More Problems with the 90° Earth Flip Theory
A Critique of a Catastrophist's "Best Evidence" -- An Advanced Catastrophism Discussion, Part 2
"Striking evidence that the surface areas of the earth have moved enormous distances during geologic history relative to its axis of rotation comes from the study of glaciers. Observations from around the globe show that almost all the land areas of the earth have been glaciated at some time in the past, including parts of Africa, India, and South America presently located on or near the equator. Without postulating either a substantial shifting of the earth's surface relative to its axis of rotation or a change in the axis, equatorial glaciation is inexplicable. If global temperatures dropped to levels sufficient to glaciate even the equator at some time in the past, all life on earth would have been destroyed. If, however, the areas of Africa, India, and South America which are presently located in tropical locales once shifted to the polar regions and shifted from there to their present locations, their ancient glaciation is not at all mysterious." -- Chapter 29, Polar Wander by Frank N. Magil, World in Peril, page 190
One of the most important things to know in order to survive a global cataclysm involving an Earth shift (a change of rotational axis or a crustal displacement) is knowing where the future poles will be (if possible). Being situated in a polar zone post-shift will almost certainly mean a frozen death (à la the Mammoths) for any who manage to survive the floods, radiation, lightning, earthquakes, hail storms, climatic extremes and solar ejections that presumably characterize a micronova, extreme superflare, or similar event. Knowing where the next polar zones will be is of paramount importance in selecting a location in which to survive the next Earth shift, seemingly underway.
This article is a follow up to: The Mammoth Conundrum, which in my opinion, disproves that the Earth consistently turns over 90-degrees when undergoing a pole shift. Please read that article prior to this one in order to understand the points of debate. This article is a continued evaluation of Ben Davidson's pole flip hypothesis (explained in the link above). This time I critically evaluate what he considers to be the best evidence for his pole flip theory.
Catastrophist's "Best Evidence"
World in Peril: The Origin, Mission & Scientific Findings of the 46th / 72nd Reconnaissance Squadron by Ken White (1994), (<--- free download) is the book that Mr. Davidson considers as the best evidence (Source 2) (Source 3) in support for his 90-degree pole flip theory. Unfortunately many of the claims that Davidson makes about this book are untrue, misrepresented, contradicted or unsupported by the text itself. To fully understand my assessment you would need to read, World in Peril, and compare it to Davidson's books and videos about the book. I will summarize my findings here.
Ken White's book is a military history of Project Nanook, a formerly classified secret U.S. Air Force mission to prepare for a possible Russian attack coming over the Arctic into North America. The mission took place during the years 1946-1948 and was tasked with reconnaissance and navigation throughout the Arctic Circle. The mission was headed by Maynard E. White and was declassified in the year 1988. Following the declassification of the mission (40 years after 1948), Maynard's son, Ken White, published the book, World in Peril, as a tribute to the mission and its historical importance. The primary finding of significance to catastrophism that came out of Project Nanook was the realization that the Earth's magnetic north "pole was 125 to 200 miles north of where it was predicted to be according to projections from findings obtained on earlier expeditions. This indicated that the north magnetic pole had moved toward the geographic pole much faster than previously anticipated." (World in Peril, page 195) This alarming discovery alerted the U.S. Government to the possibility of a geophysical planetary change with potentially catastrophic consequences. This finding was probably the first key piece of evidence in modern times that a geomagnetic excursion may be underway, giving humanity the opportunity to prepare.
I have read White's book several times to search for confirmation of Ben Davidson's statements about it. I have found many gross misrepresentations of the text by Davidson. The following statements in bold are attributed to, but do not appear to be supported by what Ken White actually writes in the book. Ben Davidson does not cite any other sources for the information in this book other than the book itself.
I will go point by point...
Ben Davidson's Claims
Ben Davidson, Weatherman's Guide to the Sun (2020), (<---download) page 249:
"In the great work of Major Maynard E. White’s son, Ken White – World in Peril, we get full accounts and actual Pentagon documents describing the discovery of this cycle in the Arctic in the late 1940s. It describes the conclusions reached by the Pentagon and Office of Strategic Services (OSS- later would become the CIA) that this cycle occurred approximately every 12,000 years, and it was indeed a magnetic excursion, ice age, and major biosphere extinction event. Major White also reported that they were concerned that the next event was imminent and evidenced by the ongoing magnetic changes on earth."
