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The beginning of the end



Columnist: William B Stoecker Posted on Wednesday, 5 February, 2014 | 6 comments Columnist:

Article Copyright© William B Stoecker - reproduced with permission.

Many of us suspected that some Earth-shaking event might take place on 1/1/2000 or, more likely, 12/21/2012; if not the end of the world, at least the end of this age and the beginning of a new age. But nothing at all happened, or at least nothing obvious. Yet it is hard to believe that the world as it has been can go on much longer. In the US, massive debts and continuing deficit spending, high unemployment, rising racial tensions, uncontrolled immigration, and the apparently endless drought in the West spell doom for our economy and our society. Much the same is true elsewhere in the world; even in China there is massive government corruption, income inequality, and a staggering level of debt. But it is not only on the human level that the signs are ominous... nature seems to be warning of terrible events to come.Strange, inexplicable events have been taking place, regularly and all over the world, and these events are well documented, seemingly ruling out hoaxes as an explanation for all of them. Many Christians believe that, in the end times, the sound of Gabriel’s shofar will herald the Day of Judgment. And sounds at least somewhat resembling some kind of horn, sounds issuing from an unseen source in the sky and heard over a wide area, have been heard all over the world in the last few years. There are videotapes with audio involving multiple witnesses from Texas and Western Canada, to mention but two of many.Then there are the “skyquakes” I have written about previously, loud booms like explosions or cannon, that have been heard for centuries in places like Barisal, India; Seneca, New York; Cape Fear, North Carolina; and Moodus, Connecticut. The usual conventional explanation for these is distant thunder channeled by unusual atmospheric conditions. But recently these sounds have been heard with increasing frequency, even when there were no storms for hundreds of miles. Such booming sounds were heard in Chino Valley, Arizona on 11/25 and 11/26/2013, and on 11/26/2013 in Verde Valley, Arizona. They were heard 11/26 and 11/28/2013 in Port Angeles, Washington, and, also on 11/26/2013, in Montreal, Canada. Loud booms were heard in Colonial Heights, Virginia in January, 2014, and the same month in Kentucky, accompanied by a shockwave that shook houses, and, also in January of 2014, in southern Illinois.Like the equally mysterious earthquake lights, these booms may sometimes herald a coming earthquake; such sounds were reported in the days preceding the massive New Madrid earthquakes of the early nineteenth century, as well as during the events. In one of my articles in Atlantis Rising magazine I pointed out that the earthquake-prone St. Lawrence Valley in eastern Canada resembles a classic plate boundary, or spreading zone; it is abnormally wide, with ranges of hills along each side. It is part of an arc of low ground and frequent earthquakes that continues down along Lake Erie, the Wabash River, the Ohio River, and finally the Mississippi and the New Madrid area. I theorized that this might be either a failed or just beginning continental rift zone. Researching for the article, I discovered that a retired petroleum geologist had independently arrived at the same conclusion. Some internet sites have suggested the same thing, and pointed out that many of the skyquakes have been on or near this line. A number of researchers have suggested that such sounds may quite often precede earthquakes, and have pointed out that earthquakes are also frequent along a the west slope of the Appalachian Mountains, another line going from south to north in Oklahoma and Texas, several parallel lines in the Rockies (including the Rio Grande rift zone), and the fault that formed the Sea of Cortez and extends northward along the east side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, with another branch further west…the San Andreas Fault. The sounds have been heard in all of these areas. Is the continent slowly breaking apart, and are we due for major earthquakes in the next few years?Equally frightening, if not more so, extremely large meteors, often called fireballs or bolides, have become much more frequent in recent years On 4/22/2012 a small asteroid fell at a low angle east of Sacramento, California, and exploded high in the air, with several fragments striking the ground in the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada. Had it fallen at a slightly steeper angle about three minutes later as the Earth turned, it would have hit downtown Sacramento with about one third the energy of the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima, and would certainly have killed thousands of people. It was that close. Bright fireballs were seen over San Francisco on 10/18/2012 and 12/15/2013, as well as on 2/15/13. On that same day, 2/15/13, an asteroid roared over Chelyabinsk, Russia, exploded high in the atmosphere some distance away, and littered the ground with fragments. As it passed over the city its sonic boom did considerable property damage and injured some 1,200 people. A direct impact would have been equal to a large thermonuclear weapon and would have destroyed the entire city and killed virtually everyone. On the same day a larger asteroid passed near the Earth, apparently from a different direction.There have been many, many bolides in recent years, and observed impacts, including injuries to people and near misses. On 2/21/2007 a meteor fell through the roof of a house in Mahadevpur, India. On 9/15/2007 a meteor made a large crater in Peru, and on 4/12/2008 one hit a house in Zunhua, China. On 9/25/2009 a meteor struck a SUV in Grimsby, Ontario. On 10/18/2012 another bolide was seen from Sacramento, and another was reported over parts of California and Nevada 1/7/2013. Others were seen over the eastern US 1/12/2013, Ohio on 9/27/13, and Puerto Rico 1/18/2014. And these are but a few of many recent examples. Understand that, while large meteors have always been much more common than most people realize, the frequency is definitely increasing, and Chelyabinsk is the only case in recorded history of major damage to an entire city and mass casualties.And then there are the mass deaths of birds, with entire flocks falling from the sky at once, with authorities scrambling to find (or invent) “rational” explanations (meaning conventional explanations). On 1/3/2012 thousands of blackbirds fell from the sky in Beebe, Arkansas. In recent years there have been other mass bird falls in California, Texas, Missouri, Louisiana, Kentucky, and many other places around the world. There have been mass deaths of pelicans, Andean flamingoes, geese, ducks, and penguins.And not only birds have died. There have been more mass deaths of pilot whales, dolphins, sperm whales, melon headed whales, seals, manatees, herring, sardines, walleyes, menhadens, trout, shad, squid, starfish, sea turtles, crabs, and jellyfish. Something is clearly wrong with the ocean, but it doesn’t stop there. Since about 2006 there have also been mass deaths of bees, hippopotamus, 10,000 cattle and buffalo in Vietnam, and camels, goats, and yaks.There are some indications that volcanism is also increasing, although precise statistics are hard to come by. Bear in mind that volcanic eruptions have always been fairly frequent; if it’s not one volcano erupting it’s another, and there are earthquakes every day somewhere in the world. Yet there is reason to believe that our planet is growing more restless. Also, UFO sightings, if not more frequent, are at least becoming better documented, with numerous cases of videotapes and multiple witnesses seemingly ruling out hoaxes (which, unfortunately, are definitely becoming more common). By “UFOs” I mean objects or lights in the sky that do not appear to be meteors, aircraft, hoaxes, etc. And there seems to be no correlation between most of these events…at least not a physical cause and effect. Earthquakes, originating in Earth’s crust, cannot cause meteors to fall from space, although if a large asteroid struck our planet it would certainly cause a mega-quake. So it appears that something above and beyond the physical realm may be trying to tell us something. I’m afraid we may all be in for a very, very wild ride.