During the latter months of 2002, for example, locals living in the area of the Observatory were plagued and annoyed, both day and night, by the rumbling sounds of extensive underground construction in their direct vicinity. Those same locals were duly sent letters from the superintendent of the installation informing them of the reportedly sensitive and classified nature of the construction program. Not only that, but the completion of the project, at the absolute earliest opportunity, was deemed to be both vital and a matter of national security. Of course, openly telling people something like that is a guarantee that gossip will spread like wild-fire all across those pleasant, white picket fences — and it most surely did spread. Maybe people, it seems, should have listened more closely to Biden’s words, rather than to those of White House aides. The Naval Observatory is not the only site that has been suggested as Cheney’s private hideaway, however.
Fingers have also been pointed at the Alternate Joint Communications Center, located within Raven Rock Mountain, Pennsylvania, only seven miles from Camp David, the presidential country retreat. Constructed in the early years of the 1950s, the installation — also referred to as Raven Rock and as Site-R — is designed to allow for at least some form of continuation of government in the event of a nuclear strike upon the nation’s capital. Whether Raven Rock itself can withstand a direct strike, however, is unknown. Nevertheless, the location is reported to be impressive and futuristic. Buried deeply within the mountain, it can comfortably house at least 3,000 people for a considerable period of time, overflowing, as it apparently is, with an abundance of food, fresh water, and clean air. Not bad, provided you happen to be on the inside, rather than the outside, when the gigantic mushroom clouds start blossoming. It is the perfect place for Vice President Cheney to have been secretly transferred.
On May 25, 2007, the Federal Register (the official journal of the government) stated in a Department of Defense policy document that dealt directly with Raven Rock Mountain, titled “Conduct on the Pentagon Reservation”: “The use of cameras or other visual recording devices on the Pentagon Reservation is prohibited…. It shall be unlawful to make any photograph, sketch, picture, drawing, map, or graphical representation of the Pentagon Reservation without first obtaining permission of the Pentagon Force Protection Agency, Installation Commander, or the Office of the Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs.”[24]
In non-bureaucratic terms, this means unless you have some weird masochistic desire to incur the wrath of just about every agency of the government that can ruin your day then stay the hell away from Raven Rock.
The 2012 Phenomena
There is a far more disturbing aspect to the story of secret underground installations constructed, or still undergoing construction, to house government officials in the event of a national emergency.
For a number of years, dark rumors have circulated that government agencies all around the world are secretly working to build or revamp huge underground realms to house senior, elite elements of the establishment who are aware that a worldwide, planetary upheaval will cause massive devastation on December 21, 2012, as many assert was predicted centuries ago by the Maya. Sounds too bizarre to be true? Or might those paranoid souls actually be correct? Let’s take a look at what we know, what we think we know, and what they may not be telling us, or preparing us for.
A great deal of what is spoken about, written about, and lectured on, when it comes the 2012 phenomenon, is, frankly, arrant nonsense that merely plays up to the worst fears and anxieties of the gullible, the wide-eyed, and the under-informed. Many of those fears and anxieties stem from deep misunderstandings about what, exactly, the Maya said, or did not say, 2,000 years ago. Plus, there is no doubt that with our civilization filled to bursting with tsunamis, earthquakes, terrorist attacks, Middle Eastern conflicts, avian flu, catastrophic oil leaks, drastic changes in weather, and melting ice caps, many people really do see the final days approaching.
Hollywood has hardly helped matters either. Blockbuster movies such as Children of Men, 28 Days Later, I am Legend, Knowing, Dawn of the Dead, and, of course, 2012, are great fun to watch, but they have all given end-of-the-world scenarios a lot of publicity, and mountains of depressing food for thought throughout the course of the last decade or so. And in the process, those movies have helped nurture apocalypse-driven belief systems that the end might be right around the corner. But is it?
The Mayas were a curious bunch, to be sure; and the means by which a determination has been made that something dramatic — for good, bad, or somewhere in between — may occur on December 21, 2012, is an extremely complex one. It all stems from something called the Mayan Long Count Calendar, which suggests that the end of one particular Earth-cycle will fall on December 21, 2012, some 5,125 years after that cycle commenced. Many people have come to the conclusion that something dramatic — for good, bad, or somewhere in between — will occur on that date. But a careful, unbiased study of Mayan lore reveals that, in actuality, the notion that the world will literally come to a horrific end, or that civilization will come crashing down around us on that day is very murky and difficult to fathom. For example, precisely nowhere in the Mayan legends are there any references to the sky falling in, the oceans overwhelming the land, or rolling firestorms overtaking the planet. In other words, the end of a cycle does not necessarily mean the end of all things. Rather, it’s the way in which that potentially emotive word, cycle, has been used that leaves its meaning so open to interpretation.
The Mayas believed that life on Earth progressed in cycles. Today, we are said to be living in the fourth cycle; the previous ones were, supposedly, failed attempts by the gods to create the perfect environment on our little world. But what comes next, in the fifth cycle, said to begin after December 12, 2012? Well, that’s the big question to which we are all eagerly awaiting the answer. (Some of us are, anyway.)
For some 2012 students, that doomsday date may mark the return of Nibiru — or Planet X — a world alleged to be a part of our own solar system, but whose orbit around the sun is so massive that only once in an extraordinarily long period of time does it ever come into view. Some say it’s going to do exactly that in December 2012. And guess what: Its orbit is going to bring it so close to the Earth that planet-wide disaster is all but inevitable. Nevermind that such a large planetary body should already be viewable via advanced telescopes if it’s already on its lumbering journey towards us. Nevermind that the entire Nibiru hypothesis was utterly unknown prior to 1995, when a woman named Nancy Lieder, who claimed to be in contact with aliens from a distant star-system called Zeta Reticuli was told that the return of Nibiru, and its attendant, powerful gravitational pull, would provoke a massive polar shift on our world that would result in unbridled chaos and death on an unimaginable scale. Nevermind that Lieder originally said the date of the disaster was going to be 2003. Now, we are told, it’s going to be 2012. Ho-hum.
Others suggest the end will come via:
The mighty wrath of a theoretical God.
A pulverizing comet.