Evacuation Routes and Destinations
More Resources
Quick Links
Disaster MonitoringDirectory of Articles, Books, DVD's and Websites
Articles of Interest
"Sunspot Cycle vs. the Power Grid."
Severe Space Weather Events...Impacts (of a technological collapse...) Space Studies Board/National Academy of Sciences (January 2009)
"Imagining the Unthinkable" 2005 Pentagon study predicting potential worldwide impacts of global warming.
"A Future Space Weather Catastrophe: A Disturbing Possibility ". By Jeff Masters. WunderBlog 4/3/2009.
"7 Tipping Points That Could Transform Earth." Wired.com 12/23/09
"Global Warming Could Cool North America in a Few Decades?" National Geographic 9/14/09.
"Climate Change and Trace Gases." (PDF) Hansen, James, et al. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 2007
Methane gas articles. UC Santa Barbara
"Alarm Over Dramatic Weakening of Gulf Stream." Guardian, U.K. 12/ 01/05
"Multiple earthquakes rattle Yellowstone." Denver Post 1/3/09
"The Dangerous and Dynamic Thermal Springs in California’s Long Valley Caldera." U.S.G.S. Fact Sheet 2007
"Sun's protective 'bubble' is shrinking." Telegraph, U.K. 10/19/08
"Earth Magnetic Field Reversal." Pure Energy Systems News 2/27/05
"Polar Ice Melt Is Accelerating." BBC News. 12/08
"Arctic Ice Shelves Crumbling Rapidly in Canada." National Geographic 9/3/08
"Alarm Over Dramatic Weakening of Gulf Stream."
Why Gaia is wreaking revenge on man's abuse of the environment The Independent, U.K. 1/16/06
DVD's and TV Programs
History Channel "Seven Signs of the Apocalypse", "Global Warning," "Mt. Vesuvious", "Yellowstone"
BBC Documentary: "Supervolcano: The Truth about Yellowstone". (Here's a transcript via ABC News.)
Websites
Continuity of Government Commission
Disease Outbreak News
World Health Organization
Univ. of Wisconsin
Arctic Report Card
NOAA.
U.S. Geological Survey
Updated info on earthquakes, volcanoes, and other hot spots worldwide.
Yosemite Wilderness Guidelines
National Park Service
Urban Search and Rescue (US&R)
FEMA. See also: List of counties participating.
Volcanic ash/sulfur dioxide hazards
Earthquake Resources for People with disabilities
California DisasterPreparedness
Tornado Preparedness Guide.
NOAA
Recommended Books
Apocalypse 2012: A Scientific Investigation Into Civilization's End (2007) by Lawrence E. Joseph.
The Unthinkable - Who Survives When Disaster Strikes (2008) by Amanda Ripley
What Everyone Should Know About the Future of Our Planet: And What We Can Do About It (2008) by Bill McGuire.
The Revenge of Gaia (2006) by James Lovelock
When All Hell Breaks Loose: Stuff You Need To Survive When Disaster Strikes by Cody Lundin
The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook by Joshua Piven and David Borgenicht.
Crisis Preparedness Handbook: A Complete Guide by Jack A. Spigarelli
While numerous 2012-related prophecies point to cataclysmic events in the near future, the details remain murky. Climatologists and other experts keep revising their models, so no one knows for sure when or where the next mega-disaster may strike -- let alone if it will amount to a knock-out punch. Still, knowledge is power, so evaluating prospective scenarios can facilitate your planning for the future. Here's a brief overview of the science and speculation that's surfaced.
Threats by Land
Significant tectonic shifting like the 9.1 earthquake off Sumatra in 2004 is predicted by many scientists, now that polar ice melt is changing weight distribution around the planet. (We may be seeing evidence of this in the Haiti, Chile and Taiwan earthquakes of 2010.) So people who live near major fault lines, volcanoes and seacoasts may have more to worry about than others. Charles Hapgood’s theory of crustal displacement argues that sudden, massive movements of the Earth’s crust take place from time to time, an idea supported by some of the doomsday trackers. However, geologists insist the plates will continue to inch along like they always have.
USGS
And here’s another wrinkle to the story: Back in the seventies, Nobel laureate James Lovelock published The Gaia Hypothesis, which argues that the planet is equipped with a homeostatic mechanism for regulating its temperature, as if it were a living organism. (It was Lovelock’s warning about ozone depletion that prompted the worldwide ban on CFC aerosol products.) In 2006, he published The Revenge of Gaia, insisting that climate change will result in unprecedented geologic upheaval.
