2012Newsletter.com :: Latest News about the possible End of Times in 2012

2012: the best of times
or the end of time
By: Keren Clark
February 2009
Source: RoughWriter.yc.edu/

December 21, 2012.
This date is familiar to many and may be new to some but it has
now erupted into mainstream culture with a vengeance, which is
how many see its significance.
For others, Solstice 2012 brings thoughts of hope and even of
redemption for humanity and our planet.
Articles pertaining to 2012 are not limited to new age publications.
Generally respected newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times
and The Times Herald in the United States as well as England’s
Daily Record and Telegraph newspapers have been following
events leading up to “The End of Days.” Mainstream media
organizations such as ABC News, MSNBC and Fox News have
aired news stories.
A Yahoo search for “2012” yields 568 million results. The History
Channel launched its first full week of new programming for 2009
with a series entitled Armageddon Week, focused on the predictions
for this portentous year.
Dennis McClung, 29-year-old co-founder of 2012Supplies.com,
says, “2012 has really taken off right now in terms of the media and
popular culture. When we first started the website a lot of people
hadn’t heard of 2012.....”
Read the full story here.

Is Dan Brown's Next
Book About 2012?
By: Robert Dougherty
21 April 2009
Source: A ssociatedContent.com

Dan Brown and his book are
synonymous with lost symbols
and religious conspiracies.
Brown has only written a few
books, but it helps that they were
among the most controversial
best sellers of this era.
Apparently, Brown has one more
book like that in him, as The Lost
Symbol is set to be released in the fall. In the tradition of The Da
Vinci Code and Angels and Demons, The Lost Symbol is bringing
Robert Langdon back for another puzzle to solve.
Dan Brown's third book in the Langdon series will be released on
September 15, with 5 million initial copies ready for release. What is
the major conspiracy that the Church is covering up in this latest
Brown/Langdon book? No advance word is out on that yet.
From the teaser, The Lost Symbol may be half of 24, as it promises
to follow 12 hours in the life of Professor Langdon, as he solves
another puzzle in record time. There is speculation that The Lost
Symbol could capitalize on the lead up to the Mayan end of the world
predictions in 2012.....
Read the Full story here.

Beware surfers:
Cyberspace is filling up
By: John Harlow
26 April 2009
Source: The Sunday Times

Internet users face regular “brownouts” that will freeze their
computers as capacity runs out in cyberspace, according to
research to be published later this year.
Experts predict that consumer demand, already growing at 60 per
cent a year, will start to exceed supply from as early as next year
because of more people working online and the soaring popularity
of bandwidth-hungry websites such as YouTube and services such
as the BBC’s iPlayer.
It will initially lead to computers being disrupted and going offline for
several minutes at a time. From 2012, however, PCs and laptops
are likely to operate at a much reduced speed, rendering the internet
an “unreliable toy”.
When Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the British scientist, wrote the code that
transformed a private computer network into the world wide web in
1989, the internet appeared to be a limitless resource. However, a
report being compiled by Nemertes Research, a respected
American think-tank, will warn... Read the Full story here.

Multiple tiny earthquakes rattle
Yellowstone. Could the big one
be far behind?
By: David Biello
30 December 2008
Source: ScientificAmerican.com

Any disaster fiend will tell you that
Yellowstone National Park is long
overdue for a monster eruption that
could leave as much as half the U.S.
under a blanket of ash. And there are
rumblings the big one could be
imminent in the wake of a series of
30-plus mini-earthquakes in the park
over the past few days—too weak to be
felt by humans for the most part but
picked up by the seismometers at the
University of Utah.

After all, the geologic record shows that the giant caldera we
affectionately call Yellowstone has blown every 600,000 years or so
over the past 2 million years. The last big eruption? About 640,000
years ago when the park spit out about 240 cubic miles worth of
rock, dirt, magma and other stuff.

But don't panic yet. Although the earthquake swarm continues,
according to the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, the volcano alert
level remains normal. And a slew of larger earthquakes have
occurred throughout the western U.S., Alaska, Puerto Rico and even
Pennsylvania in the past week without incident, according to the U.S.
Geological Survey.

In recent years, Yellowstone's caldera has been rising thanks to
uplifting magma beneath it—leading to more cracks, hot springs
and even more frequent eruptions of Steamboat Geysers. Paired
with the earthquakes, such magma movement might presage an
eruption—either big or small. Unfortunately, scientists can't really
predict when the next such eruption will happen, and the range of
possibilities is large: from later today to a million years from now.

How will we know if we should start worrying? The real warning
signs will be rapid changes in the shape of the ground as well as
volcanic gases leaking from the ground, neither of which have been
sighted—yet.

