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Roland Emmerich's 2012 Plot Spoiler!

By Kellvin Chavez
24 June 2008
source: Latinoreview.com

Things get rolling in the near(er)
future of 2009, as an American
scientist named PROFESSOR WEST
rushes to a research facility in India,
where a colleague named SATNAM
has made a mysterious but alarming
discovery: it seems that there have
been usually severe storms on the
surface of the sun, which are having
a grave effect on earth. Professor
West contacts his friend ADRIAN
HELMSLEY, a young scientific advisor to the president, and
informs him of the ominous developments. Helmsley attempts to
brief U.S. PRESIDENT WILSON on Satnam’s findings, but is
stopped by pompous White House chief of staff ANHEUSER, who
has it out for Helmsley.

From here, things move forward to 2010. By this time President
Wilson is aware of what is happening, and calls a private
meeting with seven other prominent world leaders at the G8
summit in Spain. What he has to tell them is that the world’s top
scientists have confirmed that the world will soon come to an
end. Meanwhile, in Tibet, the Chinese military displaces several
villages and begins working on what is supposedly a massive
dam-building project, Things jump forward another year to 2011
as more mysterious events unfold; a WEALTHY SAUDI
discusses an enigmatic dossier and one billion dollar
transaction with an MI-6 AGENT, and a group known as the World
Heritage Foundation, headed by President Wilson’s daughter
LAURA, is replacing priceless works of art such as the Mona Lisa
with replicas and taking the originals to storage facility in the Alps
for safekeeping.

Finally we reach the titular year 2012. By now, signs of impending
doom have been steadily accumulating. The west coast is beset
with so-called “mini quakes,” and fissures randomly appear in
the earth. Nevertheless, people are going about their daily lives
as usual, oblivious to the doom in store. We are introduced to
JACKSON CURTIS, chauffer and aspiring novelist, who is
rushing to pick up his two young children LILLY and NOAH from
ex-wife KATE’S house in Los Angeles so he can take them on a
camping trip in Yellowstone National Park. After a brief run-in
with Kate’s standard issue new man, Porshe-driving plastic
surgeon GORDON, the sort of happy trio is off on their camping
adventure. Next we meet elderly jazz musician HARRY,
conveniently enough the father of Adrian Helmsley, as he boards
a cruise ship in San Fransisco to provide the onboard
entertainment. As he tries in vain to convince bandmate TONY to
contact his estranged son in Japan, the ship is suddenly rocked
by an unexpected swell in the ocean. Back in Washington, Laura
Wilson receives a call from a distraught museum director in
France, who has just enough time to inform her that the World
Heritage Foundation is a sham before his car explodes. It seems
that he learned too much about the Foundation’s real purpose
and had to be silenced. Laura is horrified to discover that she has
been working for a front, and is further incensed when she
realizes that both Adrian and her father knew what was really
going on and didn’t tell her.

Meanwhile, Jackson and the kids arrive at Yellowstone to
discover that the military and teams of government scientists, led
by Adrian Helmsley, have taken over sections of the park for
reasons they cannot fully reveal. Jackson also encounters
crackpot radio host CHARLIE FROST, who believes that all signs
point to a major catastrophic event beginning in California,
spreading to Yellowstone, and eventually destroying the whole
world. Jackson is understandably dubious, but back in Los
Angeles the previously small fissures become massive, yawning
cracks in the earth.

It appears that things are progressing faster than anyone
anticipated, and we get our first inkling of what it is that world
leaders are planning to do about it; they, along with select wealthy
elite from across the globe, will board specially built ships that
can weather nature’s wrath. Everyone else will be left to perish
and the people from the ships will be left to rebuild civilization and
repopulate the planet. Basically, Noah’s Ark for the new
millennium.

Gordon and Kate narrowly avoid dying in a crevase in Los
Angeles, and Jackson and the children rush back to find them.
They arrive just in time to pick them up and escape as
earthquakes ravage the city. Against all logic they return to
Yellowstone to track down Charlie, who Jackson realizes was not
as much of a crackpot as he initially thought, and who may be
able to help them survive the rapidly approaching doomsday.
Once again their timing is impeccable, as they reach the park just
as it is turning into the world’s biggest active volcano. Our motley
but determined band of protagonists once again narrowly
escapes impending death, this time armed with details about the
Arks and a map to their location. What follows is a race against
time, earthquakes, dust clouds, and tsunamis as the various
groups of characters make their ways across the globe
(remember the displaced villagers building the dam in Tibet?
Well, guess what they were really building) to try and be among
the lucky few who are spared as the earth gets ready to flood Old
Testament style....