In the United States, two supervolcanoes are simmering under Yellowstone National Park and the Mammoth Lakes are of California. According to a recent segment of the History Channel's How the Earth was Made, Yellowstone has entered the red zone and could blow tomorrow -- no one really knows for sure. At the end of December 2008, activity inside the Yellowstone Caldera triggered a swarm of earthquakes that left geologists scratching their heads about their ability to accurately predict an eruption. In January of 2012, another swarm generated over 1700 earthquakes in a two-week period.
Yellowstone's subterranean caldera is 35 miles wide and 45 miles long. When it erupts, much of the central United States will experience pyroclastic flows, lahars (mud flows) and ash clouds. It will also likely effect weather around the world, possibly inducing a "nuclear winter".
Threat by Sea
In 2007, NASA’s chief atmospheric scientist James Hansen forecast rapid sea level rise of up to 25 meters during the 21st century. The relentless scourge of cyclones battering Bangladesh, the Gulf Coast and the Caribbean since 2005 may be just the prelude to bigger disasters to come. Since two-thirds of the world’s population live close to a seashore, the massive migrations that might follow a string of these episodes could overwhelm the ability of relief agencies to respond.
The second threat from the sea doesn't involve sea level but the circulation of ocean currents. As we learned in the film The Day After Tomorrow, the global climate is partially dependent on the circulation of the Gulf Stream and its counterparts in other parts of the world. Warm water near the equator travels along the streams towards both poles, and the cold water at the poles travels back towards the equator.
The problem here lies in the melting ice caps, which are dumping a huge volume of fresh water into the oceans. This changes the salinity of the sea, which keeps the colder water from sinking downward and flowing in the opposite direction of the warmer water on top. If the thermohaline circulation slows down or stops, it would cause the warm water in the tropics to get even warmer, and the cold water at higher latitudes to get colder.
Scientists theorize that this could generate a mini-ice age in northern Europe (like the one that happened in the Middle Ages), supercell hurricanes in the tropics, drought and wildfires, and the release of deadly methane gases now frozen beneath the ocean floor near the poles. There's also talk of a possible mass die-off of plankton, which could trigger a domino effect through the food chain.
The third threat from the sea is related to earthquakes. When a quake of 7.0 or higher happens beneath the ocean floor, it usually generates a tsunami. As we saw in 2004, waves up to fifty feet high can penetrate far inland and destroy everything in their path. Comet strikes are also thought to have caused massive flooding and loss of life in the past, not only for the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, but around 2800 B.C. in the Indian Ocean as well.
In the Hollywood movie 2012, the destabilization of the Earth's crust created mega-tsunamis around the world that reached as high as Mount Everest. This scenario was speculative at best. The cause of the Great Flood described in ancient legends remains an unsolved mystery.
Threats from Space
The current sunspot cycle is expected to peak in 2012, and solar physicists fret about larger than normal solar flares pelting the atmosphere. The flares usually take two days to arrive, but one in 2006 traveled here in less than half an hour. Because of the potential for knocking out power grids and satellites, space agencies need the advance warning to alert grid operators and satellite controllers, so the equipment and transmission lines can be quickly powered down.
In February 2010, NASA sent up yet another space probe, the Solar Dynamics telescope, hoping to stay ahead of this potential threat. As mentioned in other sections of this guide, cascading failures from hundreds of thousands of pole transformers could take years to fix. The impact of radiation or UV rays on humans is a second area of concern. (Contingency of Government personnel are always stationed underground in the event of a nuclear attack or signifcant space weather event incapacitates the United States.)
If the Sun's radiation weren't worrisome enough, noted Russian astrophysicist Alexey Dmitriev is adamant in his belief that the solar system is entering an interstellar radiation cloud. So far, satellites monitoring the border of the heliosphere and interstellar space have not detected any looming threats but a Voyager 2 probe recently stumbled upon one of these clouds at the border of the heliosphere.
All of this is taking place, incidentally, at a time when the Earth's magnetic field is dwindling. Although hardly reported outside science circles, a north-south shift of the earth's magnetic poles (a.k.a. a field effect reversal) appears to be in the works. One of the precursors of this shift is a steep drop in magnetism. The magnetic field blocks harmful UVA radiation and corona mass ejections (i.e. solar flares).
As for where the danger is greatest, habitats nearer the equator might logically be considered most vulnerable, since they receive a heavier dose of direct sunlight than latitudes closer to the poles. However, the Earth's magnetic fields are measurably weaker at the poles and in parts of the South Atlantic, which suggests that it's those latitudes where UV rays and radiation from space may do the most damage.
