Planetary spin cycle

I try not to spend too much time focusing on completely loony ideas here at Skeptophilia -- wackos are, after all, a dime a dozen, and grabbing the low-hanging fruit is kind of a cheap way to run a blog.  But sometimes I run into a claim that is so earnest, so serious, and at the same time so completely bizarre that it's kind of charming.

That was my reaction when a friend and loyal reader of Skeptophilia sent me a link to a site called "Bibliotecapleyades."  I have to admit that I have no idea what that means.  I know that biblioteca means "library" in Spanish, and pleyades sounds a little like "Pleiades," the star cluster that is thought among some of the astro-woo-woos to be the home of the Nordic aliens, who are tall, blond, blue-eyed, and muscular.

Sort of Liam Hemsworth from Outer Space, is how I think of them.

Whether that's the origin of the name or not, I have no idea.  He doesn't mention aliens, but given the rest of the content, I wouldn't be surprised if it came up at some point.

Anyhow, this particular page on "Bibliotecapleyades" is called "Earth Changes: Future Map of the World," and goes into how "international known [sic] and respected futurist Gordon-Michael Scallion" has a vision of how the world is going to end up.  And I do mean "vision."  His ideas aren't based on science (big shocker, there) but on his "ongoing visions concerning the Earth" that he experiences "sometimes as many as ten or more in a day, lasting from a few seconds to minutes."  But instead of seeking professional help for this condition, he started writing it all down, and put them all together into a unified, consolidated picture of what we were in for.

You really should look at the website itself, preferably after consuming a double scotch.  It's just that good.  But in case you don't want to risk valuable brain cells going through it, I present below a few highlights of what's going to happen.  Forewarned is forearmed, you know.

1. First, we're going to have a pole shift.  Scallion seems unaware that the position of the magnetic pole and the position of the rotational axis of the Earth are related but aren't the same, so he gets a little confused talking about the precession of the Earth's rotational axis (which is true; the Earth wobbles like a top, meaning that Polaris won't be the North Star forever) as somehow triggering a shift in the magnetic pole.  You get the impression he thinks when the poles reverse, the Earth is kind of going to fall over or something.  But he soldiers on ahead, saying that the Earth is going to be like "a washing machine that is out of balance in the spin cycle," and this is going to fling the poles about like damp socks.  Havoc will ensue.
2. Africa is going to fall apart into three separate continents.  Some waterways will open up in a kind of a "Y" shape, inundating large parts of what is now dry land.  Madagascar is going to sink into the ocean.  Don't ask me why.  The Pyramids will also end up under water, but the flipside is that before then, "there will be great archaeological discoveries."
3. The news is more positive for Antarctica, which is going to "be reborn, and become fertile land again."  In addition, the relics of the lost civilization of "Lumania" will be found when the ice all melts, and "great cities and temples will be discovered."  I'm not sure how I feel about this.  In the historical document "At the Mountains of Madness" by H. P. Lovecraft, some explorers went into Antarctica, discovered big abandoned cities and temples, and almost all of them ended up getting eaten by Shoggoths.  So we might want to be a little cautious about investigating "Lumania."
4. The tectonic plate underneath Europe is going to "collapse."  This will cause Scandinavia and Great Britain to sort of slide off the edge into the Atlantic Ocean.
5. The Middle East will be engulfed in war.  For a change.  But this one will be a "holy war with purification of the land by fire and water," whatever that means.  I hope no one tells the End Times folks about this, because they already spend enough time yammering on about stuff like this, and I really don't want to add any more grist for their mill.
6. North America also looks like it's in for a rough time.  California will be split up into 150 islands, and the "west coast will recede to Nebraska, Wyoming, and Colorado."  The Appalachians will be a long skinny island.  At least here in upstate New York it looks like I'll have beachfront property.

He then ends with a disclaimer, a little like the "this preparation is not intended to treat or cure any medical condition" thing you see on bottles of homeopathic "remedies."  He says:

[N]o event or prediction is final.  Predictions are given as probabilities.  Even at this time, consciousness can alter an event, modify changes in a particular area or at the very least help us to prepare for what is to come...  One final note, the areas of change presented in the Future Map of The World should not be taken as absolute. They may differ from a few miles to several hundred miles depending on many variables.  In the end, Mother Nature and our own collective consciousness will have the final say.

Be that as it may, he provides us with a map of the world showing all of the new land contours.  I'd post it here, but I don't know how Gordon-Michael Scallion feels about the copyright on images he's created, so you'll just have to go take a look for yourself if you want to figure out whether it's time to pack up and move.  Here's a map of what the world looks like now, so you'll have a basis for comparison.

[image courtesy of NASA and the Wikimedia Commons]

Anyhow, that's our excursion into the deep end of the pool for today.  Me, I'm not concerned.  He didn't provide a timeline for all of these catastrophes in any case, so right now I'm going to worry about more pressing issues, such as how the hell we here in the U.S. ended up with a spoiled toddler with orange spray-on tan as the president.  Frankly, compared to that, "Lumania" doesn't really bother me much.