Read the most comprehensive view about the 2012 movie here.

From the Yucatan to Providence: Doom
Chaz Firestone
12 September 2008
Source: The Brown Daily Herald

Entering college, students are told that with enough effort they'll
make it out in one piece. But the class of 2012 may not be so
fortunate, at least according to Patrick Geryl. If he's right, the only
chance this year's freshmen have at survival is to chuck their
color-coded flash cards in favor of more practical measures:
$10,000, survival gear and a one-way ticket to the South African
Kingdom of Lesotho.

That's where Geryl, 53, and his growing group of survivalists plan to
be in four years - when he thinks the world will come to a
volcano-erupting, tidal-wave-crashing, nuclear-reactor-melting end.

Apocalypse now
Geryl is one of the world's best-known supporters of the increasingly
popular belief that a series of catastrophic events will befall the
Earth in 2012, a year supposedly pegged for doom millennia ago by
the ancient Maya civilization.

"It will be the single most destructive event in the history of the
human race," Geryl said from his home in Antwerp, Belgium.
"Everything will be gone."

On the agenda for the destruction of the world is a massive increase
in heat from the sun, a change in the spin of the Earth and the
eruption of volcanoes everywhere, the biggest of which will burst out
from beneath Yellowstone National Park's famous geyser, Old
Faithful. Geryl said the only livable place on Earth will be Africa,
since it is the only continent without a nuclear reactor.

Inspired by this "ancient calculation," Geryl left his oil company job
two years ago after having saved enough money to pay for six years
of food, 72 months of bills and an 11-page manifest of survival
items.

The now famous "survival list," which has made its way around
online discussion boards and blogs, covers everything an intrepid
survivalist will need, with a few extra amenities: food, shelter,
transportation, clothing, paragliders, wooden abacuses, catapults
and rechargeable batteries.

"We're going to build bunkers, bomb shelters with two meters of
ground overtop of them," Geryl said. "We'll need to rebuild all of
civilization after the catastrophe."

These concerns, which now attract millions of believers and Google
hits, can be traced back to ancient stone inscriptions found in a few
ruined Mesoamerican cities. The Maya are known for their cyclical
understanding of time, and believers in these "prophecies" say that
when the current millennium-long cycle comes to an end in 2012,
the result will be similar to the last time the cycle ended: destruction.
...
Doom for sale

Dennis McClung, 28, recently left his job and home to devote all of
his time and resources to 2012supplies.com, an online business
he runs with his wife. The Web site sells "everything you need to
survive 2012," including portable generators, gas masks and even a
full-body "nuclear biological chemical public safety suit" for $495.

McClung, who had previously worked at Home Depot for over a
decade, said the first thing that came to mind when he heard about
2012 was how much his employer had profited just over a decade
earlier.

"Back in '99, when everyone was scared of Y2K, I remember Home
Depot selling out of power generators," he said. "There wasn't really
one place to go for everything you needed if you wanted to survive."

McClung said his best-selling products are water-purifying tablets,
emergency medical supplies and ready-to-eat meals, "which is a bit
surprising since it's four years away," he said.

The young entrepreneur recently moved from Scotsdale, Ariz., to
Zanesville, Ohio, with his wife and two children. He said they plan to
purchase a small house and build a bomb shelter, relying on his
Web site for income.

McClung said he doesn't know what will happen in 2012 but that
he'd like to be prepared for anything.

"There are so many theories. I'm not a firm believer in any one," he
said. "But I want to be completely independent, self-reliant, off the
grid. Just building a structure is already a giant leap over what
everyone else will be doing." ...

