Category Archives: SHTF
PANDEMIC OUTBREAK – Mystery illness claims dozens of Cambodian children
Hong Kong (CNN) — The World Health Organization is helping the Cambodian Ministry of Health investigate the cause of a mysterious illness that has killed dozens of children in the country since April.
A joint statement from the WHO and the ministry, released Wednesday, said 61 of 62 children admitted to hospital had died from the disease. The majority of the reported cases came from southern and central Cambodia.
“[The Ministry of Health] and WHO are currently investigating the cases,” Mam Bunheng, the Cambodian minister of health, said in the statement, “possible causes of the disease are being considered, but definite identification of the cause and source may take some time.”
Initial reports from the Cambodian government indicate that the unknown illness struck children under seven years old.
“The symptoms include a mixture of respiratory illnesses, fever and generalized neurological symptoms, including convulsions in some of the patients,” Dr. Nima Asgari, a team leader of the WHO country office in Cambodia, said in an email to CNN.
The children were brought to hospitals in the capital, Phnom Penh, and the northern tourist hub of Siem Reap — the two biggest cities of Cambodia — but most of them died within 24 hours upon admission.
“This can be a mixture of a number of known diseases — virological, bacterial or toxicological — which have been reported as one syndrome or something new,” Asgari added.
“While the labs are excluding the various pathogens, we are providing support to [the Ministry of Health] to make sure that an in-depth analysis of cases is done to identify possible causes or exposures which will give us a better picture. The investigation is ongoing.”
So far, there were no signs of contagion or clusters of cases — patients who had contact with each other and fell sick together — a telltale warning sign of a highly infectious disease. But Asgari admitted the high mortality rate in such a short time was extremely worrying.
ZOMBIE HISTORY – Zombie Scenes in the Bible
Zombies loom large in popular culture these days. Max Brooks’ “World War Z: An Oral 
History of the Zombie War” (2006), the Jane Austen, Seth Grahame-Smith mashup “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” (2009), and Melissa Marr’s “Graveminder” (2011), to name but a few recent novels, enjoy a wide readership. There are also graphic novels, the AMC television show “The Walking Dead,” video games, and of course movies. Some of my recent favorites in the latter category include the Norwegian Nazis-as-zombies film “Dead Snow” (2009) with its delightful tagline “Ein! Zwei! Die!” and Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon’s “The Cabin in the Woods” (2012). With all of this going on, there is little surprise to come across the open-source, collaborative Stinque Zombie Bible. It was just a matter of time, I suppose, and the King James Bible will never be quite the same.
I am an unabashed zombie fan but also teach “classic” English literature and the New Testament so I can’t quite bring myself to desecrate the literary and religious masterpiece that is the Authorized (King James) Version by contributing to the Zombie Bible. Still, wanting to get into the spirit of things, I can’t resist noting a few biblical scenes and themes — a top 10 list — that come to mind each time I watch or read the latest version of the zombie apocalypse to come along. At least in some passages, a zombie-Bible mashup requires very little editorial interference.
1. The Gospel of Luke: “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen” (Luke 24:5). Such a suggestive phrase. Note also that the angels asking the question and those they address are standing inside a tomb at the time (Luke 24:2-4).
2. The Book of Revelation: “the sea gave up the dead that were in it” (Revelation 20:13). John the Seer’s creepy statement reminds me of a scene in George A. Romero’s “Land of the Dead” (2005) that features slow-moving corpses walking out of the surf, and Max Brooks’ “World War Z” with its account of the boy returning from a swim with a bite mark on his foot. He also describes the zombie hoards roaming the world’s oceans: “They say there are still somewhere between twenty and thirty million of them, still washing up on beaches, or getting snagged in fisherman’s nets.”
3. Deuteronomy: “Your corpses shall be food for every bird of the air and animal of the earth, and there shall be no one to frighten them away” (Deuteronomy 28:25-26; cf. 2 Samuel 21:10; Psalm 79:1-2; Isaiah 34:2-3; Jeremiah 7:33). The ancients worried about the exposure of their body after death. Improper care of one’s corpse was a terrifying prospect, so it is no wonder it features in prophetic warnings of divine wrath. Qoheleth insists that even though a man lives a long life and has many children, if he “has no burial … a stillborn child is better off than he” (Ecclesiastes 6:3). The indignity of non-burial presumably accounts for the honor bestowed on the poor man Lazarus in Jesus’ parable; the rich man receives proper burial but Lazarus “was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham” (Luke 16:22) because there was no one to care for his remains.
4. The Book of Job: “Why is light given to one in misery, and life to the bitter in soul, who long for death, but it does not come, and dig for it more than for hidden treasures…?” (Job 3:20-21). Job is angry he did not die at birth (3:11), adding that he loathes his life and does not want to live forever (7:16). Others prefer death to life out of principled anger against God, like the prophet Jonah (4:3; cf. 4:8). Physical death eludes a surprising number of people in the Christian Bible, and this is not always a welcome thing. The prophet John refers to some who “seek death but will not find it; they will long to die, but death will flee from them” (Revelation 9:6). The prospect of an elusive death, as every zombie fan knows, terrorizes the living. The “stricken” Charlotte Lucas in “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” agrees to marry the tedious and obsequious minister Mr. Collins because she wants “a husband who will see to [her] proper Christian beheading and burial.” This is no small task for most survivors left with such a grim assignment, as Shaun well knows: “I don’t think I got it in me to shoot my flat mate, my mom, and my girlfriend all in the same evening” (“Shaun of the Dead,” 2004).
5. The Gospel of Matthew: “The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. After [Jesus’] resurrection they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many” (Matthew 27:52-53). Unwanted persistent life is a recurring image in biblical literature and so too is language referring to the impermanence of bodily death. The dead do not stay dead. The psalmist is confident he will not “see decay” (Psalm 16:10 New International Version; cf. Acts 2:27; 13:35). We read of the physical resurrections of specific individuals (e.g., 1 Kings 17:17-24; Luke 8:49-56; maybe Acts 20:7-12) and expected mass revivals (e.g., 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17). Some of these accounts of un-dying involve reference to un-burying. Mary and Martha’s brother Lazarus walks out of his tomb when “they took away the stone” (John 11:41). On Easter morning, mourners find “the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back” (Mark 16:4). A second century writer describes further the events preceding Jesus’ emergence from the tomb: “That stone which had been laid against the entrance to the sepulchre started of itself to roll and gave way to the side, and the sepulchre was opened” (Gospel of Peter9.35).
6. Ezekiel: Ezekiel receives a vision promising the restoration of Israel (37:11). Seeing a valley full of bones, the Lord instructs him to speak to them, saying, “O dry bones … I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live” (37:4-6). When Ezekiel does so, “there was a noise, a rattling” as bones come together and sinew and skin appears and the breath of life returns. The dry bones “lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude” (37:7-10).
7. Zechariah: “their flesh shall rot while they are still on their feet; their eyes shall rot in their sockets, and their tongues shall rot in their mouths” (Zechariah 14:12). They seem to resemble extras in a George A. Romero film.
8. The Gospel of Mark: “hell, where their worm never dies” (Mark 9:48; alluding here to Isaiah 66:24). Gehenna (here symbolically representing “hell,” and usually translated so, as in Mark 9:44, 45, 47) refers to the Valley of Hinnom located to the south and southwest of Jerusalem. Following the reign of Israel’s righteous King Josiah (see 2 Kings 23:10-14), it became Jerusalem’s garbage heap, a place with maggots and rotting corpses. Jesus refers to this burning garbage in Mark 9:48, a place where residents of the city would leave the rotting corpses of humans and animals to the worms that do not die, to maggots. The image suggests the corpses of the damned rot ingehenna/hell — maggot ridden — in perpetuity.
9. 2 Maccabees: “[Antiochus IV Epiphanes] was seized with a pain in his bowels, for which there was no relief, and with sharp internal tortures — and that very justly, for he had tortured the bowels of others with many and strange inflictions … he fell out of his chariot as it was rushing along, and the fall was so hard as to torture every limb of his body. … the ungodly man’s body swarmed with worms, and while he was still living in anguish and pain, his flesh rotted away, and because of the stench the whole army felt revulsion at his decay. Because of his intolerable stench no one was able to carry the man who a little while before had thought that he could touch the stars of heaven” (2 Maccabees 9:5-6, 7, 9-10). The Syrian ruler’s physical body rots away zombie-like while he still lives. The cause is divine, as the God of Israel strikes this enemy of the Jews with “an incurable and invisible blow” (2 Maccabees 9:5).
