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tonythorne
03-12-2012, 12:03
This seems a good place for it... so here's the first item... :goodluck:


December 1, 2012 – RUSSIA - Doomsday hysteria has gripped Russia and some of its neighbors. Travel agencies are selling tours to either heaven or hell and people are stocking up on food and fuel. Officials are publicly denying the apocalypse, hoping to calm the hype. Those awaiting Doomsday have three weeks to finish their preparations before the date of the much publicized apocalypse allegedly predicted by Mayan calendar, which is going to happen on December 21, 2012. Thousands of people across Russia keep stocking up their back rooms and balconies with food, fuel and other supplies they might need when disaster strikes. Some are even moving outside of cities because of the widely spread rumors that cities would be impossible to survive in after an apocalypse on Earth.

According to one of the most popular scenarios, on December 21 the sun is going to line up with the center of our Milky Way galaxy which will cause an entire blackout on Earth and a wave of different natural disasters. Doomsday merchandize offered in Russia and Ukraine includes survival kits. In the Siberian city of Tomsk such items for “meeting the end of the world” include ID cards, notepads, canned fish, a bottle of vodka, rope, a piece of soap, among other items. The packages are said to be popular among customers, more than 1,000 kits have been already sold, the company says. Ukrainian entrepreneurs also offer a version of a doomsday kit. Just like Tomsk package, the Ukrainian one also includes alcohol: champagne for ladies and vodka for gentlemen. The rest of the kit consist of jack-knife, two-minute noodles, shampoo, soap, rope, matches and condoms. An apocalypse kit is not the only way for the entrepreneurial minded to cash in on the end of the world hype.

One Ukrainian enterprise is selling tours to heaven and hell for December 21 promising full return of money in case of “not getting to heaven or hell.” A trip to heaven would cost about $15, while trip to the underworld is more expensive at around $18. The agency explains difference in price by saying that Hell should be more fun. While Ukrainian trips are even said by the firm behind to be just for fun, some individuals in the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod offered far more expensive doomsday fair – one being a salvation trip in an arc. An internet ad offered seats in the arc for just 80,000-150,000 rubles, which is approximately $2,600-5,000. Bars and nightclubs are getting ready for apocalypse day in their own way announcing theme parties and inventing special cocktails like “Total Recall” – an extremely alcoholic drink that makes you “recall your entire life.” But doomsday hysteria isn’t isolated to just the former soviet Republic. In France authorities had to ban access to a mountain that doomsday theorists believe will be the only safe spot during the apocalypse on December 21. –Russia Today

Watch this space folks..!

- - - - - - - - - - merged double post - - - - - - - - - -

... and here's the next item:

December 1, 2012 – WORLD - Five NASA scientists took time out yesterday to assure the public that the world will not end on 21 December. The astroboffins dismissed claims that a rogue planet called Nibiru will smash into the earth in three weeks time, killing us all. The planetary smash-up just before Christmas 2012 was allegedly predicted by the Mayans.

A wave of letters and emails from worried Americans has prompted NASA to pull together some of its top brass in a Google Hangout and make them answer questions from the public. Doomsday, one possible scenario for 21 December 2012. “This is just manufactured fantasy,” said David Morrison, an astrobiologist from NASA's Ames Research Center, “but the truth is that many people are worried about it and many of those people do write to NASA.” In particular I'm concerned about the young people who write to me and say they are terribly afraid, they say they can't sleep, they can't eat. Some of them have said they are contemplating suicide. So while it's a joke to many people and a mystery to others, there is a core of people who are truly concerned. NASA has tried to dampen fears about December 2012 several times over the past few years, in 2009 and in 2011, for example, it quelled suggestions the earth would be destroyed by a mega volcano in the last few weeks of 2012. The brainiacs answered a range of questions from the public, including “Is NASA predicting a total blackout of the earth from the 21st - 23rd December?”

