5/5/2000 -
On This Day, When the Planets Line Up, Will There Be A Disaster?

On May 5 in the year 2000, the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn will be aligned with the Earth and her Moon. According to author Richard Noone, "on that day the ice at the South Pole will upset the Earth's axis -- sending trillions of tons of ice and water sweeping over the surface of our planet. Not since the days of Noah has Humankind been faced with this ultimate catastrophe. "
The evidence that Noone says points to worldwide disaster in our lifetime:

The number of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and freakish climate changes are increasing as we inexorably move closer to 5/5/2000.
Bits of vanished civilizations preserved in museums, evidence of entire forests fossilized instantly, and animals quick-frozen and preserved for millennia prove that a sudden, momentous change in the Earth's surface occurred in the past.
An extensive study of the Great Pyramid reveals a mathematical message of warning built into the structure by survivors of a similar catastrophe millennia ago.
The 3-mile-high ice mass at the South Pole continues to grow more unstable, and in January 2000 a massive solar storm will crash into Earth's magnetic field.
The alignment and increased solar activity will unleash a complex chain of events causing the Earth's crust to slide and poles to shift. "Quite frankly, it would be a geological Armageddon," said author Richard Noone. "You'd have volcanism going on globally. Earthquakes beyond the scale anything Richter ever dreamed of. Tsunamis hundreds of feet high, sweeping hundreds of miles inland." The 390-page book uses "pole shifting" to explain everything from the disappearance of the civilization that built the pyramids to why woolly mammoths appear to be flash-frozen in Siberia.

Should you worry??

The evidence does not seem to support the theory that May 5th will be any more dangerous than any other day.
Noone has moved his family to Georgia, but astronomers say he and everybody else have nothing to worry about, because the extra pull and stretching from the aligned planets is a small fraction of the moon's tidal and gravitational strength.

The number of large earthquakes is actually LESS these days - more smaller earthquakes are reported because there is better monitoring. Climate change is being affected by global warming, but is in its earliest stages. Drought occurs in approximately 30 year cycles and we are in the beginnings of one of the drought cycles now. Global warming may make the drought particularly severe, but not the line-up of the planets.

Sudden momentous changes in the Earth's surface are proving to often be the result of asteroids striking the earth. None of the asteroids that have been discovered are currently on a collision course with the Earth in the near future. Asteroids can be perturbed into new orbits from the gravity of the planets or from collisions with each other but these would be unpredictable far advance. Asteroids that we haven't yet discovered could be on a collision course with Earth, but you can't predict that they will strike on a particular date.

Innumerable interpretations of the secrets of the Great Pyramid have been made - could Noone's be correct? Perhaps, but he doesn't have the widespread support of experts.

The solar storms predicted for 2000 have recently been downgraded and are not expected to be as strong as previous ones and those didn't cause any global catastrophes. Solar storms mainly threaten satellite transmissions.

An iceberg of near-record size -- about twice as big in area as the state of Delaware -- IS breaking off from Antarctica's Ross Ice Shelf and may soon be adrift (March 23, 2000). The oblong chunk of ice is 183 miles long and 22 miles wide. The iceberg is much larger than one that broke away last October and posed a potential shipping hazard to vessels rounding Cape Horn. That chunk was 40 miles by 11 miles. Photos and information on the iceberg. The shelves float on the ocean surface, so they do not cause sea levels to rise when they crumble. But the glaciers behind the shelves could melt more quickly if they lose the shelves' protection. The melting of Antarctic ice has been a concern for several years as a drastic melt would raise the levels of the oceans worldwide by 16 feet. (If ALL the world's galciers melted, a remote possibility, the sea level would rise by 260 ft.)
Some scientists have detected instabilities in the ice field and have predicted that it could disintegrate as soon as 500 to 700 years from now, with a rapid sea level rise starting after the year 2100. But would this melt precipitate another ice age? There are some scientists who believe it would, but other research shows that the southern oceans were warmer during periods, such as now, BETWEEN major ice ages. Understanding polar melting
As the Earth moves up and down in the plane of the solar system, it runs into various amounts of debris, dust and meteoroids. Data suggests that such accretion played the dominant role in the climate for the last million years.

Have these planets ever lined up before? Yes, and no correlation to catastrophes has been made with the dates that they did line up in the past. Astronomers call the idea of planet alignment causing a catastrophe absurd.
"Only 38 years ago, on February 4, 1962, the Sun, the Moon, and all the planets from Mercury to Saturn were clustered within a 17-degree area of the sky. To top it off there was a total eclipse of the Sun! Doom seemed certain to many astrologers and students of Nostradamus. Fortunately, nothing happened. There were no severe earthquakes, no devastating floods, no mass destruction."
"History shows that planetary alignments are harmless. In fact, alignments like the one in 1962 and in 2000 are fairly common. The five naked-eye planets cluster together in the sky within a circle 25 degrees or less in diameter once every 57 years, on average. The next time it will happen is September 8, 2040...Many people believe that when planets are aligned their gravity and tidal forces are magnified, leading to extraordinary effects here on Earth. This seems reasonable. After all, "spring tides" (peak ocean tides that arise bi-monthly) occur when the Sun, the Moon and the Earth are nearly in a straight line around the times of the New Moon and Full Moon. Shouldn't even more powerful tides arise when lots of planets are lined up? No... The strongest Earthly tides are caused by the nearest object -- the Moon. If all the planets were to align perfectly with each one as close as possible to the Earth, their gravity would raise the ocean tides by just one twenty-fifth of one millimeter. Typical ocean tides on Earth caused by the Moon and Sun are thousands of times larger than that. Clearly, the contribution of the planets is entirely negligible, and it makes no difference to the Earth whether they are aligned or not." ( quoted from science.nasa.gov )
Before the 1982 alignment, a book called 'The Jupiter Effect' received wide attention with its prediction that California would be rocked by a major earthquake indirectly caused by the 1982 alignment of the planets. It turned out to be all wrong.
Again, it is the evidence of asteroid stikes that now are being matched to dates of global catastrophe throughout history. More on the asteroid danger

Richard Noone's Home Page
A nice graphic of the alignment - from the Church of St. Expedite who believe that it will be Armageddon.
Books on all sorts of disasters and survival and preparedness supplies
Planets align, but don't whine; everything's fine.
The late Edgar Cayce, a prominent New Age psychic, forecast that Earth's axis would shift in 2000 or 2001, causing massive destruction. Some expect this on May 5 or May 17.

- Predictions and Prophesy