Will the World End in 2012?
Thousands Worldwide Prepare
for the Apocalypse, Expected
in 2012
CHRISTINE BROUWER
3 July 2008
Source: ABC World News

Two years ago, Patrick Geryl, then 51,
quit his job as a laboratory worker for a
French oil company. He'd saved up just
enough money to last him until
December 2012. After that, he thought,
he wouldn't need it anyway.

Instead, Geryl, a soft-spoken man who
had studied chemistry in his younger
years, started preparing for the
apocalypse. He founded a "survival group" for like minded men and
women, aimed at living through the catastrophe he knew was
coming.

He started gathering materials necessary to survive — water
purifiers, wheelbarrows (with spare tires), dust masks and
vegetable seeds. His list of survival goods runs 11 pages long.

"You have to understand, there will be nothing, nothing left," Geryl
told ABC News from his home in Antwerp, Belgium. "We will have to
start an entire civilization from scratch."

That's because Geryl believes the world as we know it will end in
2012. He points to the ancient Mayan cyclical calendars, the longest
of which last renewed itself approximately 5,125 years ago
and is set to end again, supposedly with catastrophic
consequences, in 2012. He speaks of the ancient Egyptians, who,
he claims, saw 2012 as a year of great change too. And he points to
science: NASA predicts a sharp increase in the number of sunspots
and sun flares for 2012, he said, sure to cause electrical failures
and satellite disruptions.

All this adds up, Geryl said, to unprecedented catastrophe. First, a
polar reversal will cause the north to become the south and the sun
to rise in the west. Shattering earthquakes, massive tidal waves and
simultaneous volcanic eruptions will follow. Nuclear reactors will
melt, buildings will crumble, and a cloud of volcanic dust will block
out the sun for 40 years. Only the prepared will survive, Geryl said,
and not even all of them.

These may sound like the ravings of a madman, or perhaps the
head of a small apocalyptic sect. But Geryl is not the only one who
believes in the apocalypse. Thousands of people worldwide seem
to be preparing, in one way or another, for the end of days in 2012.
Survival groups exist in Europe, Canada and the United States. A
simple Google search for "2012" and "the end of the world" brings
up nearly 300,000 hits. And the video-sharing Web site YouTube
hosts more than 65,000 clips informing and warning viewers about
their fate in 2012.

"It's bigger than Y2K," said Mark van Stone, a specialist of Mayan
hieroglyphic writings and author of a forthcoming book on 2012.
"The year is like a pop song or a popular movie. You type in 2012,
and you get hundreds of thousands of hits."

Dennis McClung, 28, a project manager for Home Depot from
Phoenix, Ariz., runs one of the Web sites dedicated to 2012, an
online survival supply store (www.2012Supplies.com), which sells
gas masks, knife kits, bullet-proof vests and more.

"I'm not a firm believer in one specific prophecy," said McClung, who
runs his site with his wife, Danielle. "But I think we ought to be
prepared for anything."

Even with December 2012 still 4½ years away, McClung said
business is booming. His Web site, which features an "official 2012
countdown" clock and exhorts customers to "be smart, be ready,"
averages several thousand visitors a week. McClung's best-sellers,
he said, are emergency medical supplies and water purifiers.

"I get a lot of hits from India. I get a lot of hits from the Netherlands,"
McClung said. "But my No. 1 customer is the U.S."

One of those customers is Thomas Lehmann, a 25-year-old factory
worker from Cape Girardeau, Mo. Lehmann said he started
researching 2012 when he was 12 years old, and still spends about
two hours a day reading about the topic both online and in books.
He said he is saving money for survival gear.

"Whatever happens, I'm just trying to be prepared for it," Lehmann
said. "I'm just learning to be independent of the system. I mean
electricity, vehicles, alternate sources of energy. I'm learning to live
without gas, basically be self-reliant."

"If this stuff does happen," Lehmann said, adding, "I have a way to
eat. I can hunt, I can fish and I can purify water. I think it's people in
the big cities that need to be worried. People that can't provide for
themselves."

But for all the hype, there is little evidence the ancient Maya ever
intended for the end of their calendar to be read as a portent for
disaster.

"These prophecies of doom really don't have any basis in what we
know about the Maya," said Stephen Houston, a professor of
anthropology at Brown University and a specialist of Maya
hieroglyphic writing. "The Maya descriptions barely talk about this
event."