No, said Mitzi Adams, a solar/archaeoastronomer from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. She elaborated: There's nothing we know of physically that would allow the Sun to switch off for three days and then switch back on. As for Nibiru - the legendary planet which the Mayans believed had a “3,600-year-long orbit of the Sun” - smashing us to bits in three weeks' time, David Morrison of the Ames Centre said: It makes no sense, because if it was there we could see it. We'd have been tracking it for a decade or so. And by now, it would be the brightest object in the sky after the Sun and Moon. You can dispel this rumour yourself, just go out and look at the sky. –Register

tonythorne
06-12-2012, 16:38
Physicists find Sun is capable of producing super-storms and massive radiation bursts. :wow:

December 1, 2012 – SUN - A mysterious spike in atmospheric carbon-14 levels 12 centuries ago might be a sign the Sun is capable of producing solar storms dozens of times worse than anything we’ve ever seen, a team of physicists calculates in a paper published this week in Nature. Carbon-14 (14C) is created when high-energy radiation strikes the Earth’s upper atmosphere, converting nitrogen-14 into 14C, which eventually makes its way into plants via photosynthesis. Earlier this year, a team of Japanese physicists discovered a spike in 14C in tree rings of Japanese cedars dating from the 774–75 growing season. But they were unable to explain where that 14C might have come from because all possible explanations appeared unlikely. But Adrian Melott, a physicist at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, who is the lead author of the new study, says that the Japanese team made a miscalculation in ruling out one of these possibilities — a giant solar storm.

The problem, Melott says, is that the Japanese team treated solar storms as if they shone like light bulbs, radiating energy uniformly in all directions. But actually, they produce ‘blobs’ of energetic plasma that explode outwards unevenly. Adjusting for that, he says, reduces the size of the solar storm needed to produce the observed 14C spike from 1,000 times larger than anything known, to only 10–20 times larger — meaning that a giant solar storm is suddenly back on the table as a reasonable explanation. Furthermore, observations by NASA’s Kepler space telescope have found that Sun-like stars are capable of generating super-storms of this type every few hundred to 1,000 years.

This doesn’t mean the Sun does the same, “but it suggests it’s reasonable”, Melott says. Other possible explanations for the spike seem unlikely. Radiation from a supernova explosion has enough power, but the supernova would have to have been within about 100 light years, Melott says. “Such an event would have been blindingly bright in the sky, much brighter than a full Moon. It would have been bright like that for months and could not have failed to be noted by every civilization on Earth.” Another possibility is a gamma-ray burst from a more distant supernova. But such bursts are rare and produce searchlight-like beams of radiation unlikely to hit us. “I don’t think it’s likely,” Melott says.

If the 774–75 event was indeed a flare, it’s a disturbing find. Such a flare would be about 60 times more powerful than the 1989 solar storm that knocked out power to much of Quebec for nine hours on a cold winter night. Multiply that by 60 and add two decades of increased technological vulnerability, and the effects might be disastrous. “A lot of people could die,” Melott says. “You could have power out for months or longer — no refrigerated food, no food being transported to all the people who live in big cities.” –Nature

Footnote! This item is new, but I predicted it in a speculative tale some years ago... now being featured for free, as my STORY OF THE MONTH, on my website ... www.tonythorne.com ...yes, all of it!

tonythorne
14-12-2012, 18:27
:spin::jumping:

With Dec. 21, 2012, quickly approaching, people around the world are grappling with doomsday phobia and fears of an impending apocalypse.

Friday, Dec. 21 marks the end of the Mayan long-count calendar. On this day, doomsayers believe the world will end. Some fear a wayward planet called "Nibiru," supposedly discovered by the Sumerians, will collide with the Earth. Others point to a 2012 doomsday in Biblical prophecy, a cataclysm complete with fiery explosions, earthquakes and floods.

Despite the fact that NASA has debunked such apocalyptic theories, many are still worried about the end of the days approaching.

One in 10 people questioned in a worldwide survey said they think the world will end in 2012, according to Yahoo! News' "Who Knew?"

In China, doomsday seeds were planted when the 3-D version of the 2009 Hollywood disaster film "2012" hit theaters just last month, according to Asia Times.

Stories of doomsday phobia sprouted around the country. A senior engineer and wife of a university professor in Nanjing reportedly cashed in her savings to donate to poor children to make them happy "for the last few days," Asia Times reported. A carpenter in Chongqing supposedly spent his earnings wining and dining, even though his wife had just given birth. In Xinjiang, a man allegedly spent his family's savings to build an ark in hopes of survival.

