As the new year beings it is not just the time to draw the line under the previous one, but is also a great moment for making predictions. Throughout centuries there’s been all sorts of prophets that would seek to warn those around them by using the mind of a gifted. However, there has always been enough of those who would dismiss any warning by calling it untrustworthy or even heretical.
However, prophets were not the only ones to make predictions, as there are people in any government that are tasked by the ruling authorities to make all sorts of forecasts in order to those who are getting frustrated with the rich and powerful. This has always been particularly true for the United States, where apocalyptic visions are used to make political miscalculations to look less damning than they really are. Such predictions were pretty commonplace during the Vietnam War, the Caribbean crisis or in times of financial crises that would leave American population hungry for justice. That is how the impending “doomsday” has become an integral part of the American political tradition.
As for other countries, you will be surprised how many prophecies are being made all across the world every year both political and apolitical in their nature. It is not surprising though that a considerable number of them is connected with the United States, as Washington’s foreign policy has made people across the world tired of constant wars and provocations, when countless innocent deaths remain both uninvestigated and unavenged. Anti-American sentiments are growing everywhere, just like predictions about various plagues striking the US in the nearest future, as in many countries a waiting for some sort of tsunami to come and change the international political climate forever.
However, if with such predictions are being willingly dismissed in Washington as the deep state is going to greedily cling to power even if the earth gives way, one cannot as easily dismiss those forecasts that based on scientific assessments.
It’s curious that American population is often deprived of the right to get access to such assessments even though some of them are becoming reality pretty rapidly, with especially those that touch upon the probability of natural calamities in the US and Europe along with the factors that trigger those. Just recently a number of European cities has been obliterated by hurricanes and typhoons with the wind getting so strong that it can rip houses apart, leaving hundreds of dead and injured. At the same time, all the way across the Atlantic both the US and Canada are getting chilled by snowstorms, with certain regions of the US getting covered in ice. During that period the number of reported accidents increased tenfold. For example, South Carolina where a typical winter resembles a mild spring got all covered in snow, while the state capital of Florida – Tallahassee he hasn’t seen any of it for 30 years in a row!
However, weather anomalies are not the only reason for Americans to get concerned, as a group of researchers from the University of Texas believes that the northwest of the United States is threatened by an earthquake that will lead to devastating consequences. According to the Daily Express, the study that they drafted warns us that earthquakes in the this region happen roughly every 200 to 530 years and the last one occurred 317 years ago, meaning another earthquake could be imminent. Researchers have found that seafloor sediments in the Cascadia Subduction Zone in the Northwest of the country enhance the rise of the natural disasters. Shuoshuo Han told the Daily Express that his group observed compact sediments offshore of Washington and northern Oregon that could support earthquake rupture over a long distance and close to the trench, which would increase both earthquake and tsunami hazards.
There’s scientists who believe that variations in the speed of Earth’s rotation can trigger intense seismic activity over the course of this year, particularly in heavily populated tropical regions. There’s been two major earthquake registered near New Caledonia’s shores last year. Should such earthquakes occur this year they can as easily trigger devastating far-reaching tsunamis.
Even the NASA is convinced that seismic activity represents a major threat as the Yellowstone Supervolcano can easily trigger rapid climate changes processes should if it starts erupting in the foreseeable future. According to NASA, this threat is far more real and much scarier than Earth’s collision with an asteroid. Those who study those types of volcanoes say that their eruptions lead to massive famine, as sun is usually covered by clouds of ash for days without end.
Let us recall for a moment that an eruption of the super volcano located on the site of the present-day Yellowstone Park some 600,000 years ago filled the atmosphere with hundreds of cubic miles of lava and ash, triggering the Ice Age and universal famine. According to estimates made by the UN in 2012, the mankind will have enough food for survive for 74 days in such an event.
As for the seismic hazard for the US, American scientists have been talking for months about the direct connection between an abrupt increase in seismic activity registered in the immediate vicinity of the sites where hydraulic fracturing is used to produce shale oil and gas, but a number of activists believe that the so-called fracking can trigger massive earthquakes. The University of Oklahoma would do everything it could to keep the data received by its scientists about the direct connection between fracking and earthquakes concealed from the general public. Oklahoma, where only 639 earthquakes occurred in 2016, is one of the most vivid examples of the way fracking produces a spike of seismic activity in certain regions of the world. Environmentalists have sounded alarm about it a long time ago, but American authorities are reluctant to do anything about it.
It’s unlikely that American oligarchs will get concerned about the dangers of an abrupt increase in seismic activities it, but the people of the US can still listen to the words of reason voiced by seismologists, before it’s too late.
Grete Mautner is an independent researcher and journalist from Germany, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”