Instead, Houston said, the Maya saw their "long count" — the
longest of their cyclical calendars — coming to an end in 2012 but
also beginning anew on that date, without disastrous
consequences.

"Really, it's a conversion of people's anxieties about our times, and
finding some remote mythological precedent or prediction of it,"
Houston said about the origins of the current 2012 myths. "People
like to believe that ancient wisdom is somehow predicting this time
of upheaval."

John Hall, a professor of sociology at the University of California
Davis who is writing a book on the history of apocalyptic ideas,
agreed. He said movements predicting the end of the world often
reflect a much larger nervousness about the state of our society.

"Terrorism, 9/11, ecological disasters, floods and earthquakes,"
Hall said. "[There is] a sense that modern civilization has had its
run. Those kinds of anxieties are much more widely shared than
simply among people who believe in the exact date."

To Lehmann, though, those very events are warnings of what's to
come.

"We had Hurricane Katrina, the recent cyclone in Myanmar,"
Lehmann said. "We've got major flooding in Iowa. We're always
going to have natural disasters. But they are picking up quite
frequently now."

Lehmann said he eventually hoped to move away from Cape
Girardeau, built on the banks of the Mississippi River, to the higher
plains of southwest Missouri to keep safe from the floods sure to
follow the earthquakes of 2012.

Geryl and his Belgian and Dutch followers have similar intentions,
though their plan will take them much farther from home. They are
looking to buy a plot of land high up in African mountains, where
they'll be able to withstand the monstrous tidal waves and wait out
the cloud of volcanic dust that they said would block out the sun.

Geryl said the group has recently zeroed in on a location, but won't
reveal his find for fear of tipping off rival survival groups in the United
States and Canada. On that land, Geryl's group, whose core
membership consists of 16 people but whose wait list supposedly
lists hundreds, will build concrete dwellings or outfit caves for
survival.

After the cloud clears, Geryl said, they will attempt to create a new,
better civilization.

"A guiding principle will be to keep the world population as small as
possible so as not to get into the same problems we face now,"
Geryl said, adding that the group is currently looking for sponsors
and hopes to move to Africa in 2011. "There is too little oil, too little
grain in the world now. Those are the kinds of problems we want to
avoid."

One of the group's members, Jan, a 57-year-old carpenter from
Amsterdam whose name has been changed because he doesn't
want to be identified in the press, recently drove five hours to attend
one of Geryl's meetings in Antwerp.

"I thought, if there's a chance that we can start a new civilization, I
want to contribute," Jan told ABC News. "Because whether I make it
or not, and there's only a small chance I will, this is important."

Jan, who has never been married and has no children, said he has
lost friends over 2012.

"All the people I've ever told about this have declared me crazy," he
said. "It makes people feel uncomfortable. Now I just keep it to
myself."

Geryl said he found comfort in sharing his knowledge with others.
Since "discovering" what the future holds, he has written three
books on 2012 and maintains a Web site on the subject.

When asked what would happen if December 2012 were to come
and go without the earthquakes and tsunamis of his predictions,
Geryl fell silent.

"I don't really contemplate that possibility," he said. "[My predictions]
are so spectacular, they can't possibly be wrong."

Solar Storm Warning
Dr. Tony Phillips
10 Mar 2006
source: Nasa.gov

It's official: Solar minimum has
arrived. Sunspots have all but
vanished.
Solar flares are nonexistent. The sun is utterly quiet.

Like the quiet before a storm.

This week researchers announced that a storm is coming--the
most intense solar maximum in fifty years. The prediction comes
from a team led by Mausumi Dikpati of the National Center for
Atmospheric Research (NCAR). "The next sunspot cycle will be
30% to 50% stronger than the previous one," she says. If correct,
the years ahead could produce a burst of solar activity second
only to the historic Solar Max of 1958.

That was a solar maximum. The Space Age was just beginning:
Sputnik was launched in Oct. 1957 and Explorer 1 (the first US
satellite) in Jan. 1958. In 1958 you couldn't tell that a solar storm
was underway by looking at the bars on your cell phone; cell
phones didn't exist. Even so, people knew something big was
happening when Northern Lights were sighted three times in
Mexico. A similar maximum now would be noticed by its effect on
cell phones, GPS, weather satellites and many other modern
technologies.