Going to the extreme is not unheard of. In May 2011, when Christian radio broadcaster Harold Camping predicted the rapture, some devout followers sold all their possessions to help spread the doomsday message. In 1997, 39 members of the Heaven's Gate cult committed mass suicide in Southern California believing they were called to follow the comet Hale-Bopp, according to Time magazine.

For those with burning questions, NASA created a Google+ hangout on Nov. 28 to answer inquiries and calm worries about apocalyptic theories, noting, "Contrary to some of the common beliefs out there, Dec. 21, 2012 won't be the end of the world as we know, however, it will be another winter solstice."

A wikiHow has also been created in an attempt to help those with doomsday phobia. The website highlights other supposed "doomsdays" throughout history, suggests having a healthy skepticism about end of days "news" and stop reading into the scaremongering too much. - Huffington Post, USA

tonythorne
16-12-2012, 13:50
I started this in the Dungeon... but why not here too? It'll get more hilariously frantic before Friday is over... all around the world!!!

:crazy: :eyebrows::crylaughing:

With Dec. 21, 2012, quickly approaching, people around the world are grappling with doomsday phobia and fears of an impending apocalypse.

Friday, Dec. 21 marks the end of the Mayan long-count calendar. On this day, doomsayers believe the world will end. Some fear a wayward planet called "Nibiru," supposedly discovered by the Sumerians, will collide with the Earth. Others point to a 2012 doomsday in Biblical prophecy, a cataclysm complete with fiery explosions, earthquakes and floods.

Despite the fact that NASA has debunked such apocalyptic theories, many are still worried about the end of the days approaching.

One in 10 people questioned in a worldwide survey said they think the world will end in 2012, according to Yahoo! News' "Who Knew?"

In China, doomsday seeds were planted when the 3-D version of the 2009 Hollywood disaster film "2012" hit theaters just last month, according to Asia Times.

Stories of doomsday phobia sprouted around the country. A senior engineer and wife of a university professor in Nanjing reportedly cashed in her savings to donate to poor children to make them happy "for the last few days," Asia Times reported. A carpenter in Chongqing supposedly spent his earnings wining and dining, even though his wife had just given birth. In Xinjiang, a man allegedly spent his family's savings to build an ark in hopes of survival.

Going to the extreme is not unheard of. In May 2011, when Christian radio broadcaster Harold Camping predicted the rapture, some devout followers sold all their possessions to help spread the doomsday message. In 1997, 39 members of the Heaven's Gate cult committed mass suicide in Southern California believing they were called to follow the comet Hale-Bopp, according to Time magazine.

For those with burning questions, NASA created a Google+ hangout on Nov. 28 to answer inquiries and calm worries about apocalyptic theories, noting, "Contrary to some of the common beliefs out there, Dec. 21, 2012 won't be the end of the world as we know, however, it will be another winter solstice."

A wikiHow has also been created in an attempt to help those with doomsday phobia. The website highlights other supposed "doomsdays" throughout history, suggests having a healthy skepticism about end of days "news" and stop reading into the scaremongering too much. Weird News, Huffington Post

KirstyJay
17-12-2012, 00:13
I started this in the Dungeon... but why not here too?Because it's against forum rules to create multiple threads on the same subject... so I have merged it with your original thread. ;)

Debbie_22
18-12-2012, 15:28
Well we all remember when the 'Millennium bug' supposedly happened.........

honda
18-12-2012, 15:59
I have had a bet with a friend that the world 'WILL NOT END'.
Can't lose really, if it doesn't, I get 10 euros. If it does, who cares about the bet :eyebrows:

tonythorne
20-12-2012, 17:11
Eva and I just had all our Christmas cheer delivered via Mercadona ... what a waste if it happens, but it won't have cost us anything..!

honda
21-12-2012, 16:16
Well..... It didn't happen.

imablue
21-12-2012, 22:36
Well..... It didn't happen.

yeah i know.. what happens now .... another desperate wait till it does happens ..these last 5 thousand years have been murder ...

honda
22-12-2012, 21:51
yeah i know.. what happens now .... another desperate wait till it does happens ..these last 5 thousand years have been murder ...

Maybe the next thousand will be better :laugh: