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Lemme tell you a little story, and some personal history. I run a web site called the Third Millennium Survival Web. I've let it become run down and left alone for a couple of years now. I'm a "believer" in "survival", but that doesn't mean that every person that comes along screaming about the end of the world as we know it (aka: TEOTWAWKI) is right, or even reasonable.

In years past I've belonged to the "Survival Ring" (a loosely knit group of web sites, some touting the end of the world, and others selling stuff for Y2K, etc). And I've been in many email lists.

In the olden days (roughly 5 years prior to "y2K" becoming a household word) we talked about "blizzards, tornadoes and other natural disasters" in those lists. Over the past few years, the lists for the most part (Not to MENTION most of the web sites) have been inundated and infiltrated by some of the kookiest people in the world. The majority of them appear to be "Left leaning, greenies" (my words and my own quote from an article I did a few years back) who pretend to be "right wingers". There are a vast amount of conspiracy theories running amok throughout the so-called "survival community". Over the Waco/OKC days those groups were pointed out as being "Right wing radical kooks, survivalists and militia people who were leaning towards Naziism" by the media. (That's personally why I think the groups were infiltrated by left wingers, by the way, to make the groups look worse than they were). Eventually, I left the groups and have pretty much let my web site die. I don't do much with it.

HOWEVER, I still keep up with the material through other means. Over the past three weeks, at least three people have contacted me regarding an "incoming asteroid" that "no one knows about". Being also an amateur astronomer, for thirty years now, I have attempted to verify this "astral intruder". So far, I have NOT been able to get coordinates, or find anything. I've been in contact with some large observatories, none of which can confirm anything either. I JUST visited Lowell Observatory a few weeks back.

The TRUTH is, I can't find any evidence at all for any thing like this. I will say that there is another "faction" out there who has been yelling about the "Planet X" thing, something they call "Nibiru", which is supposedly a large planet (everything from earth-sized to jupiter-sized) that orbits the sun on an extremely eccentric orbit) every "3600 years".

This "faction" has grown STRANGELY quiet over the past few months. I believe that this "comet" or "asteroid" everyone is "worried about" is simply another incarnation of the "Planet-X theory". The reason I believe this, is if there were a Jupiter sized planet out there, on an in-bound course and it's due by 2012 or so as so many have been saying, then we'd be spotting it by now on it's accellerated orbit (it would be increasing in speed as it plunges toward the sun on this orbit and would already have become visible, and since it hasn't, some folks are having to re-think their stories).

While I can not and will not discount by any stretch of the imagination the possibility (or PROBABILITY!) that the Earth WILL be struck int he future by a very large body (any scientist worth his salt will tell you it has happened many times in the past and will again, happen in the future), I can not definately verify any of the "astroid" theory. I don't think anyone can.

IF there is something incoming in the next couple of months and we (we being science) aren't SURE it is going to hit, but are pretty sure, and they JUST discovered it in the last few months, I'd say it is a SAFE bet that they aren't going to tell the public. (It'd cause panic, people to quit working, and perhaps even some countries or even the terrorists to get about their business even more quickly!) On the other hand if they found something and it is years from hitting, you're going to hear about it on the news. Period.

So far, every NEA or PHA (thats near earth asteroid or potentially hazardous asteroid) has been reported publically. There are even lists of them that are easily obtainable from the scientific sources that discover them. Orbits have been plotted and given the right sort of software ANYONE is capable of looking at the hazards (or non-hazards) posed by these objects.

If I recall correctly (and I'm probably wrong where it comes to numbers, since I always have to look them up over and over anyway) there are roughly 1500 such objects that have been mapped, plotted and we know their course within a few years, and none of them are going to "hit". Come close sometimes, yes. But close could be "just outside the orbit of the moon" too.

As another posted stated though, I guess we can just wait and see for a couple more months.

Regards, all. Rick Donaldson

By the way, I forgot to mention something. Almost every single time issues like this appear in the various email lists (in particular the survival lists, where this story is appearing once again) the messenger ALWAYS states how he can't mention certain pieces of information "or it will be shut down, discovered, attacked, etc". Almost every time these guys have had their "lives threatened" or they have had events occur that has tried to shut them up. They always use aliases, won't come out and give real names (hell, that way they don't have to stand by anything and can eventually vanish from sight returning with a new alias to start, yet another, fear campaign.

I can't and won't say that "Aussie" whatshisname is lying, but the chances are very good I know who this person is (remember, I've been dealing with this survival community for many, many years and have talked to a lot of them in email, via chats, forums and even occasionally in person. Some of these people are sincere, but certainly do not have all their lug nuts tightened correctly. Basically, ANY TIME someone comes out of the wood work making these sorts of claims and places all these caveats on the statements (aliases, "can't tell you this but..." comments and the like, they are MOST LIKELY MISINFORMED OR LYING!) - rd