Dikpati's prediction is unprecedented. In nearly-two centuries
since the 11-year sunspot cycle was discovered, scientists have
struggled to predict the size of future maxima—and failed. Solar
maxima can be intense, as in 1958, or barely detectable, as in
1805, obeying no obvious pattern.

The key to the mystery, Dikpati realized years ago, is a conveyor
belt on the sun.

We have something similar here on Earth—the Great Ocean
Conveyor Belt, popularized in the sci-fi movie The Day After
Tomorrow. It is a network of currents that carry water and heat
from ocean to ocean--see the diagram below. In the movie, the
Conveyor Belt stopped and threw the world's weather into chaos.

Above: Earth's "Great Ocean Conveyor Belt."

The sun's conveyor belt is a current, not of water, but of
electrically-conducting gas. It flows in a loop from the sun's
equator to the poles and back again. Just as the Great Ocean
Conveyor Belt controls weather on Earth, this solar conveyor belt
controls weather on the sun. Specifically, it controls the sunspot
cycle.

Solar physicist David Hathaway of the National Space Science &
Technology Center (NSSTC) explains: "First, remember what
sunspots are--tangled knots of magnetism generated by the
sun's inner dynamo. A typical sunspot exists for just a few weeks.
Then it decays, leaving behind a 'corpse' of weak magnetic fields."

Enter the conveyor belt.

"The top of the conveyor belt skims the surface of the sun,
sweeping up the magnetic fields of old, dead sunspots. The
'corpses' are dragged down at the poles to a depth of 200,000 km
where the sun's magnetic dynamo can amplify them. Once the
corpses (magnetic knots) are reincarnated (amplified), they
become buoyant and float back to the surface." Presto—new
sunspots!

The sun's great conveyor belt.

magnetic fields are being swept up, and that a future sunspot
cycle is going to be intense. This is a basis for forecasting: "The
belt was turning fast in 1986-1996," says Hathaway. "Old
magnetic fields swept up then should re-appear as big sunspots
in 2010-2011."

Like most experts in the field, Hathaway has confidence in the
conveyor belt model and agrees with Dikpati that the next solar
maximum should be a doozy. But he disagrees with one point.
Dikpati's forecast puts Solar Max at 2012. Hathaway believes it
will arrive sooner, in 2010 or 2011.

"History shows that big sunspot cycles 'ramp up' faster than
small ones," he says. "I expect to see the first sunspots of the
next cycle appear in late 2006 or 2007—and Solar Max to be
underway by 2010 or 2011."

Who's right? Time will tell. Either way, a storm is coming.

Load Up the Pantry
Brett Arends
21 April 08
source: Wall Street Journal

I don't want to alarm anybody,
but maybe it's time for
Americans to start stock-
piling food.

No, this is not a drill.

You've seen the TV footage of food riots in parts of the developing
world. Yes, they're a long way away from the U.S. But most
foodstuffs operate in a global market. When the cost of wheat
soars in Asia, it will do the same here.

Reality: Food prices are already rising here much faster than the
returns you are likely to get from keeping your money in a bank or
money-market fund. And there are very good reasons to believe
prices on the shelves are about to start rising a lot faster.

"Load up the pantry," says Manu Daftary, one of Wall Street's top
investors and the manager of the Quaker Strategic Growth mutual
fund. "I think prices are going higher. People are too complacent.
They think it isn't going to happen here. But I don't know how the
food companies can absorb higher costs." (Full disclosure: I am
an investor in Quaker Strategic)

Stocking up on food may not replace your long-term investments,
but it may make a sensible home for some of your shorter-term
cash. Do the math. If you keep your standby cash in a
money-market fund you'll be lucky to get a 2.5% interest rate.
Even the best one-year certificate of deposit you can find is only
going to pay you about 4.1%, according to Bankrate.com. And
those yields are before tax.

Meanwhile the most recent government data shows food inflation
for the average American household is now running at 4.5% a
year.

And some prices are rising even more quickly. The latest data
show cereal prices rising by more than 8% a year. Both flour and
rice are up more than 13%. Milk, cheese, bananas and even
peanut butter: They're all up by more than 10%. Eggs have
rocketed up 30% in a year. Ground beef prices are up 4.8% and
chicken by 5.4%.

