’s been about 650,000 years) to erupt and spew 200 cubic MILES of ejecta into the atmosphere. And a sufficient earthquake could trigger multiple Cascade Range eruptions from California’s Mt. Baker all the way up into Alaska. I’ve been threatening to write the SF story of a 50 megaton impact in Yellowstone triggering it, the Cascades, the San Andreas and New Madrid faults…
Speaking of the New Madrid Fault, it’s potentially more dangerous than San Andreas–the soil structure of the eastern US is such that ground waves are possible with a strong tremor. The effects could travel as far as the Carolinas and Pennsylvania. I’ll leave everyone with those cheery thoughts of Mother Nature for now. – Michael Z. Williamson

James,
I had the opportunity to speak to one of the Bible Code team rabbis and this is important for people planning their future to know. Bible code only works on five books of Torah. It doesn’t predict the future only several possible outcomes. Its purpose is to show evidence divine inspiration by being several hundred thousand times more organized and patterned than normal text.  Mayan calendar or any non -Torah based prophecy is derived either from necromancy or astrology. These two methods may appear effective but they are reading from the wrong end of the process and their purpose is to give free will to reject prayer as the real answer. [When you] rejects the Creator and worship the creation and your life will be ruled by the stars, I choose to be in the hands of G-d who moves worlds at his whim.

A comet strike story is well told in [Niven and Pournelle’s novel] Lucifer’s Hammer which covers many survival topics one of my favorites. If such a strike comes to pass it like all of life is just a step toward the final redemption. Happy and Kosher Pesech  (Our big bug out from Egypt) – David in Israel

Sir:
Rourke needs to check his facts. The Aztec calendar does not end in 2012 or any other date. It is as open ended a calendar as any other. There is a neat astronomical alignment at the end of 13-baktun/21dec2012, but that’s all it is- scientifically speaking anyway.- K

Mr. Rawles:
Good article on asteroid impacts. But as it lead off with the Mayan calendar ending in 2012, I must comment. What no one seems to mention when they talk about the end date is that it might not mean a darn thing. The Mayan civilization ended from resource depletion. Doesn’t it stand to reason maybe the guys that were making the calendar died off before they could finish the job? Sorry, I just had to comment. Take care, Great job, – Jim

