"Dan Weir" wrote in message
om...

I've got you there...if a 7-mile-wide asteroid hit Earth, certainly 90
percent of the world's population would perish. Ask any scientist
who's studied the so-called "Crater of Doom" that wiped out the
dinosaurs 65 million years ago. And that's not the fevered (but
brilliant) imagination of Steven Spielberg...that is the collective
conclusion of hundreds of geologists, astronomers, historians, climate
specialists, paleontologists (sp?), and so on, and so forth.


No doubt. An impact from a 7 mile wide asteroid would be very bad news.


I suspect that the "Planet X" you are referring to is indeed an
asteroid (but it just may indeed be a planet - see below).

Planet X is supposedly an Earth sized planet, if I recall correctly. To be
fair to the SW prophets though, Planet X wasn't supposed to actually impact
with Earth, just fly by and spin the poles around enough to make the world
largely inhabitable. The flyby vs. impact distinction isn't one the SW
broadcasters often make.

What is the
boundary between an asteroid and a planet anyway? Asteriods have
gravity, they have moons, and the larger ones have atmospheres. All
characteristics of planets. Remember, the word "asteroid" comes from
the Greek expression for "star-like" because these relatively small
heavenly bodies looked like pinpoints of light compared to the planets
in our Solar System.
Back to Chuck: Before Y2K, he told his audience about a
science-fiction book written in the 1950's called "The Big Red Eye."
This horror tome was about a 4,000-mile-wide planet that had been torn
from its solar system near the center of our galaxy and had travelled
billions of light-years since almost the beginning of the universe
(the "big bang"). Somehow, by an incredibly bad streak of luck, the
planet surfed and coasted on the gravitational pull of various stars,
supernovae, planets, and various and sundry space junk, to land smack
dab in the middle of OUR solar system - and on a collision course with
Earth.

Yes! I suspect all such fantasies were rooted in Percival Lowell's search
for what he called Planet X, before WW2. He was looking for slight
perturbations in the orbits of other planets. No doubt some imaginative
people said "What if something's coming our way?"


At first, of course, the planet (which, like Mars, is red in
appearance) looks like a faint red star. Then it gradually gets
brighter, and eventually it appears as a small red disk visible at
night - the "Big Red Eye" - and by then Earth is racked with mile-high
tidal waves that wipe out New York, Washington, Israel, the west coast
of Africa, and Australia. Of course, there is a complete breakdown of
society and the global economy, and mankind reverts back to the early
Bronze Age.

That's the Planet X Prophesy!

And that's as far as Chuck Harder got with the book. Mind you, I
haven't read it (I'd love to), yet I find Chuck's lurid description at
once repelling and compelling. Remember, Chuck Harder was comparing
"The Big Red Eye" to the Y2K fiasco. That proves that he is NO
MODERATE. He, like the "shortwave prophets" you eloquently describe,
is a lunatic-fringe, end-of-the-world, Armageddonist, survivalist
KOOK!

In comparison to the other SW hosts, Chuck Harder is a moderate
lunatic-fringe, end-of-the-world, Armageddonist, survivalist KOOK. He's
hardly in the big league of false scary predictions with Brother Stair, Alex
Jones, James Lloyd, Texe Marrs or any of a dozen SWers. Chuck Harder's
scary stories are too infrequent, and carry too little impact for him to run
with the big dogs. Chuck Harder is a single shot .22 in a world of .50
caliber machine guns.



That is my opinion. Sorry you don't like it, but life's a bitch - and
then you marry one!

Wait 'till you find out the penalty for bigamy!

Frank Dresser