SIGHTINGS


 
Russian Scientist Predicts World Meltdown Catastrophe Next Year
Discovery Channel Online
<www.discovery.com>
9-29-98
 
 
"Theoretical Geography or Imminent Disaster," by Anatoly Votyakov and his son Alexei, contains maps and diagrams outlining the doomsday scenario. The book sold out within hours of appearing in Moscow book shops recently, London's Independent newspaper reports.
 
Votyakov graduated in mathematics from Urals University, then worked for a Russian Academy of Sciences institute. He explains that despite global warming, ice is building up at the polar caps. There will come a point when the Earth's crust will have to distribute the weight more evenly.
 
"Once the ice exceeds a certain limit, a catastrophe will occur, a real deluge," he says. This, he adds, has happened many times before in the Earth's 4.5 billion-year history.
 
"The process will begin when Greenland starts slipping toward the equator," Votyakov says. "The first result of this will be that a huge tidal wave hits the east coast of America, making clear to everyone the total irrelevance of the dollar."
 
Initially, the English Channel will recede and there could be a land path to France. Later, the low-lying parts of Europe will be submerged. Severe cold will render Japan and China uninhabitable.
 
Doomed cities include Montreal, Toronto, Rome, and Paris. Norway will be a good escape. Muscovites will have to run for eastern Siberia, which should enjoy a warm spell.
 
As proof that this has happened before, Votyakov points to studies from eastern Siberia that show layers of birch wood 9,300, 26,800 and 31,800 years old in the permafrost.
 
That means that the area once must have been warm, he says. Remains of mammoths have been found with freshly swallowed grasses in their digestive tracts, meaning that they died from a sudden cataclysm, not hunger.
 
Votyakov and his son Alexei, both Orthodox Christians, note in their book that Nostradamus, the 16th-century French astrologer, predicted the end of the world in 1999. "It was the only time he gave a specific date," says Votyakov.
 
Modern Russian seers go further and set the date for July 19, the Independent reports.





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