The abrupt ending of the Mayan calendar in December of 2012 has long been assumed to be an astrological catastrophic event for Earth (http://survive2012.com). More recently, the Bible Code has produced passages/matrixes that seem to announce a comet impact in 2012 (http://www.satansrapture.com/nasa2012.htm). [JWR Adds: Beware! Not Biblically supported doctrine at that site!] There are said to be two conflicting matrixes, once saying the Earth is annihilated, the other that the comet is annihilated. I realize what most people think of prophecy (unreliable, to say the least), so let’s take a more scientific look at this, and consider that if there was such an asteroid or comet coming and our government knew this, what would the government actually do about it?
Before I start, I should make sure that some key words are defined. An asteroid is a celestial body found especially between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter (asteroid belt). It is theorized that a planet, or beginnings of planet once existed between Mars and Jupiter, but that the extreme gravity of mighty and gigantic Jupiter busted it up into pieces. A meteor is a particle of matter in the solar system that are directly observable only by their incandescence from frictional heating on entry into the atmosphere (visible during Earth atmosphere entry as they usually burn up). Once a meteor hits the ground, anything you find of it is a meteorite. A comet is celestial body that consists of a fuzzy head usually surrounding a bright nucleus, and that when its orbit is near the sun develops a long tail which points away from the sun (has a big tail).
The idea or realization of large meteors striking the Earth and doing great damage is largely new to 20th Century thinking. The first proven meteorite creator is in Arizona http://www.meteorcrater.com/, http://www.barringercrater.com/science/ and in the early 1900s the owner went bankrupt searching and drilling for the meteorite as proof, when it is now believed it exploded on impact (sending tiny bits everywhere, thus leaving no large meteorite to be found). The famous and mysterious Tungsuka impact in Siberia of 1908 http://newsfromrussia.com/society/2002/06/29/31473.html is now recognized to be a meteor impact which completely exploded above the ground (thus leaving trees dead center under the blast still standing). Finally of course there is the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, which is believed to have killed 70% of all life on Earth at that time.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/06/0617_020617_fossilleaves.html You may be surprised to learn that this was not the only such mass extinction http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/extinction.html, and there have be more. However, it was really the spectacular 1994 impact of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 into the planet Jupiter which ended the speculation about asteroids or comets impacting into planets. http://www.solarviews.com/eng/impact.htm
As this article points out, one look at our very pock-marked moon should be an indication asteroids we have and will likely continue to be hit both the moon and the Earth (erosion over time, from water, helps hide the Earth’s wounds). http://www.thesahara.net/asteroid_2002_nt7.htm. The results to us of such an impact would of course be disastrous, depending on the size, speed, and make-up of the asteroid or comet. http://www.sandia.gov/media/comethit.htm And also see.. http://www.pibburns.com/catastro/impacts.htm. However, just like with nuclear winter, if you survive the initial blast and any generated tsunamis (serious concern since Earth is 2/3 water of course), and stay underground, out of the potentially abusive weather, and wait for everything to settle out of the atmosphere, you can survive. But let’s focus on the issue of stopping the comet or asteroid in the first place…
In the past 25 years, Hollywood has taken a few takes on this issue of stopped an inbound asteroid or comet, and the work they did is worthy of consideration as a starting point. What I am trying to do is look at the facts, and then employ the “what would I do” method of backward engineering government decisions. In the recent movie remake of Pearl Harbor, Dan Akroyd, playing the role of an intelligence officer, is asked why he thinks Japan would hit Pearl Harbor when he has no hard evidence. He replies, “Well, it’s what I would do”. Such will be my approach here.

