Gucciardi writes: "Flammable craters spanning acres wide and leaking radiation...are now ushering in concerns about serious Earth changes in the near future."

The 200 foot long sinkhole in Ohio is approximately eighty-five feet deep as well as a hundred feet wide. (photo: Times Reporter)

Media Silence on Mass Sinkholes

By Anthony Gucciardi, NaturalSociety

03 December 12

ave you heard of the massive sinkholes popping up around the nation? Flammable craters spanning acres wide and leaking radiation, monster sinkholes described as 'apocalyptic' have forced residents out of homes, expelled radiation into the environment, and are now ushering in concerns about serious Earth changes in the near future. If you've heard of these sinkholes, chances are it has been from the alternative media.

It's a hot issue on forums, some social networking sectors, and certain alternative talk radio programs. Sure, it has come up in some mainstream reports here and there, but there are virtually no in-depth pieces tying everything together. And they often fail to mention the scale of these sinkholes, behemoth anomalies that can swallow up 100 foot trees, houses, with the latest Ohio sinkhole devouring 4 football fields of land. Events that are sending residents scrambling.

You can see a video of the Ohio sinkhole below:

Fracking, Drilling, Mining Responsible for Sinkhole Changing Earth Events?

A more serious issue, even beyond the dangers posed by these radiation-leaking sinkholes, is how man-made processes like fracking and excessive drilling are changing the planet on a larger scale. Bloomberg reports that fracking is a likely cause for a dramatic rise (sixfold) in earthquake activity from 2000 to 2011. Not to mention contamination of the water and food supply.

Extreme mining practices by Texas Brine and others are also responsible for triggering the sinkholes.

So are these actions 'waking up' the New Madrid fault line? In case you're not familiar, the New Madrid fault line was responsible for the legendary 1811-1812 earthquakes dubbed the 'New Madrid' earthquakes. Extremely powerful and devastating earthquakes that are the most significant earthquakes to hit the United States in all of recorded history. As Investment Watch explains, the research indicating fracking and excessive mining in the expansion of earthquakes along the Madrid line reveals a concerning and plausible reality.

It is important to note that the New Madrid fault line includes areas within Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi. In the event of a large (8.0 or higher) earthquake along the fault line, however, a much greater area would likely be affected.

Outside of the repercussions of the sinkholes, such as the radiation issue and major possibility of implosion or massive disruption in the area, what are the larger consequences of invasive fracking? Could a massive disaster be the result of greedy corporations endangering the entire nation? Furthermore, why is the mainstream media shying away from the issue completely?

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+81 # froghair 2012-12-03 17:05

It's pretty evident that the mainstream media isn't going to investigate this until they are forced to! They are too busy reinforcing the corporate outlook on every aspect of life here in the US! This is another reason to be thankful that we have the internet and good investigators like RSN to keep us informed.

+68 # 666 2012-12-03 18:07

Why are we not fracking wall st & k st??????

+24 # Archie1954 2012-12-03 21:22

And what about mysterious vibrations affecting the whole country just about. The USGS records them but doesn't know what is causing them.

+43 # Cactusman 2012-12-03 21:27

This might sound flighty and airy-fairy, but we really need to envision and support a breakthrough type of energy process (or several) that totally obviates the need for us to burn carbon fuels for our most basic energy needs. Without something that changes the game utterly, and makes using so much carbon fossil fuel IRRELEVANT, we are going to continue to have all of the problems that come with extracting it and using it, including climate change, terrible pollution, huge money in politics, and a deadlock of corporations over our basic energy needs and money supply of our nation and our planet.

The world is not going to end on Dec 21, 2012. The only end that happens then is a big cosmic cycle, and maybe in the open, unexplored space that is left behind we can allow game-changing ideas to relegate the destructive ones to their necessary place in the dustbins of history.

If you can't dream it you can't get there. I understand that this is close to "magical thinking", but really, in some ways isn't that all we have left? No Jesus isn't going to get us out of this. Our own collective willingness to imagine and press for a better future will.

Obama's reelection over the forces of darkness and greedy patriarchy was part of the turning point we are at now.I hope we will make it in time to undo the damage we have done.

+19 # tbcrawford 2012-12-04 09:00

If you can't dream it you can't get there.

Great post...but before we start dreaming, we have to wake up to devastation going on...and it is touching every aspect of our lives! Then we can follow our dreams, hoping will we have time to resolve the issues that threaten life itself. Occupy was an inspiration for pointing out that the emperor has no clothes...some of us saw that this was true. We must tell the others and get to work. There is no time to lose.

+4 # davideovinchi 2012-12-04 12:36

Cactusman:but we really need to envision and support a breakthrough type of energy process (or several) that totally obviates the need for us to burn carbon fuels for our most basic energy needs. Without something that changes the game utterly, and makes using so much carbon fossil fuel IRRELEVANT,

Watch THRIVE -youtube, see the list of free energy inventions as well as power that needed no cross country wires which were crushed by the power companies as far back as the last century (both auto and oil). Some of these inventors were beaten to death and every ounce of product research and records seized by our FBI.
I don't mean to discourage but to RALLY!