Almost this entire paragraph appears to be false. I saw no Pentagon documents, just a diagram that is supposed to represent a Rand Corporation model of the pole flip. It is not clear from the book World in Peril, if the diagram was from an actual Rand Corporation report or if Ken White had the concept illustrated for his book. In Ken White's book there is no mention of the Pentagon or the OSS discussing a 12,000 year disaster cycle, magnetic excursion, ice age, or major biosphere extinction event. If Davidson is citing other sources I would like to see them.
Ben Davidson, COSMIC DISASTER | CIA: Classified (2019):
"The [Project Nanook] scientists found much more than they bargained for when they got their boots on the ground. They found evidence of marine strata lifted to significant altitude. Time after time... All in all, Major White's team believed that they had unearthed nine levels of catastrophe on the planet. These findings were reported at the Pentagon, attended also by Paul Sipple of the Rand Corporation and presumably members of the Office of Strategic Services where Charles Hapgood was a key player in geophysics and working with major White's findings and Dr Sipple's experiments."
Similar claims were made in this more recent interview...
Ben Davidson, Micro Nova Theory w Ben Davidson | Forbidden Frontier #53 (2024):
"There were many Pentagon meetings about that with the OSS. If you don't know what the OSS is, that's the Office of Strategic Services which morphed into the CIA. They were there too. Them and the Rand Corporation, who still to this day has their hand in so many secret government things. All determined that the Earth does a 90 degree flip, that this is a geomagnetic excursion and all these other things."
There is no mention in World in Peril, of Project Nanook making any of the findings (marine strata or nine levels of catastrophe) that Ben Davidson claims in the paragraph above. Nor is there any mention of the Office of Strategic Services or Charles Hapgood being involved. Davidson provides no evidence for his presumptions.
Ben Davidson, The Next End of the World - The Rebirth of Catastrophism (2020), (<---download) page 15:
"The work [World in Peril] described several interesting points about the evidence discovered, specifically the layers of tropical and polar sedimentary evidence found near the arctic shelves:
(a)- The layers appear to be separated by ~10,000 - 12,000 years.
(b)- The layers (5 discovered) each include a magnetic field excursion.
(c)- The Earth’s crust shifts back and forth, putting the current polar regions in the tropics and then back to the poles.
(d)- The major magnetic shift takes place rapidly (~1 day), driving the cyclical deluge and ice age.
(e)- The scientists initially thought they had found 9 layers, but further study revealed one event was so bad it actually thrust an entire slab overtop another to make it appear that the layers had doubled."
Point (a) - 10,000 - 12,000 year cycles. Ken White, World in Peril (1994), page 198, writes:
"There have been many attempts to determine if such 'ice ages' occur in cycles, and if so, when the next one could be expected to begin, namely the astronomical theory, Croll's Theory, Milankovich's approach, and core samplings, to name a few. [footnote 7 - lmbrie, John, Ice Ages, Solving the Mystery, pp. 61-122] If crustal shift is interrelated with the onset of ice ages, then the recurring patterns of ice ages should help us predict crustal shifts. For example, one ice age theory based on earth strata studies indicates that following each ice age, broad-leafed deciduous trees cover the earth, followed after many thousands of years by conifers, later by grasslands, and finally by wind-blown silt of the next glacial age. Repeated layers of this soil strata combination suggest a predictable ten to twelve thousand year cyclical pattern. 'On the basis of this definition the present interglacial age - the Holocene Epoch - began about 10,000 years ago...and can be expected to end within the next 2,000 years.' [footnote 8 - same as above]"
The book does suggest a 10,000 - 12,000 year cycle but I found no mention of an expedition by Major White or the team of Project Nanook discovering anything about this cycle.
Point (b) - 5 sediment layers. Ken White, World in Peril (1994), page 196-198:
"Crustal shift, as an explanation for the geologic upheavals of the past, would also account for the fantastic tectonic stresses that are the probable causative factors in the formation of new mountain ranges. During a scientific meeting at the Pentagon, it was discussed how the flip phenomenon would cause a 'cooling effect', followed by a bilateral 'contraction' of the earth and the formation of another 'ring of mountain ranges around the planet'. Counting the existing chains of mountain ranges of this type on land and within the oceans, they concluded that at least five major polar 'flips' had occurred in fairly recent geologic history."
