The biggest threat facing the USA is probably NOT related to Al Qaeda, Islamic radicalism, Iranian nuclear weaponry, a second Banking meltdown, failure to stop oil spills in the Gulf, a comet on a collision course, our Earth crossing the hypothetical "galactic plane", Tea-baggers in Congress, or the other dire warnings that have appeared in the News recently.
However, there may be a true connection to the year 2012 - aside from most of the Mayan inspired nonsense (which is an almost guaranteed book-selling strategy). Solar cycle 24, due to peak around election time in November, or early in 2011 - looks like it's going to be one of the most intense cycles in modern times - at least since scientific solar record-keeping began almost 400 years ago . yet a few observers (and writers) are trying to stretch the exact date a little further out - till the end of 2012 - for reasons that probably relate to drama and commerce, more than to science. Here is NASA's take on the date: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2006/21dec_cycle24/ OK the next part of the story relates to "EMP". There is a periodic natural threat that has gone more or less unnoticed, and it has a fair statistical chance of arriving soon, but it could easily be sooner or later, depending on the accuracy of our information on solar cycles. EMP stands for electromagnetic pulse, and you may have thought that it only related to advanced military weaponry, which it does - but the larger threat may be both "natural" and imminent . http://www.energycentral.com/gridtandd/communicationsandsecurity/articles/21 06/EMP-A-Poorly-Understood-Threat/ HuffPo is running a piece about John Kappenman - an electrical engineer who is determined to save civilization from the mother of all blackouts. Over the past thirty years, Kappenman has accumulated a compelling body of evidence indicating that sooner or later a major blast of EMP (electromagnetic pulse) from the Sun, will knock out the electrical power grid and the secondary results can be surprisingly bleak. "Historically large storms have a potential to cause power grid blackouts and transformer damage of unprecedented proportions. An event that could incapacitate the network for a long time could be one of the largest natural disasters we could face." Kappenman insists that solar EMP blasts the size of those that occurred in 1859 (before society was electrified) and 1921 (before the power grid had developed to the point where it played any significant role) would today result in large-scale blackouts lasting for months or years. Apparently, there appears to be a marked similarity between the 1859 and 2012 solar cycles, which is kind of unrelated to the Mayan prophecy . or is it? One might imagine, with or without the help of pre-Columbian archaeology - that if a culture's religion and politics is built around "Temples of the Sun" . that this society might have understood a few things about solar cycles that we are just now coming to understand more fully. Or else one can try to conflate two unrelated stories in order to sell more books. Lawrence E. Joseph is the author of "Apocalypse 2012" and he will tell you about EMPs and much more, if you are into doom and gloom . but he probably wants you to trust the Mayan prophecy a little more than the version NASA has given us . http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-e-joseph/the-solar-katrina-storm-t_b_ 641354.html
