Apocalypse 2012: 3 1/2 Star rating

TERMINAL ESCHATOLOGY: THE END OF THE "END TIMES"?, January 26, 2007

Reviewer:

RBSProds "RBS" (Deep in the heart of Texas) -

Three and a half ENGROSSING Stars!!!
In "Apocalpse 2012", scientific investigator Lawrence E. Joseph makes it clear in the introduction that he believes in God and is not "New Agey". And he spends a considerable amount of time laying a scientific 'cause for concern' about the future of the Earth and the Solar System. I had anticipated only a laundry list of calamities awaiting us in 2012. Instead what I got in the beginning of the book can only be described as a "creep fest". He initially proposes some things so creepy it actually made my skin crawl. It's bad enough thinking of natural disasters awaiting us in the future in the form of explosions of Mount St Helens or Monteserrat, or another Hurricane Katrina or tsunami, but what if we cause it ourselves"?

The author tells us the physical scenario of 2007 is unsettling: the sun is in an atypically turbulent period of activity with the next solar upheaval due in 2012; the solar system's very movement through space may be endangering it; "California-sized cracks have inexplicably opened up in the Earth's magnetic field", the Yellowstone supervolcano "is preparing to erupt", threatening nuclear winter; and that we are overdue for a gigantic cataclysm that regularly reduces the population of Earth's species by at least half. And he's just warming up with these topics. But the prophesying is based on other more earthly factors.

Not one to be an armchair analyst, Mr Joseph has actually been to Guatemala and talked with a Mayan priest about the calendars (yes, there's more than one) and taken part in rituals, he's been to South Africa's Hermanus Magnetic Observatory to investigate the data on the magnetic cracks, Durango Colorado's SORCE solar conference, and many other places: along the way talking to everyone from scientists to shamans to validated psychics. The scientific data alone amassed on earthquakes, sun activity, hurricanes, and such is impressive and fascinating and makes this book a worthwhile, engrossing read just to get at those particular parts. And then there are interesting things like the Shiva hypothesis. It's his conclusions that are somewhat suspect, but he's welcome to his opinions and he may be right in the end. If only one of these predictions comes true, it could be "lights out" for mankind.

And the book does give us warnings and information that you won't read or hear about in very many other places. Beyond this, despite what the Mayan calendar says and if nature doesn't strike first, ironically we may be ONE KEY FATAL MISTAKE away from destroying life on planet Earth OURSELVES by our actions or inactions.

Highly recommended for the scientific parts of the book which are absolutely RIVETING. "BE SAFE", indeed. Three and a half ENGROSSING Stars

(Note: this review of based on an eBook digital download of 424 pages, within which 37 pages are notes, references, and additional information.)

5 star rating for Apocalypse2012

***** Factual Yet Funny But Mostly ... Frightening *****, January 23, 2007 Reviewer: John Jay Harper "www.johnjayharper.com" (Spokane, WA United States) - See all my reviews Since I opened the first page of this book, I was captured by its style as much as its content. For as I write and speak extensively on the coming global supersolar storm circa 2012, too, and issue warning after warning that our weapons of mass manufacturing-era is all but dead and gone, the words that Lawrence E. Joseph uses to describe these civilization-changing calamities disarms me as it alarms me. Now that takes a damn good wordsmith to properly employ gallows humor, as he calls it, while all the time he gets us to braid our own noose and volunteer to stick our necks into it simultaneously. I mean this book is more a manual for the dead than the living since he seemingly expects the majority of us to meet the undertaker in 2012. Albeit that will take the form of a solar storm that will cremate us rather than bury us alive as some see earthquakes and tsunamis doing in fact. Nonetheless, as I have seen in my own visions, the greatest concern that we both have is that if the SuperVolcano known as Yellowstone erupts at the time of the solar maximum sunspot eruption, then it will be lights out for 90% of the world population according to some estimates. Why? It will be as I say over and over again from starvation, a slow angonizing death for sure. Ask the millions that are doing so today in Third World countries ... or will it be the case, as I suggest in my book, that we will wise-up in the next few years, begin to respect the natural world order, band together in communities focused on family to survive the shift of the ages in 2012. Whatever the case, this book is a valuable worst-case scenario guide to the looming disasters that will come to pass as we spiral faster and faster towards an inevitable rendevouz with destiny; the most energetic and transforming region of the cosmos for us -- the central core bulge, called a "black hole" for a reason, in the Milky Way Galaxy. Of course, this is what the Maya shaman knew as the Mouth of the Crocodile as it swallows you whole as you sink deeper and deeper and deeper into trance to commune with cosmic consciousness that resides there as well. To the Maya this is the Home of Hunab Ku -- the Sun Behind the Sun, or ... God. Yes, we are to worship the Sun God as it will be that living light that will bring both death and rebirth to the blue-marble planet we call the Good Green Earth soon. Dr. John Jay Harper is author of Tranceformers: Shamans of the 21st Century and his award-winning blog on the End-Time Solar Cycle of Chaos in 2012.

APocalypse2012: Available NOW

Apocalypse 2012: A Scientific Investigation into Civilization's End (Hardcover)
by Lawrence E. Joseph

(1 customer review)

---

List Price: $23.95 Price: $16.29 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. You Save: $7.66 (32%) Apocalypse 2012 is an authoritative and deeply unsettling appraisal of just how close the earth, or at least our species, might be to extinction.

Availability: In Stock.

Want it delivered Thursday, January 25?

receiving complaints

2007-01-19 19:50:33

I am receiving complaints that my book, Apocalypse 2012: A Scientific Investigation into Civilization’s End, is causing a lot of fear. Nothing I have written in my 25-year career has caused so much distress as this book appears destined to do. Although my vision for 2012 has many positive, uplifting aspects, there is no denying the very scary side and for that I do apologize.