Climate predictions for 21st century from the Pentagon study, "Imagining the Unthinkable". The authors said there was insufficient data available to predict the impact of global warming on the southern hemisphere. It's worth noting that Australia has been experiencing a drought over the last several years. The western coasts of North and South America are part of the Ring of Fire and expected to see considerable geologic upheaval in the coming decades.
High-Altitude Evacuation
Some doomsday websites, citing the Great Flood, recommend evacuating to the highest places on Earth. Earth-based cataclysms are likely to trigger chemical and sewage spills, radiation leaks at nuclear facilities, and other toxic discharges that can poison the land, air and water table up to about 3000 feet in altitude. Climbing out of harm's way, therefore, may be the most sensible plan.
Other doomsday trackers argue that since the second epistle of Peter says the Earth will be destroyed this time by fire from the heavens, the higher locales may be more dangerous. Fire could take the form of volcanic eruptions as well as space radiation and nuclear attacks.
Evacuating to a mountaintop retreat is easier said than done, in any case. The legendary Hindu Kush along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, for instance, is controlled by fundamentalist Islamic military forces. Tibet is occupied by China, while Nepal has spent the last decade in the throes of its own civil war. In South America, the Shining Path guerrillas and Columbian kidnappers are known to be roaming around the Andes and other high-altitude locales.
The Alps, meanwhile, are crumbling fast, according to geologists. The massive mudslides make parts of that mountain chain extremely dangerous. In the United States, federal and state government agencies regulate the public's access to the Rockies, Sierras, and other mountains. As for polar refuges like the Alaskan and Canadian wilderness, the higher latitudes present food supply challenges which even an Eskimo might found challenging. It remains difficult to predict how global warming and any subsequent change of the Pacific Ocean will affect western North America.
In defense of the high-altitude haven, staying put at lower altitudes - where the planet is plagued by drought, flooding and hurricanes - doesn't make much sense, either. It goes without saying that a rogue nuclear missile is more likely to strike a major population center than a remote mountain chain. Drawing from our experience in the Dark Ages, a disease epidemic would also least affect people living above the fray.
Ethiopia and other Foreign Refuges
Some 2012 survivalists are said to be eyeing Ethiopia as a possible refuge. Yet this idea has its drawbacks. Shortly after Katrina in 2005, and following a week of X-class solar flares, an earthquake opened up a 37-mile-long gorge, 13 feet wide in Boina. The city is 270 miles northeast of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's capitol. Geophysicists have since declared this spot the beginning of a new ocean, which makes it hardly the kind of place to be putting down roots.
Of course, Ethiopia is a big country. There may also be other parts of Africa that could weather well through a period of climate stability. Regardless, when investigating any foreign country as a potential refuge, it's important to do your homework. Check out the climate, presence of diseases (especially Malaria), political unrest, proximity to fault lines and volcanoes, availability of drinking water, cultural issues, plants and other food sources. Some of the information you need should be availabe in the CIA factbook and at the U.S. State Department website - travel advisories section.
Flexible Planning Approach
While nobody knows exactly what the future will bring, it's still possible to identify a range of possible destinations using the process of elimination. Based on the discussion above, places that should probably be avoided include:
- seacoasts (unless there's quick access to a higher elevation)
- land with major fault lines running underneath
- within a hundred miles of a volcano or tectonic plate boundary.
- Northern Europe (possible mini-ice age forecast)
- densely populated areas (i.e. pandemic and nuclear targets)
- within fifty miles of a potential migration route for evacuees
- any terrain, altitude or climate unsustainable for farming, foraging, hunting or fishing
- areas absent waterways, underground springs and/or significant rainfall
- countries that are politically unstable or rife with diseases like malaria
- altitudes below 3000 feet if industrialized areas are present
- areas relatively close to the poles or adjacent to the South Atlantic hole in the magnetic field
Intuition Trumps Logic Approach
If we are to believe the scriptures and legends from cultures around the world, the survivors of an apocalypse are not people gifted with actuarial skills, but rather those who best maintain a spiritual connection with the heavens. It seems that a higher power has directed evacuations during past cataclysms on Earth. That's why the decision about where to go and what to do may be a matter requiring far less logic and a lot more faith. See our section on Spirituality for more on this aspect of 2012 preparation.
---
Copyright 2009-2010 TheCityEdition.com
