Hi, edan.
Bunkers
There are plans to expand Moscow's emergency bunker capacity, because the current system in the metro can only accommodate about half the city's population. Some hoaxers have latched onto this and claimed that Russia is hurrying to build hundreds or thousands of bunkers before 2012, but that simply isn't true. What Russia expects is to have the plans finalized by 2012. No bunkers are to be constructed before them.
In general, bunkers are nothing new. They've existed for as long as human beings have been trying to kill each other, and especially since World War II and the Cold War. No government bunkers are being constructed for 2012, because nobody has any reason to think anything bunker-worthy will happen then (though admittedly there might be cranks and people conned by hoaxers into buying/building private bunkers). Every "bunker" conspiracy I've ever seen on a website or video has consisted of a series of hysterical claims with no basis in fact, usually a woo artist making a big deal about bunkers that have existed for decades or outright fabricating something.
The Maya
The only connection the Maya have to 2012 is the possible end of a baktun, which is a unit of time on the Meso-American Long-Count calendar, kind of like our calendar year but much longer. They didn't predict doom. They were decent astronomers for their time, but not as good as the Egyptians, Greeks or Babylonians, and we have no reason to think they knew anything about the cosmos that we don't know. In short, people who attribute doomsday claims and magical powers to the ancient Maya are wrong.
http://www.famsi.org/research/vanstone/2012/index.html
http://www.2012hoax.org/mayan-calendar
http://www.2012hoax.org/mayan-prediction
Earthquakes and Tsunamis
Earthquakes are not increasing in any way, neither in frequency nor strength. We detect more small earthquakes now than we did twenty, thirty or fifty years ago, because the number of monitoring stations has increased significantly, but that is a far cry from the number of quakes actually going up. In point of fact, the number of huge quakes has remained fairly steady, with an average of one magnitude 8.0+ quake and fifteen magnitude 7.0 to 7.9 quakes per year. These numbers go up and down, and that's why we call it an average. People who claim otherwise are either very ignorant or deliberately trying to spread misinformation.
Tsunamis are simply what happen when earthquakes under the ocean displace large volumes of water. There has not been any rash of these phenomena, just as there has been no rash of earthquakes, so I'm not sure what exactly you find anomalous about them.
Weather
Weather in recent seasons hasn't really been that unusual. We've been in the midst of a particularly strong oceanic oscillation called La Niña, which is expected to persist in some capacity until this coming summer. These things can have myriad effects on weather and are likely at least partially responsible for some of the storms and such that have occurred in various areas recently. AccuWeather has a blog entry on the phenomenon here. There are other possible influences, of course, such as ocean warming due to climate change, but nothing in this regard has anything to do with 2012.
People trying to link natural disasters to their pet doomsday claims are scamming you. Don't buy into the b.s. Also, you would do well to simply stop getting your "news" from cranks on YouTube.
edan (guest) 27 Mar 2011 17:41