"Eruptions are far enough apart that there is a very low probability of
the next eruption happening in our lifetimes or anytime soon,"
Daniel Dzurisin of the USGS told me in 2006. "The flipside is:
[Yellowstone] has been active for millions of years and it's going to
erupt again sometime."

Celente Predicts Revolution, Food Riots, Tax
Rebellions By 2012
DarthDubious's Blog
undated
Source: TheCitizen.com

Trend forecaster, renowned for being
accurate in the past, says that America
will cease to be a developed nation within
4 years, crisis will be "worse than the great
depression"

The man who predicted the 1987 stock
market crash and the fall of the Soviet
Union is now forecasting revolution in
America, food riots and tax rebellions - all
within four years, while cautioning that
putting food on the table will be a more
pressing concern than buying Christmas
gifts by 2012.

Gerald Celente, the CEO of Trends
Research Institute, is renowned for his
accuracy in predicting future world and
economic events, which will send a chill
down your spine considering what he told Fox News this week.

Celente says that by 2012 America will become an undeveloped
nation, that there will be a revolution marked by food riots, squatter
rebellions, tax revolts and job marches, and that holidays will be
more about obtaining food, not gifts.
Read the entire article and watch the actual video here.

Scientists find hole in Earth's magnetic field
17 December 08
source: AP News

LOS ANGELES – Recent
satellite observations have
revealed the largest
breach yet seen in the
magnetic field that protects
Earth from most of the
sun's violent blasts,
researchers reported
Tuesday. The discovery
was made last summer
by Themis, a fleet of five small NASA satellites.

Scientists have long known that the Earth's magnetic field, which
guards against severe space weather, is similar to a drafty old
house that sometimes lets in violent eruptions of charged
particles from the sun. Such a breach can cause brilliant auroras
or disrupt satellite and ground communications.

Observations from Themis show the Earth's magnetic field
occasionally develops two cracks, allowing solar wind — a
stream of charged particles spewing from the sun at 1 million
mph — to penetrate the Earth's upper atmosphere.

Last summer, Themis calculated a layer of solar particles to be at
least 4,000 miles thick in the outermost part of the Earth's
magnetosphere, the largest tear of the protective shield found so
far.

"It was growing rather fast," Themis scientist Marit Oieroset of the
University of California, Berkeley told an American Geophysical
Union meeting in San Francisco.

Such breaches are temporary, and the one observed last year
lasted about an hour, Oieroset said.

Solar flares are a potential danger to astronauts in orbit but
generally are not a risk to people on the surface of the Earth.

The research was funded by NASA and the National Science
Foundation.

Scientists initially believed the greatest solar breach occured
when the Earth's and sun's magnetic fields are pointed in
opposite directions. But data from Themis found the opposite to
be true. Twenty times more solar wind passed into the Earth's
protective shield when the magnetic fields were aligned, Oieroset
said.

The Themis results could have bearing on how scientists predict
the severity of solar storms and their effects on power grids,
airline and military communications and satellite signals.

The Themis satellites were launched to find the source of brief
powerful geomagnetic disturbances in the Earth's atmosphere.

Tonights show we have Dennis McClung
as a special guest. Mr McClung Originated
and runs the website 2012Supplies.com
This website not only sells products to help
during the coming chaos, but has a vast
amount of information about all the different
society's and peoples and groups that have
spoken of and predicted the changes we
are experiencing right now. From the
Mayans to the Hindus, to astronomy and
NASA, and to the Christians and the
Sumerian's. There is plenty of food for
thought at his website. Please join authors
of the book "A Guide for Spiritual
Awareness for 2012" as they discuss
spirituality and preparation for the changes
occurring now and culminating in 2012.
Everyone is welcome to voice their
feedback, concerns, comments and
questions. Please tune in, call in and help
us have a great show filled with increased
awareness. Thanks J & M

The second part of the event continued at the Beatrice Friedman
Symphony Center and featured the angelic music of Lara Jai.
William Henry was the first speaker and he explained his unique
theory about 2012 and stargates/wormholes. John Major Jenkins
spoke next about the Mayan Long Count Calendar in relation to the
Galactic Alignment in 2012. Robert Sitler continued and spoke about
the indigenous Mayan interpretation of 2012. It was refreshing to
hear a Mayan viewpoint of 2012. Daniel Pinchbeck was the last
speaker and he focused on the Shamanic side of 2012. The
speakers finished the second part of the conference with a Q&A with
the audience.