People already have more than enough to worry about, and I am truly sorry for any psychological and emotional discomfort my book may cause. I particularly regret burdening parents, whose worry-load for their children is barely manageable under normal circumstances, and also young people, who are supposed to have so much of their lives ahead of them.

But fear, though unpleasant, is not always a bad thing. It is downright helpful if it alerts one to the significant possibility of danger. That ancient Mayan prophecy and contemporary solar physics both point to the year 2012 as a potentially catastrophic year, is, by my lights, a significant possibility of danger. Better that we should be goaded now into preparing and defending ourselves than remain blissfully oblivious and get cosmic sucker-punched five short years from now.

Regardless of how much credence one places in predictions concerning 2012, the fact of the matter is that, at this point in history, our defenses are down, and no one is building them back up. Even after the unimaginable disaster that Hurricane Katrina wrought on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, there has been little preparation for what might come next. Is it your opinion that, in the area where you live, the public places where people might seek refuge – schools, auditoriums, athletic stadiums, etc. – have been adequately equipped with food, water, medicine and other necessities for survival?

True, FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency that so badly botched the New Orleans disaster relief operation, is in the process of being dismantled. But has a new and better relief organization taken its place? We are sitting ducks.

Afraid? Good!

If there were a chance that opening this book could set off a chain of events that would lead to Apocalypse, to the end of Life as we know it, would you be tempted? Finger poised uncertainly above the flashing red button? How about if the Apocalypse promised to result in a new age of enlightenment, a Heaven on Earth like never before?

Personally, I’ll take the security of my cozy life over a chance at nirvana. But status quo may no longer be an option, for any of us. This book will convince you that there is a nonnegligible chance that the year 2012 will be more tumultuous, catastrophic, and, quite possibly, revelatory, than any other year in human history.

Parts of this book are best read with a bowl of popcorn: looking into the jaws of a great white shark in search of the meaning of death; touring a picturesque Guatemalan town with Mayan shaman just weeks before it is utterly destroyed. Other sections go better with a tranquilizer, such as the impending eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano, or the mass extinction headed our way—on the scale of the great collision that destroyed the dinosaurs and 70 percent of all other species, our best scientists contend that it’s now overdue. Nail-biters should beware the fact that the next peak in the sunspot cycle, due in 2012, is widely expected to set records for the number and intensity of solar storms pummeling the Earth with radiation and igniting natural calamities such as earthquakes, volcanoes, and Katrina-sized hurricanes. And that our entire solar system appears to be moving into a dangerous interstellar energy cloud.

Is it a coincidence that the burgeoning war between Christianity and Islam seems hell-bent for Armageddon? Or that numerous other religions, philosophies, and cultural traditions are signaling that the end is near, with 2012 emerging as the consensus target date? A new era is about to be born, with all the pain and blood and joy and release that birth naturally entails.

Facing oblivion, or at least mega-metamorphosis, is something that few of us are emotionally prepared to do. Thus my excuse for the gallows humor that pervades this story. In a memorable Mary Tyler Moore episode, Mary cracks up laughing at the funeral of Chuckles the Clown who, dressed as a peanut while marching in a parade, was shucked to death by an elephant. If Mary can giggle in the face of death, so can we.

With kind regards,
Lawrence E. Joseph

The Case Against 2012

Guilty of Apocalypse: The Case Against 2012

The thesis of this book is that the year 2012 will be pivotal, perhaps catastrophic, possibly revelatory, to a degree unmatched in human history.

1. Ancient Mayan prophecies based on two millennia of meticulous astronomical observations indicate that 12/21/12 will mark the birth of a new age, accompanied, as all births are, by blood and agony as well as hope and promise.
2. 
   
3. Since the 1940’s, and particularly, since 2003, the Sun has behaved more tumultuously than any time since the rapid global warming that accompanied the melting of the last Ice Age. Solar physicists concur that solar activity will next peak, at record-setting levels, in 2012.
   
4. Storms on the Sun are related to storms on the Earth. The great wave of 2005 hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma coincided with one of the stormiest weeks in the recorded history of the Sun.
   
5. The Earth’s magnetic field, our primary defense against harmful solar radiation, has begun to dwindle, with cracks comparable in scale to the ozone hole opening up randomly. A pole shift, in which such protection falls nearly to zero as the North and South magnetic poles reverse position, may well be under way.
   
6. Russian geophysicists believe that the Solar System has entered an interstellar energy cloud. This cloud is energizing and destabilizing the Sun and all the planets’ atmospheres. Their predictions for catastrophe resulting from the Earth’s encounter with this energy cloud range from 2010 to 2020.
   
7. Berkeley physicists, who discovered that the dinosaurs and 70% of all other species on Earth were extinguished by an impact 65 million years ago, maintain, with 99% certainty, that we are now overdue for another such mega-catastrophe.
   
8. The Yellowstone supervolcano, which erupts catastrophically every 600,000 to 700,000 years, is preparing to blow. The most recent eruption of comparable magnitude, at Lake Toba, Indonesia, 74,000 years ago, led to the death of more than 90% of the world’s population at the time.
   
9. Eastern philosophies such the I Ching, Chinese book of changes, and also Hindu theology, have been plausibly interpreted as supporting the 2012 end date, as have a range of indigenous belief systems.
   
10. At least one scholarly interpretation of the Bible predicts that the Earth will be annihilated in 2012. The burgeoning Armageddonist movement of Muslims, Christians and Jews actively seeks to precipitate the final End-Times battle.
    
11. Have a nice day.