These are trends that have been in place for some time.

And if you are hoping they will pass, here's the bad news: They
may actually accelerate.

The reason? The prices of many underlying raw materials have
risen much more quickly still. Wheat prices, for example, have
roughly tripled in the past three years.

Sooner or later, the food companies are going to have to pass
those costs on. Kraft saw its raw material costs soar by about
$1.25 billion last year, squeezing profit margins. The company
recently warned that higher prices are here to stay. Last month
the chief executive of General Mills, Kendall Powell, made a
similar point.

The main reason for rising prices, of course, is the surge in
demand from China and India. Hundreds of millions of people
are joining the middle class each year, and that means they want
to eat more and better food.

A secondary reason has been the growing demand for ethanol
as a fuel additive. That's soaking up some of the corn supply.

You can't easily stock up on perishables like eggs or milk. But
other products will keep. Among them: Dried pasta, rice, cereals,
and cans of everything from tuna fish to fruit and vegetables. The
kicker: You should also save money by buying them in bulk.

If this seems a stretch, ponder this: The emerging bull market in
agricultural products is following in the footsteps of oil. A few
years ago, many Americans hoped $2 gas was a temporary
spike. Now it's the rosy memory of a bygone age.

The good news is that it's easier to store Cap'n Crunch or cans of
Starkist in your home than it is to store lots of gasoline. Safer, too.

Honey bee crisis could lead to higher food prices
Stephanie S. Garlow
26 Jun 08
source: Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Food prices
could rise even more unless
the mysterious decline in
honey bees is solved, farmers
and businessmen told
lawmakers Thursday.

"No bees, no crops," North
Carolina grower Robert D.
Edwards told a House
Agriculture subcommittee. Edwards said he had to cut his
cucumber acreage in half because of the lack of bees available to
rent.

About three-quarters of flowering plants rely on birds, bees and
other pollinators to help them reproduce. Bee pollination is
responsible for $15 billion annually in crop value.

In 2006, beekeepers began reporting losing 30 percent to 90
percent of their hives. This phenomenon has become known as
Colony Collapse Disorder. Scientists do not know how many
bees have died; beekeepers have lost 36 percent of their
managed colonies this year. It was 31 percent for 2007, said
Edward B. Knipling, administrator of the Agriculture Department's
Agricultural Research Service.

"If there are no bees, there is no way for our nation's farmers to
continue to grow the high quality, nutritious foods our country
relies on," said Democratic Rep. Dennis Cardoza of California,
chairman of the horticulture and organic agriculture panel. "This
is a crisis we cannot afford to ignore."

Food prices have gone up 83 percent in three years, according to
the World Bank.

Edward R. Flanagan, who raises blueberries in Milbridge, Maine,
said he could be forced to increase prices tenfold or go out of
business without the beekeeping industry. "Every one of those
berries owes its existence to the crazy, neurotic dancing of a
honey bee from flower to flower," he said.

The cause behind the disorder remains unknown. Possible
explanations include pesticides; a new parasite or pathogen; and
the combination of immune-suppressing stresses such as poor
nutrition, limited or contaminated water supplies and the need to
move bees long distances for pollination.

Ice cream maker Haagen-Dazs and natural personal care
products company Burt's Bees have pledged money for research
and begun efforts to help save the bees.

The problem affects about 40 percent of Haagen-Dazs' 73 flavors,
including banana split and chocolate peanut butter, because
ingredients such as almonds, cherries and strawberries rely on
honey bees for pollination.

Katty Pien, brand director for Haagen-Dazs, said those
ingredients could become too scarce or expensive if bees keep
dying. It could force the company to discontinue some of its most
popular flavors, Pien said.

Haagen-Dazs has developed a new limited-time flavor, vanilla
honey bee, and will use some of the proceeds for research on
the disorder. Burt's Bees has introduced Colony Collapse
Disorder Lip Balm to "soften your lips while saving honeybees."

The House Appropriations Committee approved $780,000 on
Thursday for research on the disorder and $10 million for bee
research. The money awaits approval by the full House and
Senate.