A Handy Tool

Ensuring the Continuity of our Species: It doesn’t look good for the home team. (Part 3 of 4)

As you can see, there's never been a shortage of doomsday scenarios. From the dreaded Mayan Apocalypse of 2012 to the havoc wreaked in the movie "The Day After Tomorrow," people have been predicting the end of civilization for as long as there has been a civilization.

The trouble is … sometimes they're correct: The Roman Empire fell spectacularly, as did the Mayan civilization, the Han Dynasty of China, India's Gupta Empire, and dozens of other once-mighty kingdoms.

So then how, exactly, do powerful empires collapse and why? Researchers now believe they've found an answer, one that has troubling implications for today; because this country is clearly on the road to ruin.

To begin with, societal collapse is actually more common than you think. The researchers' first task was overturning "the common impression that societal collapse is rare, or even largely fictional," as they wrote in their report published in the journal Ecological Economics.

In fact, they argue the rise and fall of great social structures is so common a theme in human civilization, recurrent throughout history and worldwide in scope, that it's more the rule than the exception.

Most studies of a society's collapse have looked at the specifics of how one civilization declined, citing individual causes such as a disaster (earthquake, flood), loss of resources (soil erosion, deforestation) or human conflict (war, uprising) that led to the particular society's downfall.

But the researchers, funded in part by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and the University of Maryland, College Park, cast a wider net. They aimed to create a useful mathematical model that could help analyze how any society might fall, including our current global, technically advanced, interconnected societies.

The model they arrived at takes inspiration from the classic notion of predator vs. prey, sometimes referred to as the "balance of nature." You know how it works: When a deer population grows the wolves that feed on those deer reproduce more successfully, too, and so the wolf population grows.

Everything is fine until the wolves become too numerous, eating so many deer that there isn't enough venison to go around. Then, as the number of deer plunges the wolf population drops due to famine, until equilibrium is reestablished and the cycle begins anew.

A handy tool

Informed by this paradigm, the researchers developed a relatively simple formula with four factors influencing social collapse: 1) nature and natural resources, 2) the accumulation of wealth, 3) the elite, and 4) the commoners. The team calls their model Human and Nature Dynamics, or HANDY.

The researchers used the HANDY model to analyze three different social scenarios: 1) an egalitarian society with no elite class; 2) an equitable society with workers and non-workers (students, retirees, disabled persons); and 3) an unequal society with a robust class of elites.

Control Your Fears

Doomsday Revisited

Ensuring the Continuity of our Species: It doesn’t look good for the home team. (Part 2 of 4)

Nostradamus, 1999

The heavily obfuscated and metaphorical writings of Michel de Nostrdame have intrigued people for over 400 years. His writings, the accuracy of which relies heavily upon very flexible interpretations, have been translated and re-translated in dozens of different versions.

One of the most famous quatrains read, "The year 1999, seventh month / From the sky will come great king of terror." Many Nostradamus devotees grew concerned that this was the famed prognosticator's vision of Armageddon.

Y2K, 2000

As the last century drew to a close, many people grew concerned that computers might bring about doomsday. The problem, first noted in the early 1970s, was that many computers would not be able to tell the difference between 2000 and 1900 dates.

No one was really sure what that would do, but many suggested catastrophic problems ranging from vast blackouts to nuclear holocaust. Gun sales jumped and survivalists prepared to live in bunkers, but the new millennium began with only a few glitches.

Antarctic, 2000

In case the Y2K bug didn't do us in, global catastrophe was assured by Richard Noone, author of the 1997 book "5/5/2000 Ice: the Ultimate Disaster" (Three Rivers Press). According to Noone, the Antarctic ice mass would be three miles thick by May 5, 2000, a date in which the planets would be aligned in the heavens, somehow resulting in a global icy death

While it may have been responsible for a lot of book sales, global warming must have kept the ice age at bay.

God's Church, 2008

According to God's Church minister Ronald Weinland, the end times were upon us, again. His 2006 book "2008: God's Final Witness" (The-End.Com, 2006) states that hundreds of millions of people will die, and by the end of 2006 "there will be a maximum time of two years remaining before the world will be plunged into the worst time of all human history.

By the fall of 2008, the United States was supposed to have collapsed as a world power, and no longer exist as an independent nation. As the book notes, Ronald Weinland placed his reputation on the line as the end-time prophet of God.

Harold Camping, 2011

In May 2011, radio preacher Harold Camping drew international media attention with his predictions that Judgment Day would come on May 21, kicked off by earthquakes around the globe and a rapture of the faithful. According to Camping, this dreadful day would be followed by months of torment and the end of the world on Oct. 21.