Overall, it was an intimate 2012 conference with much audience
participation and book signing. It was a great way for the public to
get to view an unreleased 2012 movie, get meet some of the
leading 2012 researchers, and learn about 2012 and what the date
December 21, 2012 means to many. 2012Supplies.com would like
to thank Larraine Tennison for putting together a great 2012
conference. 2012Supplies.com was pleased to be in attendance
and looks forward to future 2012 events from GoldenGyre
Productions .

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." ...

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.

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.
Read the rest off the 2012 movie plot along with other 2012
movie information here.

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."
Read the full article here.

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.

'Doomsday' vault design unveiled
By Mark Kinver
09 February 07
source: BBC News

The final design for a
"doomsday" vault that
will house seeds from all
known varieties of food
crops has been unveiled
by the Norwegian
government.

The Svalbard International Seed Vault will be built into a
mountainside on a remote island near the North Pole.

The vault aims to safeguard the world's agriculture from future
catastrophes, such as nuclear war, asteroid strikes and climate
change.

Construction begins in March, and the seed bank is scheduled to
open in 2008.

The Norwegian government is paying the $5m (£2.5m)
construction costs of the vault, which will have enough space to
house three million seed samples.

The collection and maintenance of the collection is being
organised by the Global Crop Diversity Trust, which has
responsibility of ensuring the "conservation of crop diversity in
perpetuity".

"We want a safety net because we do not want to take too many
chances with crop biodiversity," said Cary Fowler, the Trust's
executive director.

"Can you imagine an effective, efficient, sustainable response to
climate change, water shortages, food security issues without
what is going to go in the vault - it is the raw material of
agriculture."

Future proof

The seed vault will be built
120m (364ft) inside a
mountain on Spitsbergen,
one of four islands that make
up Svalbard.

Dr Fowler said Svalbard,
1,000km (621 miles) north of
mainland Norway, was
chosen as the location for the
vault because it was very
remote and it also offered
the level of stability required
for the long-term project.

"We looked very far into the future. We looked at radiation levels
inside the mountain, and we looked at the area's geological
structure," he told BBC News.

"We also modelled climate change in a drastic form 200 years
into future, which included the melting of ice sheets at the North
and South Poles, and Greenland, to make sure that this site was
above the resulting water level."

By building the vault deep inside the mountain, the surrounding
permafrost would continue to provide natural refrigeration if the
mechanical system failed, explained Dr Fowler.

'Living Fort Knox'

The Arctic vault will act as a back-up store for a global network of
seed banks financially supported by the trust.

Dr Fowler said that a proportion of the seeds housed at these
banks would be deposited at Svalbard, which will act as a "living
Fort Knox".

Although the vault was designed to protect the specimens from
catastrophic events, he added that it could also be used to
replenish national seed banks.

"One example happened in September when a typhoon ripped
through the Philippines and destroyed its seed bank," Dr Fowler
recalled.

"The storm brought two feet of water and mud into the bank, and
that is the last thing you want in a seed bank."

Low maintenance

Once inside the vault, the samples will be stored at -18C (0F).
The length of time that seeds kept in a frozen state maintain their
ability to germinate depends on the species.

Freshwater ice (Image: P.Vermeij/Crop Diversity Trust)
The Arctic conditions will help keep the seeds in a frozen state
Some crops, such as peas, may only survive for 20-30 years.
Others, such as sunflowers and grain crops, are understood to
last for many decades or even hundreds of years.

Once the collection has been established at Svalbard, Dr Fowler
said the facility would operate with very little human intervention.

"Somebody will go up there once every year to physically check
inside to see that everything is OK, but there will be no full-time
staff," he explained.

"If you design a facility to be used in worst-case scenarios, then
you cannot actually have too much dependency on human
beings."

Nostradamus: 2012

Source: HistoryChannel.com
Originally Airs:
January 4th, 2009
9:00 PM ET / PT
Nostradamus: 2012
In 2012, a rare and possibly Earth-shattering astrological alignment
is due to occur that will precipitate a cataclysmic event. Whatever is
in store a massive cosmic collision, a global environmental
disaster, an Armageddon-like religious showdown, or a more subtle
transformation there have been multiple predictions from different
times and cultures that December 21, 2012 will mark a major shift
in the history of our planet. This explosive two-hour special seeks
answers to key critical questions that may loom in just four years: Is
there any modern scientific proof that such an alignment will indeed
happen? Is any other compelling evidence throughout history that
2012 will be a year of unprecedented, even deadly, upheaval? We'll
look for the parallels between the nightmarish daily headlines and
the 2012 prophecies from Nostradamus and others.
Read more about Nostradamus and 2012 here.
Watch Nostradamus 2012 videos here.