"Believers have taken the end-of-the world fears to the Internet with hundreds of thousands of websites and blogs. Yet others are capitalizing on the heightened interest. Films depicting the end of the world – including the 2009 movie, “2012″ – are contributing to the mounting hype as well as to misinformation, experts say."But as we know, we're still here today. Some people took it seriously but most didn't. They were planning end of the world parties.
There are some things in life that we cannot predict, like when the world will actually end. We cannot predict what other people will do. If they will cause a car accident or commit a crime. We cannot predict fires. We can only plan on the possibilities and respond to them.
There are things we can predict. Disasters we can see coming because researchers base the prediction on years of watching them from start to finish.
Scientist knew Hurricane Katrina was coming because other researchers developed the technology to see them, understood how they formed and where they would go. They did it to save lives. They thought if they could see something coming ahead of time, they could warn people to prepare and seek safety.
In 2012 research had been ignored and thousands died. They did not die because of an ancient calendar. They did not die because of a natural disaster. They died because the disaster was caused by ignorance.
I met with an Iraq veteran yesterday. He was a Marine, deployed in Fallujah during the Iraq War. He has not just been dealing with memories of death and destruction there. He is dealing with the pain and misery of losing a friend to suicide and blaming himself for it. He didn't know what to do or say to his buddy in crisis. No one told him what he needed to know. No one told him what 40 years of research discovered. No one told him about his own PTSD or how he could heal.
He was feeling many emotions as we talked. The biggest question he had was why no one told him any of it before. All the years of suffering and struggling after his combat battle was over, he was alone fighting another battle because of it.
About a year ago I had a call from an Army Ranger. He was also in Iraq when he switched seats with another soldier. Seconds later a bullet hit his friend. As he laid dying in the arms of the Ranger, he looked up at him and said, "It should have been you." There is no way the Ranger could have predicted what would happen by such a small thing as switching seats but he still blamed himself.
A Marine was sick and unable to go on patrol one night in Iraq. Another Marine took his place. When the Marines returned, they were missing one. The Marine was killed. The sick Marine was blamed for the death of the other.
Last month over 8,000 Moms had to visit graves of their children because they were veterans and died by suicide. This month it will be over 8,000 Dads. How many still blame themselves? How many will never know that it wasn't their fault?
This hangs on my wall to remind me, sadly remind me, that we've known all these years what was coming but never paid attention.
In that research this is what they knew in 1978. It was the warning of the coming storm. A predictor of lives being lost in a cataclysmic event that was supposed to cause great change in all of us. Few heard it but far too many experienced it.
UPDATE
I took pamphlet down and with great sadness, I began to read it again. In the introduction written by Charles Figley, it summed up the condition of the American public and their lack of interest in what happens after war unless it came home to them.
"Gerald R. Ford, when he was President of our country, asked the American public to put Vietnam behind them and forget it. I can think of no Presidential injunction that has been more effective. As a Vietnam Veteran, myself, I believe it's both healthful and necessary to put the bitterness and dissention of the war years behind us. But to forget the Vietnam War, its troubled veterans and their families would be unforgivable.
Of course that was long before President Bush told the American public to go shopping.
"As you know, I have been consulting closely with our commanders and the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the strategy in Iraq and on the broader war on terror.But they didn't have all they needed during combat or when they came back home. As the speech went on that is when the moment came and veterans cringed.
One of my top priorities during this war is to ensure that our men and women wearing the uniform have everything they need to do their jobs."
"The unemployment rate has remained low at 4.5 percent. The recent report on retail sales shows a strong beginning to the holiday shopping season across the country. And I encourage you all to go shopping more."
Recently FOX News contributor Dr. Ablow released this about PTSD and how WWII veterans were better than veterans today.
Returning home from D-Day when PTSD did not exist
FoxNews.com
By Dr. Keith Ablow
Published June 06, 2014
"To do what they did, they had to withstand crashing waves of the fight-or-flight neurotransmitters norepinephrine and dopamine. Yet they ultimately had to control their fears, with millions of neurons in their brains pouring out substantial amounts of the calming neurotransmitter serotonin. If their minds were made of muscles, theirs were running the equivalent of a full marathon."
Within "The Etiology of Combat Related Post Traumatic Stress Disorders" Jim Goodwin Psy.D wrote this.
WWI to WWII 300% increase in psychiatric casualties. "At one point in the war the number of men being discharged from service for psychiatric reasons exceed the total number of men being drafted."
If you live without a TV or computer it is very hard to see something coming like a hurricane but you have to be a hermit living in a part of the world where hurricanes never happen to not know they happen somewhere.
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