They discussed 5 mountain ranges, not 5 layers of sediment. The mountain formation was not specifically correlated with a magnetic field excursion.
Point (c) - I found no evidence of this claim of alternating tropical and polar sediment layers and will address this issue more completely, later on in this article, as it is the most important claim that Ben Davidson makes and the key detail that his theory rests upon.
Point (d) - While the book does suggest that the flip may be rapid I did not see anything stating that the flip would occur in ~1 day.
Ken White, World in Peril (1994), pages 191-194, Frank S. Magill states:
"During most of the twentieth century, almost all of the geologists who were daring enough to accept the theory of continental drift assumed that the movement of surface features of the earth relative to the axis of rotation and relative to one another was very slow, on the order of a few inches per year at most. Then an increasing number of earth scientists began arguing for short periods of relatively rapid movement of the earth's crust and long periods of stability...
If, as more and more geophysicists are coming to believe, the shifting of the earth's surface does take place rapidly at infrequent intervals and for reasons not currently well understood, the phenomenon is of the utmost importance. Modem civilization would not survive the enormous climatic dislocations that must accompany such a shift. It is therefore imperative that the phenomenon known as polar wander be studied to the point that it can be, if not prevented, at least predicted and prepared for."
Point (e) - Mistaken 9 layers. In the video: Cover-Up of Catastrophe | Which Is More Important? (2019), Mr. Davidson states that the team of Project Nanook found tropical corals in 9 alternating layers, later to be determined as 5 layers. In other instances Davidson only mentions the 9 layers and talks about fossils or lines of black coal, not corals. Davidson contradicts himself here.
Ken White, World in Peril (1994), page 186:
"Yet on Spitzbergen there is ample evidence that tropical corals once grew on the shores of the island. [footnote 3 - Hapgood, Charles H., The Path ofthe Pole, p.65]."
The 9 layers were related to tree trunks, not corals, fossils, or coal. I found nothing in the book that supports Davidson's statement: "The scientists initially thought they had found 9 layers, but further study revealed one event was so bad it actually thrust an entire slab overtop another to make it appear that the layers had doubled." I will cover this more in the next section.
Several of Ben Davidson's claims about Ken White's book deserve a deeper look.
Issue 1) Sediment Layers
The most important claim about this book is that Project Nanook found evidence in the Arctic of alternating polar and tropical fossils, 9 layers (or 5, depending on which of Davidson's quotes we are referencing) deep into the soil. If this was true, this would constitute very strong evidence of a 90-degree pole flip and flip back.
Ben Davidson, The Earth Will Turn Over | POLE SHIFT (2024):
"They [Project Nanook] not only found evidence of a magnetic pole shift every 10,000 to 12,000 years but that the Earth turns over 90°. They dug down and found alternating polar and tropical fossil layers, one after another, each about 12,000 years thick in time."
Ben Davidson, Earth Disaster Cycle: The Cycle Resets Soon (2023), page 45:
"In the book 'World in Peril' by Ken White, he published documents saved by his father Major Maynard E. White, from Project Nanook in the Arctic, and subsequent meetings at the Pentagon. Simply put, they found alternating layers of tropical and polar fossils - each ~12,000 years thick. This suggested that the Arctic region alternated between polar and tropical locations every 12,000 years. They found 9 layers. This material was classified, along with the Pentagon documents explaining that it was a magnetic excursion/pole that correlated with the tilt.
Page 48:
"The direct evidence of alternating polar and tropical fossil layers in the Arctic, and the corresponding classified material kept by Major White forces us to believe that the tilting of the Earth and great tsunamis are real, and related to geomagnetic changes."
Ben Davidson, The Next End of the World - The Rebirth of Catastrophism (2020), page 14:
"In the late 1940s, his team [Maynard E. White] discovered the magnetic north pole, evidence of its instability, and evidence of catastrophe after catastrophe, seeming to put the polar region in a hot tropical climate then frigid polar position in alternating periods."