10. Genesis with the Book of Revelation: “the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep”; “the first heaven and the first earth has passed away, and the sea was no more” (Genesis 1:2; Revelation 21:1). With the disappearance of chaos, Eden returns: “On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit” (Revelation 22:2; cf. Genesis 2:9). Horrors stories often wander back and forth between forms of paradise (ordered society) and chaos (some variant of an apocalyptic hellscape) thus recalling biblical stories with similar alternations. Zombie stories typically depict the disintegration of the modern world, and often hint at a return from the wilderness to the paradisiacal garden for survivors (cf. Genesis 3:23-24). Danny Boyle’s “28 Days Later” (2002), for one, ends with a developing romance between Jim and Salina, happy in the cultivated lands around a cottage that echoes Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The sequel “28 Weeks Later” (2007), however, depicts a failed attempt to restore Eden. After the spread of the disastrous infection in the first film, the sequel documents efforts to repopulate the United Kingdom. Survivors return to their homeland, to what the director’s commentary refers to as “a new world” and a “Garden of Eden.” Naturally, mayhem ensues and the infection spreads as the movie unfolds. It wouldn’t be much of a horror movie otherwise.
ZOMBIE OUTBREAK – Indianapolis David Martin fights off cops, stun gun shocks in ‘ninja’ attack
WATCH VIDEO BELOW
A naked man went on a rampage against police officers, doing ninja-like flips and ignoring stun gun shocks — and it was all caught on video.
David Martin, 27, was recorded running down the middle of a street, punching people during a violent frenzy in Indianapolis on May 20, Fox 59 reports .
According to nydailynews.com , police attempted to subdue Martin with a stun gun, tackling him to the ground.
Despite Martin’s shrieks and screaming, the shocks had no effect on his mobility, and he continued to fight the officers with kicks. He is seen doing somersaults while fighting off police.
“This guy’s like a ninja, man. Holy s–t!” the man filming the police encounter is heard saying in the video clip “That guy’s strong, he’s got to be on something,” the man adds.
FOX 59 reports that Martin allegedly injured a female officer when he pushed her into a building. He also punched a male cop in the face multiple times, according to the report.
Video of the event posted on YouTube describes Martin as a ‘zombie.’
Watch the video here : http://bit.ly/OhDuxp
‘God particle’ found – DOOMSDAY IS NEAR
GENEVA (AP) — Physicists say they have all but proven that the “God particle” exists.
They have a footprint and a shadow, and the only thing left is to see for themselves the elusive subatomic particle believed to give all matter in the universe size and shape.
Scientists at the world’s biggest atom smasher plan to announce Wednesday that they have nearly confirmed the primary plank of a theory that could restructure the understanding of why matter has mass, which combines with gravity to give an object weight.
The idea is much like gravity and Isaac Newton’s discovery: It was there all the time before Newton explained it. But now scientists know what it is and can put that knowledge to further use.
The focus of the excitement is the Higgs boson, a subatomic particle long sought by physicists.
Researchers at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, say that they have compiled vast amounts of data that show the footprint and shadow of the particle, even though it has never actually been glimpsed.
But two independent teams of physicists are cautious after decades of work and billions of dollars spent. They don’t plan to use the word “discovery.” They say they will come as close as possible to a “eureka” announcement without overstating their findings.
“I agree that any reasonable outside observer would say, ‘It looks like a discovery,'” said British theoretical physicist John Ellis, a professor at King’s College London who has worked at CERN since the 1970s. “We’ve discovered something which is consistent with being a Higgs.”
CERN’s atom smasher, the $10 billion Large Hadron Collider on the Swiss-French border, has been creating high-energy collisions of protons to investigate dark matter, antimatter and the creation of the universe, which many theorize occurred in a massive explosion known as the Big Bang.
