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August 1998 Vol. 219 No. 8 Comment R. W. Scott Catastrophes The above, these days mostly predicted by "scientists," politicians and CNN

August 1998 Vol. 219 No. 8
Comment

R. W. Scott

Catastrophes

The above, these days mostly predicted by "scientists," politicians and CNN, would have us all believe the world's coming to an end by next weekend at the very earliest and Jan. 1, 2000 at the latest.

Current forecasts of catastrophes range from a heavenly body hitting the earth to old computers expiring at the turn of the century and throwing everything into chaos. Global warming and ozone holes, fantasized by the enviroknuckleheads, are not included here, since we've cussed and discussed them for years and both remain as unproven today as they did when first hatched at what some suspect was a hippie pot party.

Since we first mentioned it here years ago, the most likely catastrophe at the moment has to be Y2K, the millennium bug, scare stuff about which has grown exponentially with enough predictions of disaster to fill a supercomputers' memory. And more potential mischief to add to the usual, revealed at recent Senate hearings, has been both delightfully and disgustingly scary. It includes:

Cost to fix computer stuff globally could reach $600 billion
Cost to pay smart lawyers to handle lawsuits against the computer industry over the Y2K problem may reach $1 trillion — which is really disgusting
A global recession starting in 2000
Global military forces, excepting those on foot or camels, will be paralyzed (they won't even be able to order paper clips) and unable to even defend their own computers, let alone anything else
A labor productivity decline that will spur inflation
Businesses, financial markets, banks and the Infernal Revenue Service (the delightful part) will all crater
Vote counting in all 2000 elections might have to be by hand with all sorts of juicy fraud potential
Gillions of cemetery headstones with "19__" carved into them for still-living future residents would have to be redone
And oil company CEO's, reservoir engineers, electronic geologists and geophysicists, and their associated beancounter types will go stark, raving mad without their solitaire games and sundry information.

Solution? Well, turning all your assets into gold, burying it in your backyard and guarding it with a shotgun come to mind. But planting a garden, penning up a few chickens and getting a cow or two may pay better.

We mentioned here last month about the alignment of planets that will focus their combined gravitational pulls on earth in year 2000 and how that could lead to a further crude oil glut. But we didn't know about another pending catastrophe from space.

According to a Kiplinger Letter report last month, it seems like 2000 is supposed to also see ultra-high sun spot activity. That will cause monstrous solar flares, a big increase in solar wind velocity to near-spacehurricane force and a gushing of radioactivity through the solar system that will play unshirted hell with anything that has electricity running through it.

Radio and TV transmissions can be disrupted. Control systems for pipelines, refineries, production operations, etc., could get juiced up by electromagnetic-induced currents. GPS equipment for aircraft, boats, surveying etc. won't be as precise. Communication satellites, if they don't already think they're back in 1900 because of Y2K, can be short-circuited. Power transmission transformers may blow due to current overload. And last but not least, insurance companies will have to decide whether all this mess is due to force majeure or equipment failure.

Lastly in the catastrophe category, our Cocodrie, South Louisiana, pundit Beauregard Uribe Laviolette LeBleu, better known as BULL LeBleu, whom we've not heard from in awhile, has just provided a really cataclysmic catastrophe prediction. BULL, an ardent star gazer after six or five beers, has just discovered two oncoming, roughly spherical asteroids traveling side-by-each that are aimed straight for earth. Combined mass and trajectory of the two oncoming balls of rock (which were immediately tabbed BULL's balls by his fellow star gazers headquartered at Hebert's Bar & Funeral Home in Cocodrie) indicates they will strike precisely at 12:01 a.m., Jan. 1, 2000 and wipe out everything in a 600-mi-radius circle.

Projected impact point is Ardal, Iran, which lies 77 miles due east of Masjid-I-Sulaiman, better known as MIS to "older" IOEPC consortium and OSCO oilfield hands who headquartered there and found and developed most of the oil in South Iran.

BULL further projects that after impact the world will probably forever be without the 20 million bpd or so of production, 31% of present world output, from Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Syria. It also means the globe will be deprived of 614 billion of reserves, some 64% of the planet's total.

BULL's final prediction is that his catastrophic balls will sure enough make the price of oil go up after impact and stay that way forever.

Heard at a Washington get-together, according to The Chicago Tribune: "I tell you that Michael Jackson is unbelievable, isn't he? He's just unbelievable."

The admirer? Ozone Gore, of course, praising the Chicago Bulls winning the NBA Championship. Ozone had best not look for many votes in Chicago in 2000.

According to Rep. Jim Gibbons of the U.S. House National Security & Intelligence Committee, the Army recently checked to see who had been most active in calling up its website. Rep. Gibbons said "It wasn't the 82nd Airborne or the lst Infantry Division, it was not the Air Force, it was not the Navy, it was not the Marines."

"It was the People's Liberation Army" (the one in China).

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