Page 37:
"The tropical and polar fossil layers discovered by Major White’s team, alternating every cycle, speak to a turning-over of the Earth -- the physics nightmare. The shifting back and forth of the crust helps us answer the mystery of the cause of the great waves, and also the persistence of magnetic pole position in similar places over eons."
Page 69:
"Both the local and global freezing makes sense from a micronova, but it gets help from geology if the crust shifts. [Chan] Thomas, Major White, the RAND Corporation and The Pentagon offered an alternative explanation for the freeze, and it does not really even require a solar micronova (just the crustal shift). If you recall, in their version [sic], the Earth’s crust unlocks from the mantle and shifts 90 degrees, with considerable influence from the magnetic fields on the water, metal and crystals of the crust. The next cycle, it flips back exactly as it was before. In this way, the evidence of magnetic pole position in the polar regions over eons of time makes sense... it just keeps coming back. It also explains why the layers alternate between polar and tropical conditions - every other cycle it is at the equator."
Ben Davidson, Earth Disaster Cycle: The Cycle Resets Soon (2023), pages 82-83:
"While performing this analysis, they [Project Nanook] wanted to dig deep into the sediment layers beneath the ice, but were immediately confronted with a puzzle that would lead to perhaps the greatest discovery in all of catastrophism. They got down a bit into the soil and realized that all the fossils had suddenly shifted from those of polar creatures, to those of tropical creatures. They found 9 layers, each measuring at a time period about 12,000 years long, and they alternated between polar and tropical fossils - back and forth. This information was classified by the government, and so was everything in the Pentagon meetings that took place in the months and years ahead. Major White technically committed a major crime by holding onto this evidence, and by giving it to his son (Ken White) to publish - which he did in the 1990's in a book called 'World in Peril.'
Most importantly, the Pentagon scientists and those from the Rand corporation determined that the alternating fossil layers were in fact evidence that the Earth turns over 90 degrees, then back, over and over again. They also worked out that the magnetic field directions were shifting in a massive way every time the Earth tilted, tying the magnetic excursions to the tilting of the Earth...
Project Nanook was classified and to this day there is no official acknowledgement that Major White's team found the magnetic and fossil and tilt evidence of the Earth disaster..."
These claims are repeated in these videos:
Earth Catastrophe Cycle | CIA Classified (2019)
Cover-Up of Catastrophe | Which Is More Important? (2019)
Earth Rotation Changes | Advanced Catastrophism (2021)
Salt-Free (Maybe) Live Q&A (2024)
Schumann Resonance, Solar Storm Discussion, Q&A (2024)
Micro Nova Theory w Ben Davidson | Forbidden Frontier #53 (2024)
What the book, World in Peril, actually states is different.
Ken White, World in Peril (1994), page 187:
"An expedition digging in the Canadian Archipelago only a few hundred miles from the geographic North Pole found under the ice and snow hundreds of frozen (not petrified) prehistoric tree trunks, shattered as though by massive tidal wave activity, and buried in the sand. Beneath the surface they found another layer of similar tree trunks, and beneath that layer yet another, until they had identified nine different levels of evidence of catastrophic change. [footnote: 11 - Discovery, 1989.] Not only was the Arctic apparently once a highly forested temperate or tropical region, but it was subject to periodic cataclysmic upheavals."
Several points:
a) The Arctic expedition is attributed to a source in the bibliography: Discovery, 1989. It does not appear to have any connection with Maynard E. White and Project Nanook (which took place during 1946-1948). The Discovery reference is from a source dated four decades later.
b) There was no mention of a determination of a 12,000 year time period between the layers in White’s book.
c) The paragraph from World in Peril does not explicitly state that the layers were alternating between tropical and polar layers. It does say that there are 9 layers of tree trunks found of either temperate or tropical trees. There is no mention of the fossils, corals, or coal, that Davidson talks about, in these layers. Without knowing the tree species and more about the composition of the sediment we can't deduce how the Earth may have shifted with each cataclysmic layer. But if you think back to my article, The Mammoth Conundrum, it could be that when the ocean overtakes the continents, it sweeps away forests and stirs up sediment, leaving tree trunk layer deposits each time.