The phrase “God particle,” coined by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Leon Lederman, is used by laymen, not physicists, more as an explanation for how the subatomic universe works than how it all started.
Rob Roser, who leads the search for the Higgs boson at the Fermilab in Chicago, said: “Particle physicists have a very high standard for what it takes to be a discovery,” and he thinks it is a hair’s breadth away. Roser compared the results that scientists will announce Wednesday to finding the fossilized imprint of a dinosaur: “You see the footprints and the shadow of the object, but you don’t actually see it.”
Fermilab, whose competing atom smasher reported its final results Monday after shutting down last year, said its data doesn’t settle the question of the Higgs boson, but it came tantalizingly close.
“It’s a real cliffhanger,” said Gregorio Bernardi, a physicist at the University of Paris who helped lead one of the main experiments at Fermilab. He cited “strong indications of the production and decay of Higgs bosons” in some of their observations.
Fermilab theorist Joseph Lykken said the Higgs boson “gets at the center, for some physicists, of why the universe is here in the first place.”
Though an impenetrable concept to many, the Higgs boson has until now been just that — a concept intended to explain a riddle: How were subatomic particles, such as electrons, protons and neutrons, themselves formed? What gives them their mass?
The answer came in a theory first proposed by Scottish physicist Peter Higgs and others in the 1960s. It envisioned an energy field where particles interact with a key particle, the Higgs boson.
The idea is that other particles attract Higgs bosons and the more they attract, the bigger their mass will be. Some liken the effect to a ubiquitous Higgs snowfield that affects other particles traveling through it depending on whether they are wearing, metaphorically speaking, skis, snowshoes or just shoes.
Officially, CERN is presenting its evidence this week at a physics conference in Australia but plans to accompany the announcement with meetings in Geneva. The two teams, known as ATLAS and CMS, then plan to publicly unveil more data on the Higgs boson at physics meetings in October and December. Each of the teams involves thousands of people working independently to ensure accuracy.
The scientific threshold for discovery is high. Scientists have to show with complex formulas that there’s a less than 1 in 1.7 million chance that the findings are a statistical fluke. With two independent experiments showing that there’s less than 1 in 16,000 chance of being wrong, it’s a matter of how their work is put together.
Scientists with access to the new CERN data say it shows with a high degree of certainty that the Higgs boson may already have been glimpsed, and that by unofficially combining the separate results from ATLAS and CMS it can be argued that a discovery is near. Ellis says at least one physicist-blogger has done just that in a credible way.
CERN spokesman James Gillies said Monday that he would be “very cautious” about unofficial combinations of ATLAS and CMS data.
“Combining the data from two experiments is a complex task, which is why it takes time, and why no combination will be presented on Wednesday.” he said.
But if the calculations are indeed correct, said John Guinon, a longtime physics professor at the University of California at Davis and author of the book “The Higgs Hunter’s Guide,” then it is fair to say that “in some sense we have reached the mountaintop.”
Sean M. Carroll, a California Institute of Technology physicist flying to Geneva for Wednesday’s announcement, said that if both ATLAS and CMS have independently reached these high thresholds on the Higgs boson, then “only the most curmudgeonly will not believe that they have found it.”
DOOMSDAY 2012: A New Age or a New World Order?
I see two events as the most probable for this date. A terrorist attack, which will bring with it the Dawn of the New Age of Man, or perhaps the collapse of the world economy, which would bring about the New World Order spoken of since the time of Woodrow Wilson’s presidency.
A terrorist attack of some sort may occur on 12/21/2012 and is most likely the event that world leaders are trying their best to prevent. After the events of 9/11, nothing would surprise me. The architects of the events of 9/11, Al-Qaida, planned the event to be carried out on 9/11/2001 as the numbers 911 refer to the phone number we here in America and other places as well, use to report an emergency. 
So if one or more terrorist organizations were to plan and try to execute an event on 12/21/2012, the supposed end of the world according to the Mayan calendar, it may not be as unexpected as one might think. Actually, the end of the Mayan calendar signifies the dawn of a New Age, not the end of the World as we know it.