OBAMA? Check these two short new articles about bedbuds Obama and Monsanto.
Don't look for much except more to RALLY over.

http://www.naturalnews.com/038200_natural_food_Michelle_Obama_organics.html

http://www.naturalnews.com/038199_Monsanto_bailout_European_Union.html

+20 # Street Level 2012-12-03 21:27

I read an earlier RSN article on how some Haliburton employees lost an 8 inch radio active rod in the desert that they use in the fracking operation.
It didn't make sense to me that they would use it in fracking but now this sink hole is leaking radiation. As if the poisonous crap they already put down there isn't enough.

-19 # cafetomo 2012-12-03 22:45

Don't have one of these, yet? Get yourself some razor wire and plenty guns, 'cause folks that do have them, will be coming around your neck of the woods to live, now.

-20 # R Miller 2012-12-03 22:56

I'm not entirely sure this was a balanced report. I'm no fan of fracking, but I fail to see how activity hundreds of feet below the surface can lead to a sinkhole--an essentially surface phenomenon. As for fracking leading to an earthquake in the New Madrid area--it should be pointed out that the source of the original N.M. quake was a buildup of sediment at the mouth of the Mississippi River exerting a lever effect. Not fracking. This article needs some more research.

+21 # Jackpine 2012-12-04 11:57

What do you think supports the surface features? Turtles?

Sort of like saying "I don't see how pulling this box out of the bottom of the stack will affect anything way up there at the top."

As for New Madrid being caused by sedimentation, sure--but that's not the only possible source of a "lever effect" to use your language. Many things can cause a fault to move. For example--and I'm not saying this is the specific cause--fracking involves pushing a lot of little, round sand grains, just like tiny ball bearings, down into the fractured layers of rock beneath the earth's surface. The sand that is used for fracking is from riverine deposits exactly because the individual grains have been tumbled by nature into little spheroids. Surely you can imagine how intrusions of this sort could facilitate slippage along faultlines.

0 # JJS 2012-12-05 17:18

Read the happy, pappy, sappy ODNR site fact sheet:

http://ohiodnr.com/Portals/11/pdf/wastewater-fact-sheet.pdf

Then read the ecowatch report:

http://ecowatch.org/2012/first-ever-fracking-test/

Is there a disconnect somewhere????

+30 # fdawei 2012-12-04 00:35

We are drilling and fracking ourselves into oblivion. Mainstream media won't report it until a sinkhole appears beneath their very building.

Why must we reply on alternative media such as Reader Supported News to inform us of the cataclysm that awaits?

However, because of them, we have the truth, unadorned and factual. We must continue to be thankful for and offer support to RSN.

+14 # Grey Cells 2012-12-04 00:39

Some time ago I set out to show the effects that underground nuclear testing had on the incidence of earthquakes in the US. I found a definite correlation, and I then did a quick 'whip around' the globe, to show that the US underground testing link with the frequency of earthquakes, was unique. Sure enough, all the other instances of earthquakes, over time and location, did not match the US data - except one: Greece showed a similar trend to that of the US. I wrote this off, as coincidence, and rued the fact that the Grecian data, had at least in part, destroyed my nice correlation. However some time later, the penny did dropeth ... the USSR was also conducting lots of underground (and above ground) tests, over more or less the same time-frame as the US data which I used as temporal reference for all the other controls. The regions about Greece and the adjoining lands, are very seismically active (the northern margin of the African tectonic plate) - at least as much as the central and western margins of the American tectonic plate.

+5 # Grey Cells 2012-12-04 00:40

Fracking, as compared with nuclear testing, is quite respectable, and is well shielded by governments and media . Conservation groups would be loathe to provoke an open debate, as sooner or later the question would be raised " which would you prefer coal gas power generation, or nuclear testing for military purposes along with nuclear powered electricity generation?"; the implication is, that the military industry, knowing that nuclear power generation could only be economically viable if the industry involved nuclear weapons, would be happy to preside over the mentality of nuclear - everything.

+8 # Dion Giles 2012-12-05 03:40

Not sure fracking and nuclear energy are alternatives to each other. Uranium and plutonium reactions are self-driven as they produce enough neutrons to keep the show on the road. Nuclear energy from thorium is produced as long as neutrons are externally supplied and stops when the supply stops. Much safer and cleaner than U and Pu, and world supply of Th is more than adequate.

Why is Th not pursued? First, because U and Pu are up and running, second, because Th won't fuel nuclear weapons (no chain reaction) and blow millions of "disposable" people to ash.

Thorium is just one alternative to both carbon (damage from fracking, destruction of coal-bearing mountains, noxious pursuit of tar sands, endless devastating oil spills) and uranium (Three Mile Island, Sellafield, Chernobyl, Fukushima, nuclear weapons). There are many other alternatives, some of which even now can be developed to supply both base load and portable power.

+20 # Ralph Averill 2012-12-04 02:32

"Could a massive disaster be the result of greedy corporations endangering the entire nation? Furthermore, why is the mainstream media shying away from the issue completely?"
The second question is answered by the first question.