d) I found nothing in Ken White's book, World in Peril, about the Maynard E. White, the Rand Corporation or the Pentagon discussing alternating sediment layers and linking the layers to magnetic excursion events.
e) In theory, the top layers of such a sediment layer (as proposed by Davidson) might not have time to fossilize and therefore might just be layers of lifeforms. Alternating tropical/polar layers of the soil would have to be found exclusively in either a tropical or polar area to support Davidson's theory. If such a flip pattern were present, every time the tropics went to the polar region, the animal and plant life would be frozen and preserved for a cycle. Then when this area went back to the tropics, there would be a thaw and decomposition. I would expect that much of the evidence would be lost with each return to the tropics and the signatures of such a shift would be greatly diminished.
f) As Bret Weinstein of the DarkHorse podcast expressed, it is difficult to imagine us having the level of biodiversity that we have today on Earth with such an extreme climate shift and hit to the biosphere every 12,000 years. A 90-degree flip at that frequency would be devastating. Mr. Weinstein: "The biota of the Earth are hard to square with a shift in Latitude that is that regular and that short a periodicity."
I find it difficult to believe that a complex and diverse ecosystem like the Amazon was able to develop within a 12,000 year period, for example.
Davidson has stated that the sediment layering evidence, proving the 90-degree flip, has been "pointed out by every catastrophist for centuries." and that the, "forecasts of the new pole positions go back to before they knew about the magnetic field changing right now. They suggested that the new poles were going to be somewhere in South America and somewhere near India." I would be interested in seeing which catastrophists say this, where they say this, and what evidence they might have. Davidson does not provide examples.
Further, Davidson claims that there is a hole in the ground, that he alleges the squadron of Project Nanook dug. He claims that this hole is now off limits: "In this one area of the Arctic that has been off limits since the first time they actually discovered this stuff. Nobody's allowed to go there and start digging."
Think about this statement for a minute. If the entire arctic is at the equator every other 12,000 year cycle as Davidson alleges, then someone should be able to dig down throughout almost anywhere in Siberia, Alaska, Canada, or northern Europe, in the northern hemisphere, to find such an alternating sediment pattern. Then there is the tropical counterparts and Antarctica where such alternating earth layers would exist too. If the government was going to prevent people from digging down to find these "classified" soil layers, they would have to stop humanity from digging over vast swaths of the globe. A very impractical task.
I found nothing about Project Nanook digging in the Arctic in Ken White's book. NOTHING. How does Ben Davidson know that they were digging up in the Arctic? In Alaska, the mining operations use high pressure water hoses to wash away sediment deposits while looking for gold. How does Davidson suppose that Maynard E. White and his squadron dug 9 layers deep into the frozen Arctic soil? With their hands? Shovels and picks? Have you tried to dig through permafrost?
Especially when Davidson claims that Project Nanook just happened to be up there by the north pole and decided to dig around. If they did not come prepared, how did they manage to dig through 9 layers of permafrost? And what would drive them to do so?
I suspect that there was"no official acknowledgement that Major White's team found the magnetic and fossil and tilt evidence of the Earth disaster," because they never did.
Issue 2) "Classified" Documents
Ben Davidson claims that the information found by Project Nanook regarding the possibility of a pole shift was classified and hidden from the public. The book, World in Peril, indicates the opposite.
Ben Davidson, Crustal Displacement & Disaster | Q and A Nov.9.2022:
"In the 1940s [Major White of Project Nanook] kept the classified documents. He kept the documents from the Pentagon meetings. He kept the documents from the Rand Corporation analysis that showed that just underneath the surface ice there was 12,000 [year] layer sediments of polar fossils, tropical fossils, polar fossils, tropical fossils [alternating], over and over again"
Ben Davidson, The Earth Will Turn Over | POLE SHIFT (2024):
"Major Maynard E. White, who went to the Arctic and Project Nanook kept the classified data and classified documents from the Pentagon meetings and he gave them to his son, Ken White, to publish years later in this book. [World in Peril]"
Ben Davidson, The Next End of the World - The Rebirth of Catastrophism (2020), page 14:
"Major White saved records from both the expedition and the meetings at the Pentagon, where the matter would quickly be classified, and he gave those documents to his son, Ken White, to publish after his passing. In 1994, Ken published World in Peril, including all the evidence his father had given him and a considerable amount of his own research."