Terrorist groups the world over 
have been trying to acquire nuclear weapons of any kind for some time now. We don’t know if they have succeeded in acquiring them, but I think if they did, our government would do something about it, and then that information would be made public, so all the World would know. And I’m not sure if that type of information would be disseminated to the general public, as it may have unintended consequences.
Panic and hysteria may ensue, and this may be the reaction that those involved are after.
So if someone or some group of people manages to create a disastrous event on this date, just how crippling to our world this event will be should be examined.
A concerted effort by radical terrorist groups Worldwide to act
in unison on this date would be devastating. Mass bombings of buildings and infrastructure around the globe would be extremely debilitating. The worst case scenario in my opinion would be the detonation a nuclear device, or even multiple devices, on a global level. This would spell doom for the entire Planet.
Iran has been actively producing nuclear material for some time now, according to them, for peaceful purposes, i.e. nuclear power generation. But many in the International community, the
United States included, think that they are trying to create a nuclear weapon. They have been hell bent on the destruction of Israel for decades, and this scenario on this date would create Armageddon. This definitely would bring about the Dawn of the New Age of Man. And it is a distinct possibility.
Now let us talk about the other possibility referred to herein, the New World Order.
The term was first used during Woodrow Wilson’s presidency, in reference to his creation of the League of Nations, a
precursor to the United Nations, following the devastation of World War I. The term was used sparingly at the end of World War II when describing plans for the creation of the United Nations, in part because of the negative association to the failed League of Nations.
The most widely acknowledged use of the term in modern times was by President George H. W. Bush of the United States and President Mikhail Gorbachev of the Soviet Union to define the post-Cold War era.
The New World Order, and its possible enactment, has been deemed a conspiracy by several different groups of people to, in essence, start over, and Capitalists have been accused of leading the charge.
You see money, in my opinion, is a finite resource, and there is only so much of it to go around. Many will disagree with this statement, and it is only my opinion, not necessarily a fact. Be that as it may, Capitalists, since the dawn of time, want to make ungodly profits on their investments, for a multitude of reasons. One only has to look at Exxon/Mobil for an example. Our planet is in the midst of a global recession, and their profits are in the hundreds of billions. Ungodly indeed.
Have you ever wondered why our government appears to prop up some third world countries? That’s because one or more American businessmen probably has a factory there, and it’s there because the wages paid to the work force in these countries are a tenth or less than the wages in the US. That makes it cheaper to manufacture and ship a product to the US than to manufacture it here because of our prevailing wages. And it allows the Capitalists the opportunity to make ungodly profits.
So here’s the conspiracy scenario. On December 21st, 2012, a disaster on a global scale befalls the planet. Whether it is a natural disaster or an intentional event created by some group of people with ulterior motives is yet to be determined. In short order, the world economy crashes, and transportation of goods stops. No ships to bring goods to America. The food supply will also be interrupted.
Then at some point in time, the government announces that US dollars are no longer a valid currency
and USA bucks, or some similarly named item, will replace them. At ten cents on the dollar. So the $10,000.00 US dollars in your savings account will only be worth $1,000.00 USA bucks. The majority of the population in the US will exchange their US dollars for USA bucks because that’s all they can do. Black market buying of USD will begin as independent entrepreneurs realize what is happening and try to get in on the scam.
Capitalists and the wealthy will not exchange their US dollars because they already know the scam. Then when all the available
US dollars are accounted for and replaced by USA bucks, then and only then will our government announce that we are returning to the US dollar as our only form of currency, and everyone will have to re-exchange their USA bucks for US dollars. Except for the rich and wealthy, who were in on the scam from the beginning and never exchanged their money in the first place. They will have prepared for the event by stockpiling food and water and anything else they would need to last them for five years or longer. And now their US dollars are worth ten times more than before.
And the rich get richer. And let us not forget, your wages will only be worth 10 cents on the dollar as a 9 dollar per hour minimum wage is now only 90 cents per hour. Similar to the wages in those third world countries. And everything starts over. And thus begins the New World Order. Or is it the New Age of Man? Hang on a minute, let me look at my scorecard.
I know it sounds crazy, but it could happen, couldn’t it?
Maybe. Maybe not. Anyway, let’s hope not.
Surviving the event begins next week, I promise.