The 1979 movie “Meteor” starring Sean Connery introduced the concept of using nuclear warheads to try and destroy an incoming meteor (or asteroid actually, before it hits the Earth’s atmosphere). The movie Armageddon in 1996 took the thinking to the next level, realizing that surface explosions would be insufficient to break up an asteroid, and thus presented the idea of astronauts going to the asteroid and then “drilling” the nukes into the asteroid as the best approach to bust it up, or into two pieces at least. This production, staring Bruce Willis, was certainly exciting, but a little too fantastic. The most realistic of the movies made, IMHO, would be Deep Impact, released in 1998. The primary plan was similar to the Armageddon plot, which of course is simply too fantastic and unnecessary, but it was the government’s contingency plan C which really interested me. This was that if the astronaut mission failed (Plan A), and if a bunch of ICBMs launched when it was near Earth (Plan B) failed, there would be a national lottery for one million people (none over age 50 and 200,000 pre-selected government officials and scientists of course) to survive in a Ark made up of man made caves drilled into Missouri limestone with enough supplies to last 2 years (Plan C – “the rules of 3” right from Ragnar Benson, author of The Survival Retreat and others). Wages and prices were frozen, and people were made to “go to work and pay your bills”. Martial Law was declared and people were to be home at night. “Hoarding” was not allowed (though I still think that is a term not really defined as to where the line is, and the term is used as if people just seem to understand where that line is). There was an optimistic plan A and B which kept people going, and hoping, and in the movie that seemed to work and hold off the riots, though they did show characters putting up bars over their windows, meaning there were some problems. Other countries were left to do as they could.
Now let’s look at the facts, real life. NASA currently operates the Near Earth Object Program, who’s stated purpose is to identify 90% (highest they think they can get to) of the objects in space that may come into contact with the Earth. http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov If you have never seen this site, take a look. Check out Close Approaches and Impact Risk in particular, but you will have to brush up on your math to remember how very large numbers are presented to the powers format with the little number superscript (i.e. thousand = 1000 = 10 x 10 x 10 x 10 = 103). In Close Approaches, note that a Lunar Distance (LD) is the average distance from the Earth to moon (~384,000 km or ~240,000 miles). So if an asteroid was going to pass 16 LDs from Earth, that would be 16 times the distance from the Earth to Moon.
Now before you laugh this off as such an event being less likely than you winning the Powerball lottery, you had better take a look at this link: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news149.html That one in going to miss the Earth by only 5.7 times the diameter of the Earth in 2029. That asteroid also has a diameter of 320 meters or over 1040 feet. How much damage could that do? Well let’s look back to the damage caused by the Arizona meteorite which was only 150 feet in diameter (<50 meters) http://www.barringercrater.com/effects/. We are probably talking about wiping out the better part of Texas here or worse. Note that the article says this is BELOW the level of geosynchronous Earth satellites. One more thing about the Powerball lottery; Why do people pay money to play something they know they have a less than 1 in hundred million chance of winning? Answer: Because the payoff is so large. Now reverse that logic as to asteroids; Why should you worry about the very very small chance a large asteroid or comet will collide with the Earth? Because the payoff is so large if it does.
Now I want to insert the “what would I do” if I was with NASA. My very first comment is that you don’t need a manned mission to nuke an asteroid or comet headed for Earth. There are two methods to “drill” a nuke into an asteroid. First would be to land a probe and have it land on the asteroid that had such automated capacity to drill a nuke in. I will note that this part was done back in 2001. Remember the landing on Eros? (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1148071.stm and http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/solar_system/59734
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1162463.stm )
The second way makes more sense to me and is actually easier to do IMHO. Here you want to punch a nuke into the asteroid so you can just aim the satellite right into it. Torpedo it. The trick though is developing a nuke that would survive the harsh impact and then blow up at depth inside the steel or rocky asteroid or comet. The military calls these “bunker busting” weapons, originally made from old cannon barrels, and non-nuclear variants are nothing new at all, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_bunker_buster. It is interesting to note that exactly such a nuke has been in the research and development works of the US Pentagon for some time now. It’s called a RNEP for Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/systems/rnep.htm ). This remains an issue of Congressional funding http://www.ananuclear.org/rnep.html Clearly using a penetrating bunker buster type tactical nuclear bomb could work for an asteroid or comet. Rather than going through the difficulties of a landing on an asteroid or comet and drilling, we could merely proceed with the presumably easier task of merely intercepting it (torpedoing it). This was exactly what the 2005 Deep Impact probe did by hitting an asteroid at 23,000 mph, a mere 200 feet off its target on a city-sized asteroid.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2005-07-03-deep-impact_x.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26386-2005Apr4.html
It is clear IMHO that scientists are considering this method for dealing with an inbound asteroid or comet. They even call this entire line of thinking deep impact.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/deepimpact/main/index.html
http://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html
Billions have now been spent developing exactly the technologies needed to deal with an incoming asteroid or comet. The question is, was there merely done a precautionary science, or do they have a reason to keep this research moving along. Consider it. What would you do, if you knew?

One final thought: As in the movie Deep Impact would the government build a gigantic underground shelter to house people for this period time as a backup plan? How could they hide such an operation of such scale? Perhaps by building it for a different purpose (cover story, or perhaps real alternative)? Where is the government spending billions hollowing out a mountain right now? Answer: Yucca Mountain NV. Why? For spent nuclear storage, officially. http://www.epa.gov/radiation/yucca/ And what is the proposed completion date before this becomes operational? I’m not joking. They say “2012 or later.” See: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,165203,00.html, http://ocrwm.doe.gov/ymp/index.shtml, and http://www.nsc.org/ehc/yuccamt.HTM

Here are two other sites of interest:
Meteor showers http://home.att.net/~thehessians/asteroidstrike.html
Meteor Impact game http://www.barringercrater.com/game/

– Rourke http://groups.yahoo.com/group/survivalretreat