+15 # vt143 2012-12-04 04:56

"Could a massive disaster be the result of greedy corporations endangering the entire nation? Furthermore,why is the mainstream media shying away from the issue completely?"

...Because they are owned by greedy corporations!

+18 # Glen 2012-12-04 05:22

I live near the New Madrid fault and was extremely tense when fracking began in Arkansas. There were as many as 38 tremors a day during that period. This fault as well as other big ones in the U.S. is not to be messed with. A sizable earthquake would take out major cities and destroy much in a wide swath along that line. When the earthquakes occurred in the early 1800's lakes formed, the land became mushy and unstable, and now we have huge cities, such as Memphis built on that unstable ground.

Any earthquake along a fault line of size could devastate the U.S. economy totally, and ruin thousands of lives.

+11 # RLF 2012-12-04 05:27

They wouldn't care as long as it made them a buck...they'll take a helli out!

+11 # Magginkat 2012-12-04 06:05

The first time we will hear about it via MSM will be when it happens to one of our one percenters homes.

+6 # Jackpine 2012-12-04 12:00

That will be the day you see Satan on ice skates. Neighborhoods inhabited (I'm tempted to say infested) by the 1%, and especially the .01%, will not be fracked.

-37 # Abigail 2012-12-04 07:40

This problem emphasizes the hype around global warming. The fact is that we have had many episodes of global warming and cooling throughout the ages- long before there were people to blame them on. We have glacial striations on rocks in the southern states, coral embedded on rocks near the Great Lakes, and myriads of other examples of multiple Ice Ages. Why does man in his hubris thinks that we are the cause of these events?

+11 # tbcrawford 2012-12-04 09:12

Why does man in his hubris thinks that we are the cause of these events?

Probably for the same reasons many of us do...look at those records you cite up to the present. The trends suddenly take off catastrophicall y.

But, quoting my 15-year-old grandson, most of my friends don't like to think about things like climate change...I add, nor to his parents.

+22 # wise old owl 2012-12-04 10:07

Abigail, the fact that the Earth has warmed and cooled over hundreds of millions of years does NOT mean that we humans cannot affect climate. You are falling for a disinformation campaign whipped up by the fossil fuel industries.

The facts are: (1) CO2 is a greenhouse gas that causes global warming; (2) humans have been pumping CO2 gasses into the atmosphere at ever increasing rates for a couple of hundred years, resulting in (3) accelerated global warming that is human-caused. To conclude anything else is "magical thinking" (i.e. the gasses "magically" have no effect). Those who try to muddy the issue with uncertainty are supporters of the polluting industries that profit from this arrangement.

If buggy whip manufacturers had the political clout that fossil fuel companies now have, we'd be walking through piles of horse sh*t!

+15 # Cactusman 2012-12-04 11:11

CO2 is a greenhouse gas. There have been other causes of increasing releases of large amounts of CO2 in the past that have caused planetary warming. WE are the cause of THIS round. Not every round, THIS ONE.

There is a strong correlation between rising CO2 and warming climate, and dropping CO2 and a cooling one. The agent of increased CO2 has varied throughout geological history. Once again, HUMANS are causing this particular session, and therefore the planet will be warming as a direct result of the 38 billion tons of CO2 we are pumping into the atmosphere every single year now.

Why the hell is that so difficult for people to understand?

+13 # Jackpine 2012-12-04 14:00

As Sinclair Lewis said, "It is very difficult to get a man to understand something when his income depends on his not understanding it."

0 # JJS 2012-12-05 17:28

Skeptial of the skeptics:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/human-co2-smaller-than-natural-emissions.htm

+8 # Third_stone 2012-12-05 07:13

We are extinct, but we don't know it yet. While half the people see the problems of this sort and want to act, the other half blocks action and buys bigger and faster passenger trucks. Because we cannot stop fighting each other, we are finished.

+5 # MainStreetMentor 2012-12-05 08:56

Fracking, (the destructive lunatic methodology for extracting natural gas), is equivalent to selling the mule to buy a plow: these people are seeking profits at the cost of devastating the very ground on which they stand. There are better, safer, less destructive methods for attaining natural gas. We are allowing these people to slowly, methodically kill-off our citizens while destroying the ecology of our land. Where are the elected officials who will actively, openly fight these ecological rapists?

+5 # DaveM 2012-12-05 12:50

I would like to see more details on this. Is there any data on the cause? Could it be the result of fracking gas wells or is it merely the result of overuse of aquifers or similar activity? And what's with the "radioactive" bit? How much radiation and what is its source?

This article could be far more informative than it is and I hope to see a follow-up.

+2 # independentmind 2012-12-06 13:11

I live in Ohio and our local newspaper did have a small article on the sinkhole. I have not looked up where it was in Ohio, but it did cross my mind that fracking or mining could cause this type of collapse. It did mention that the hole appeared next to a lake.

0 # Salty 2012-12-06 23:03

Ah, we'll last another 50 years. Why complain. Most of us alive now will be playing our heavenly harps when the old mountain sinks into the deep blue. Forget it! .

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