Page 17:
"...the Pentagon documents scanned-in as part of Ken’s book."
These claims are repeated here:
The Earth Turns Over | Advanced Catastrophism (2021)
A Conversation With Ben Davidson (timestamp: 1:15:30) (2022)
The Earth Disaster | When They Figured It Out (2023)
Ben Davidson of Suspicious0bservers on Earth's coming reset! (2023)
Apocalypse When? Ben Davidson on DarkHorse LIVE (2024)
What the book actually says:
While there is a page on the RAND Corporations' modeling of an Earth flip, I saw no Pentagon meeting documents preserved by Major White in the book, World in Peril.
Ken White, World in Peril (1994), page 14:
"I have always felt that these accounts should be put into writing, but it wasn't until my own retirement from the Air Force that the opportunity presented itself."
I didn’t see anything about his father (Maynard White) asking Ken to publish the book after he passes away.
Project Nanook was primarily about polar navigation and reconnaissance to deter the military threat from Russia. This is what the book has to say about classification of the mission:
Ken White, World in Peril (1994), page 14:
"Were it not for the mandatory 40-year declassification of the unit records and the subsequent organization of the reunion effort, sufficient resources would not have surfaced to make this book possible.
We only began to communicate with many former squadron members in 1988, the year the squadron records were declassified, and soon thereafter individual stories and documentation began to emerge. The volume of corroborative information increased significantly after the unit's first reunion in 1989. Since then, many unit members have contributed immeasurably in terms of narrative reminiscences, anecdotes, and photographs."
On the classification of the potential cataclysm...
Ken White, World in Peril (1994), page 197:
"At one of the scientific meetings that Major White attended in the Pentagon in early 1948, the scientists discussed the advisability of alerting the public to the pending polar-flip phenomenon. None of the scientists would agree to withhold the information from the public; but, on the other hand, neither could they agree on how to release it. The knowledge of this phenomenon, some felt, could in itself destroy the moral fiber of society. Their fears were apparently unfounded when, in the early 1950s, information about the flip phenomenon was released in both a newspaper column and a magazine article, but surprisingly generated no responses from an apparently stunned, parochial or incredulous public." [Note: this is probably a reference to Hugh Brown's publicity.]
It was the military operations that were classified, not the pole shift information.
So Davidson's statement that he repeats again on page 16, of his book, The Next End of the World: "The disaster information was classified shortly after White’s expedition...", and his statements that Maynard E. White "committed a felony" and "stole" the documents, appear to be false. I found no evidence of government suppression of polar flip or catastrophe information in the book.
Issue 3) The Rand Corporation Model
Ben Davidson, The Next End of the World - The Rebirth of Catastrophism (2020), page 15:
"While White’s book was not released until 1994, the evidence suggests that this has been the classified understanding of the U.S. government since at least the late 1940s. While this version [the version in the Rand Corporation model] does not claim to know the mechanism causing the magnetic shift (just that they happen)..."
This is what the book states:
Ken White, World in Peril (1994), page 195:
"The data on terrestrial magnetism that the 46th/72nd Squadron obtained indicated that the magnetic pole was 125 to 200 miles north of where it was predicted to be according to projections from findings obtained on earlier expeditions. This indicated that the north magnetic pole had moved toward the geographic pole much faster than previously anticipated. Among the government scientists, the question arose as to what would happen when the magnetic and geographic poles coincided.
To answer this, under the project control of Dr. Paul A. Siple, the Rand Corporation was contracted to conduct lab studies using models of the earth constructed of concentric spheres - an inner sphere representing the electromagnetically-charged molten iron core of the earth whose axis defined the 'magnetic' poles; and an outer sphere representing the crust of the earth which rotated around a 'geographic' polar axis. It was determined through repeated experimentation that as the 'magnetic' pole approached the 'geographic' pole, the 'magnetic' pole would at some point accelerate its rate of convergence as though pulled toward the 'geographic' pole by centripetal force and jump to coincide; but instead of the poles coinciding, the 'magnetic' pole would rapidly 'flip' around the 'geographic' pole, then spin off towards the equator as though by centrifugal force, ending up at a position where the two axes assumed an approximate 89-degree divergence. After this polar 'flip' occurred, the axes would then gradually begin to reconverge over a long period of time."
