In Chapter Five, titled The Science of Apocalypse, Bruce tackles the pronouncements of another video participant, Lawrence Joseph, author of Apocalypse 2012 (which is forebodingly subtitled: A Scientific Investigation into Civilization's End).
Bruce evidently is a little sceptical about that word scientific since she conducts her own independent study into the likelihood of our befalling certain of the enumerated fates. However, at a minimum she does concede that they are a "good sampling of the classic concerns that have come to be associated with the 2012 meme."
After an extensive search of the scientific literature relevant to Joseph's "selection of apocalypses" she declares that "some are legitimate, others aren't"......and some fall in between.
In considering mass extinctions, either due to cosmic events or man's tinkering with nature, she cites a National Academy of Science assertion that we may well lose five million of today's ten million species by the end of the century.........but not by the end of 2012.
Coronal mass ejections (CME's) which occasionally streak out from the sun's surface are another matter altogether. They can play serious havoc with power lines, substations and satellites. The last really big one was the Carrington event of 1859. That one messed up the telegraph systems of the day but a similar event now could be truly catastrophic since, "...our civilization's complete dependency on a functioning power grid does leave us totally vulnerable should the grid suffer a protracted failure."
A NASA-funded National Academies of Science report published in 2008 concluded that "...the prospect of an extended power outage due to cascading failures is real and quite dire...." Depending on the extent of the physical damage it could take weeks, months or even years to get the power system back on-line.
Think about the consequences of that. It could mean the almost total collapse of the global economy; severe impacts on our financial, transportation, communication, water, sewage and health care systems; and disruption of food production, processing and distribution systems. This would lead almost inevitably to a breakdown in public order, a curtailment of public services, and possibly even the eruption of armed conflict over increasingly scarce resources. And we are heading into a period of increased solar activity, possibly peaking in late 2012.
To make matters worse, it has been recently determined that the earth's magnetosphere, "the bubble of magnetism that surrounds Earth and protects us from...the solar wind," has not only been weakening over time but has developed "...a big, gaping hole" that is "...ten times larger than anything previously thought to exist."
Food for thought.
Bruce also puts in her two cents regarding such potentially calamitous events as an eruption of the Yellowstone caldera supervolcano (see map below), a shifting of the poles, asteroid impacts, earth crustal displacement, gamma ray bursts, the return of Zecharia Sitchen's planet Nibiru, and the entrance of earth into an "energetically hostile" sector of the galaxy.
(Note, if you take such dire possibilities seriously enough to consider acting on them, then Joseph's most recent work, AFTERMATH: A Guide to Preparing For and Surviving Apocalypse 2012 , might be just the ticket for you.)
On a more positive note, there is an excerpt lifted from Daniel Pinchbeck's on-screen interview in which he talks about the role of crop circles in all of this. A long-term researcher in the field reportedly told him that he was convinced that the circles were "...predicting or projecting a kind of dimensional shift...[that] was going to complete itself in the year 2012."
Pinchbeck goes on to note that more and more of the crop circles have featured Aztec and Mayan imagery. He is convinced that they are the work of some kind of "galactic intelligence" that is trying to communicate with us.
The question is, what are they trying to say?
Continuing in a positive vein, Bruce touches on Alberto Villoldo's work with Peruvian shamans who have a message of optimism regarding a "'quantum leap' into [a] new form of humanity." She also refers to various mechanisms of ascension and to Sri Aurobindo's concept of an emerging new type of human being capable of accessing a "supermind." Ervin Laszlo is predicting a "chaos point," to be reached on or about 2012, which will serve as a gateway to a different (hopefully better) world.
And then there is the 1947 work of Jean Gebser which envisions a transition from our current "Mental structure" to what he calls (predating Ken Wilber) "the Integral structure of consciousness....a four-dimensional...world of transparency, where we see through things and perceive their true nature."
In closing Bruce notes, quite correctly I believe, that:
...the 2012 meme has evolved beyond any debates about the relevance of the Maya Long Count calendar....
She goes on to say that:
2012 encapsulates the growing sense of urgency about the unsustainability of our current way of life on many levels, not the least of which are the psychological and the spiritual....with every one of us awakening to the immanence that's all around us and within us...recognizing the sacredness of our beautiful planet and of life, itself.
And, drawing on Graham Hancock's on-camera interview:
I...see a new birth of human consciousness underway....the possibility that all of us are going to be looking at the mystery and meaning of life in a very different way, very soon and that date, 21st of December 2012, sticks in my mind as one that it is really worthy of consideration.
