For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation. (Paul, 2 Corinthians 7:10)
All these are the beginning of sorrows . . . But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. (Jesus, Matthew 24:8,13)
I was born in the United States during the Baby Boom generation and grew up during the Vietnam War Era. Baby Boomers lived their childhood under the threat of nuclear war and the end of the world if such a war were to ever occur. Some of us complained that we should not have been fighting the Vietnamese people. We were lectured that we had to because we were fighting the spread of Communism. We responded, “If Communism is so bad, then why aren’t we fighting to win?” To which, we were dutifully told that, “Trying too hard to win would cause a nuclear war.” End of discussion. We didn’t understand the role of proxy wars.
Our lives, our futures were held hostage to this threat of apocalyptic annihilation and the malaise that there was nothing we could do about it. Is there any wonder that we complained? Is it any wonder that some of us embraced hedonism? We were living on the “Eve of Destruction.”
“End of the World” scenarios are nothing new to Baby Boomers. It is a pastime for some; perhaps, a theme for campfire ghost stories. But somehow, we get along because it does not seem real to many of us. I mean really real, as in an existential, imminent threat real.
In 1998, Russia mobilized a major war game exercise in the Belarus. A friend of mine, whose father was a CIA analyst, was convinced that World War III was imminent. He argued the point so convincingly that I believed him. I remember the sense of dread and genuine fear. I was in the midst of a move from Wichita, Kansas to the panhandle of Idaho. My family was in Idaho waiting for me to return with the rest of our belongings. A vague sense of panic descended upon me as I realized I might not get to them in time.
As it turned out, nothing happened. Or so it seems. Stories of brinkmanship risking nuclear war surface from time-to-time in declassified documents of the Cold War Era. We are told that we were close, but at the time, no one knew except for the guardians of civilization. So, maybe my CIA-connected friend was right on target. Maybe the world was indeed on the edge of World War III and only a few people knew it. Regardless, the false alarm was embarrassing.
The Russians are mobilizing again in the same theater of operations. The Great Pretender, who spuriously displaced the Great Disrupter, believes that they are about to invade Ukraine and start World War III. We shall see.
Whether they do or not and whether the world ends in a nuclear holocaust or not, it does not change the cycles of nature. They are beyond the control of the human species. Weather modification, notwithstanding, stars explode. We call them novas. Our Sun is a star.
The prospects of a solar nova/magnetic reversal/ice age scenario are substantial. There are too many convergences of indicators which point to the same event. As you begin to assess the data, you will experience the same feeling that I felt now for the second time in my life: the dread and vague fear that this might be real. In time you will be overwhelmed by that sinking, sickening feeling that a person gets when he realizes that he is facing his end.
Only, it won’t be the end for some of us. The greatest sorrow will be experienced by the survivors who will have to live with the knowledge of what they have lost: the memory of a comfortable and safe existence. They will face a bleak future, a future in which children who are born will be living in caves and will think your stories of our lost civilization to be pure fiction. It might as well be. It will take a thousand years to get it all back.
Elisabeth Kubler-Rose and David Kessler have written extensively on dealing with loss in their classic On Grief & Grieving (www.grief.com). They have identified the five common stages of mourning: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Douglas Vogt has discussed this grieving process in recent YouTube video lectures, as understandably, his audience has reacted to his presentations with these same emotions.
I, too, went through these stages and so will you. It took me two years before I could even mention to my grown children the scenario which Vogt describes. I had already lectured and written on Robert Felix’s research pertaining to ice ages and had done so for many years. That scenario was bad enough, but Vogt’s presentation of a solar nova and reversal takes catastrophism to a whole new level.
You must weigh carefully to whom and when you divulge this information. Some people will respond with irrational terror. Others will rage at you. Your children might withdraw and stop speaking to you.
Most will laugh it off, nervously perhaps. Vogt’s presentation is convincing until he starts to talk about synchronicities and numerology. That’s when he loses a lot of people. He starts to sound like a kook.
Prophets are usually kooks. If they were credible, then everybody would believe them. Prophets are not meant to be believed except by the remnant. The remnant are able to see past the prophet’s ‘”kookiness” and analyze the prediction upon its own merits. That is why everybody is surprised by Divine judgment and cosmic disasters: they base credibility upon the messenger. That is why government agencies, like the CIA, can’t seem to predict major geopolitical events. If the experts don’t see it, then it isn’t real. The fall of the Soviet Union – they didn’t see coming. The fall of Afghanistan – they didn’t see coming. As they say, the strategists are always fighting the last war.
Evangelical doctrine has become founded upon escapism in many forms, certainly in the area of Bible prophecy. Evangelicals are counting on living a modern, middle class life style, and then getting “raptured” before things get too unpleasant. The idea of survivalism and rebuilding civilization from a condition of primitivism is definitely not on their radar. These people are probably a waste of time.
David Kessler has written a sequel, Finding Meaning: the Sixth Stage of Grief (Scribner, 2019). It might be worth while for you to read it, because that is exactly what we are talking about here: finding meaning in the end of the world.
“Melancholia” is a movie in recent years which describes the end of the world from a Planet X encounter. The lovely Kirsten Dunst is the leading actress. The movie is depressing. There is no post-cataclysm restart to the world. For almost everyone, there is no “morning after.” Likewise, for the solar nova scenario, Mother Nature does not offer a free pass.
If you are prepared, your odds for survival might be one in a thousand. Those are not very good odds on a personal level, but statistically, it is significant for the species. If one tenth of the world’s population is prepared, that would mean 700 million. If one in a thousand survives, then that would mean a new world population of 700,000. According to The Human Scale (Kirkpatrick Sale, Penguin, 1982), that would be large enough to maintain a society of medieval quality, better if the survivors have a skill-set in the appropriate technologies.
This is a lot to take in. I felt a pause in the clinical description of the disaster was in order. There is an emotional component that must be addressed. However, we cannot ignore this subject. Nor can you assume that you can build a bomb shelter or a little boat for you and your family and that you can ride it out. The magnitude of this impending disaster is so great, humanity on a collective level must respond to it. That means governments must mobilize industry and science to prepare for this scenario. The world’s religions must speak prophetically to their constituents to harden them with the humility and perseverance which the Apostle Paul and Jesus described in my opening texts above. Who will have the emotional and physical stamina to survive this thing?
— JWS, January 30, 2022
Survival Praxis is published bi-weekly only to the 2046AD.org website.
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