The Rand Corporation postulated a mechanism that has been proven wrong, since the magnetic pole has now passed the geographic north pole and we have not had a flip occur as they suggested. See the following map to see that the magnetic pole has passed the geographic northern axis of spin.
Additionally, Davidson diverges from the Rand model and says that the crust will shift 90-degrees, stays in that position for 12,000 years, then during the next cataclysm, the Earth flips back to the prior position. In the Rand model, they think that the Earth will flip rapidly then gradually return to it´s current position over time.
Unfortunately, there is not much detail about what considerations went into the Rand model in White's book. For example, how do they account for weight/mass distribution of glaciers and land masses on the planet? What was their conception of the internal structure of the planet? How do they account for variation in thickness of the crust? Did their model use an oblate spheroid, as the Earth is said to be? What types of physics were involved in the modeling? In the 1940's, the data available on astrophysics and geophysics was much less than now. I have serious doubts that their model has any worth. What is clear about their model is that the trigger that they propose for the flip is incorrect.
Davidson states that Paul Siple is from the Rand Corporation, but White’s book states: "...under the project control of Dr. Paul A. Siple, the Rand Corporation was contracted to conduct lab studies using models of the earth..." Dr. Paul A. Siple was part of the Project Nanook squadron. He served as a Military Geographer and Scientific Advisor to the Research and Development Department of the Army General Staff.
Ben Davidson, The Earth Will Turn Over | POLE SHIFT (2024):
"Rand [Corporation], the Pentagon, Chan Thomas, Einstein and many others did the math and checked the evidence and they all say [sic] that the Earth would tilt such that Greenland would shift Southward to the equator, and the side of Antarctica, just south of Australia, would shift North to the equator. This would put the new geographic poles near India and near South America"
The Rand Corporation model suggests a 90-degree flip but does not specify the shift that Davidson states, they do not state where the axis for the tilt will be or the future pole locations. I could not find evidence in Ken White's book regarding the position of the Pentagon on this matter. I saw no discussion from Einstein regarding the new position of the continents in Charles Hapgood's book, The Path of the Pole, where Einstein's letters on crustal displacement theory are printed. (If this information is available elsewhere, please notify me). Chan Thomas seems to be the only one on that list that agrees with Davidson. (Chan Thomas: "The Bay of Bengal basin, just east of India, is now at the North Pole. The Pacific Ocean, just west of Peru, is at the South Pole." -- The Adam and Eve Story, page 15).
Who are the "many others", "that did the math and checked the evidence", that Davidson claims support his theory of the new pole positions? He doesn't list them and I would be curious to know.
Issue 4) Past Pole Locations
Ben Davidson, COSMIC DISASTER | CIA: Classified (2019):
"It was concluded that Earth's magnetic pole began slowly accelerating followed by a whip around the geographic polar region which somehow tilts the planet back and forth. Which is why there is evidence of the polar regions in the same places over and over because it always tilts right back and appears to have not moved over geologic time."
Ben Davidson, The Next End of the World - The Rebirth of Catastrophism (2020), page 17:
"White tells a story of a recurring polar position, offering an easy explanation for evidence of the magnetic poles being in those locations over eons."
Page 37:
"The shifting back and forth of the crust helps us answer the mystery of the cause of the great waves, and also the persistence of magnetic pole position in similar places over eons."
Page 69:
"...Major White, the RAND Corporation and The Pentagon offered an alternative explanation for the freeze, and it does not really even require a solar micronova (just the crustal shift). If you recall, in their version [sic], the Earth’s crust unlocks from the mantle and shifts 90 degrees, with considerable influence from the magnetic fields on the water, metal and crystals of the crust. The next cycle, it flips back exactly as it was before. In this way, the evidence of magnetic pole position in the polar regions over eons of time makes sense... it just keeps coming back."
Let's look at what Ken White printed on this.