When May 21 passed quietly, Camping retreated from the limelight for a brief time before announcing that Judgment Day had, in fact, come and gone on that date. Instead of physical earthquakes, Camping wrote on the website of his radio station, Family Radio, May 21 brought spiritual earthquakes as God completed His judgment of souls.

Camping continued to contend that the end of the world would indeed come on Oct. 21, albeit quietly and without fire and brimstone.

I Told You So

Doomsday

Ensuring the Continuity of our Species: It doesn’t look good for the home team. (Part 1 of 4)

When it comes to apocalypse and planet-wide destruction, there seem to be no shortage of details on the when and how and why the world will come to a halt, with some "prophets" even predicting the exact day of the final event.

Most prophets of doom come from a religious perspective, though the secular crowd has caused its share of scares as well. One thing the doomsday scenarios tend to share in common is that, so far, they haven’t come to pass.

The Millerites, 1843

A New England farmer named William Miller, after several years of very careful study of his Bible, concluded that God's chosen time to destroy the world could be divined from a strict literal interpretation of scripture. As he explained to anyone who would listen, the world would end sometime between March 21, 1843 and March 21, 1844.

He preached and published enough to eventually lead thousands of followers (known as Millerites), who decided that the actual date was April 23, 1843. Many sold or gave away their possessions, assuming they would not be needed: When April 23 arrived and Jesus didn't the group eventually disbanded. Some of them went on to form what is now the Seventh Day Adventists.

Halley's Comet, 1910

In 1881, an astronomer discovered through spectral analysis that comet tails include a deadly gas called cyanogen (related, as the name implies, to cyanide). This was of only passing interest until someone realized that Earth would pass through the tail of Halley's comet in 1910.

Would everyone on the planet be bathed in deadly toxic gas? That was the speculation reprinted on the front pages of The New York Times and other newspapers, resulting in a widespread panic across the United States and abroad. Finally even-headed scientists explained that there was nothing to fear.

Pat Robertson, 1982

In May 1980, televangelist and Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson startled and alarmed many when, contrary to Matthew 24:36 ("No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven ...") he informed his "700 Club" TV show audience around the world that he knew when the world would end.

"I guarantee you by the end of 1982 there is going to be a judgment on the world," Robertson said.

Heaven's Gate, 1997

When comet Hale-Bopp appeared in 1997, rumors surfaced that an alien spacecraft was following the comet, and that there was a cover up by NASA and the astronomical community. Though the claim was refuted by astronomers (and could be refuted by anyone with a good telescope), the rumors were publicized on Art Bell's paranormal radio talk show "Coast to Coast AM."

These claims inspired a San Diego UFO cult named Heaven's Gate to conclude that the world would end soon. Unfortunately, the world did end for the 39 of the cult members who committed suicide on March 26, 1997.

Founding Fathers

Leadership Threats

Chaos is at our Door: Why a dangerous world is closing in. (Part 5 of 5)

It is time to face the reality that we are living in dangerous times. While an open southern border, disease, guns, drugs, illegal aliens, and terrorists are being used as a diversion,  our government is attempting the cover up of scandals too numerous to mention.

Shameless attacks on traditional values and religious beliefs; the legal slaughter of millions of unborn children; attempts to legalize suicide and drugs; and the attacks on freedom are the very real threat of tyranny.

When Americans can no longer trust their leaders and when they realize that the government can’t or won’t protect them, they have no choice but to trust in themselves. Nothing provides individuals more immediate, undeniable, and irreplaceable protection than the 2nd Amendment. It is the one freedom that guarantees our lives, the one freedom we can count on to protect ourselves when no one else will or can.

Imagine your world blanketed in darkness: Everything from radio, TV and cell phones to air defense radar, to police, fire and EMS frequencies gone; no internet, no public water or sewage treatment, no banking, no gas; no emergency response from hospitals or police. Who would protect you or your family?

Chaos is an ever present danger today, especially when you factor in the undercurrent of social unrest, and frustration with government leaders. We live in an age when preparing to survive whatever comes our way is a simple fact of life or death.

Prudent leaders prepare their nation. Prudent people prepare themselves. The police cannot always be there to protect you and the government can’t or won’t.

It’s time to re-listen to the words of an old Bob Dylan song, “Gather ‘round people, wherever you roam, admit that the waters around you have grown, and accept it that soon you’ll be drenched to the bone. If your time to you is worth savin’ then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone. There’s a battle outside and its ragin’, it’ll soon shake your walls, for the times, they are a changin’.”

If there is a battle cry for this age, it must be: We will not be left defenseless. We will not give up our freedoms. We will not surrender our safety to the lies of leaders who promise everything and deliver nothing. It’s time for all of us, as individuals and as community, to stand up and speak up!