Ken White, World in Peril (1994), pages 189-191, Frank S. Magill states:
"Paleomagnetic studies quickly yielded very puzzling and often contradictory results. The new science produced evidence that the north magnetic pole has changed its location by thousands and even tens of thousands of miles, hundreds of times, during the earth's geologic history. Since earth scientists are generally agreed that the north magnetic pole has always corresponded closely with the north geographic pole, this evidence seemed to indicate that the earth's axis of rotation must have changed... Observations from around the globe show that almost all the land areas of the earth have been glaciated at some time in the past, including parts of Africa, India, and South America presently located on or near the equator... During the past million years, forty-three different areas of the earth's surface have been on or near the north geographic poles, averaging over 1,500 miles distance from each other." [Note: this entire Chapter 29 is a reprint of: "Polar Wander" from Magill's Survey of Science: Earth Science Series, volume 4, pages 2101-2107. Reprinted by permission of the publisher, Salem Press Inc., Copyright 1990, by Frank N. Magill.]
This chapter in the book suggests highly varied polar locations. The question is how to reconcile Ben Davidson's 90-degree flip theory with the information presented by Frank Magill. Davidson is saying that every other 12,000 year cataclysm the Earth is oriented as it is now. Magill is saying that over the past million years there have been [at least] 43 different locations. Without knowing where these 43 different locations are, we can't determine if both Davidson's and Magill's statements can be reconciled or if Davidson's theory is in conflict Magill's statement. In a future article on paleomagnetism studies I hope to resolve this issue.
What is in the Arctic?
Ken White, World in Peril, page 187:
"We still must account for the fact that massive forestation doesn't occur where there are six months of darkness during the year, a characteristic of a polar area."
I did a search for "Discovery, 1989 Arctic tropical" to see if I could find the reference mentioned in White's book. If I could find some studies that show alternating layers of tropical/polar life as Davidson claims, then perhaps his theory might have some merit to it. Unfortunately, I could not find the reference for "Discovery, 1989" in Ken White’s book. It remains a mystery to me, much to my displeasure.
I found a link to a book titled: Tropical Arctic: Lost Plants, Future Climates, and the Discovery of Ancient Greenland (2021). It is about tropical fossils found in Greenland dated to 205 million years ago. While the book does look interesting, no alternating layers are mentioned in the description.
I found the articles, Fossilized Tropical Forests Found In Arctic and Tropical Fossil Forest Discovered In Arctic Islands (2015). These articles are about tropical tree stumps found in Svalbard, Norway, dated to 380 million years ago. Svalbard, previously known as Spitsbergen or Spitzbergen, is a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. North of mainland Europe, it lies about midway between the northern coast of Norway and the North Pole. (Source) Again, no alternating tropical/polar layers are mentioned in the articles. These are probably the same trees that Davidson asserts are signs of the arctic flipping to the equator: "the prehistoric trees unearthed in Norway which had no rings indicating that they resided at the equator." But these are very old tropical trees (hundreds of millions of years old according to the scientists that study them), not 12,000 year old trees from the last flip.
When I was doing research to write The Mammoth Conundrum, I read the anthropological report Archaeology in Central Alaska by Froelich G. Rainey. In this report he mentions the work of James Louis Giddings, Jr., a prominent Arctic archaeologist and pioneer of dendrochronology. "Dendrochronology, examines patterns of yearly tree ring growth to establish datable sequences of tree rings which can then be correlated to remains of ancient wood found in archaeological sites, providing a firm and reliable dating technique." (Source) On page 45, in Rainey's report he states: "Mr. Giddings collected sections of spruce stumps in the muck near the mouth of Engineer Creek, and by cross-dating methods he has determined the length of time in which some five to seven meters of muck were deposited. This dated section, however, lies near the center of the over-burden and neither a beginning nor an end date for the deposition has been established as yet."
5-7 meters deep looking at spruce stumps. Nothing tropical mentioned.
You might also recall Frank Hibben's description of the muck layers in the article, The Mammoth Conundrum:
"Cross sections of the muck in those places where these can be observed by the cutting action of the hydraulic giants [high pressure water hoses used in mining] show an abundance of vegetal material, much of which is in the form of large trees. Some of the latter are in an upright position with stumps in place, apparently growing on their original ground level. By far, the majority of the tree and larger wood remains lie in twisted piles in accumulations suggesting their deposition in ephemeral arroyo or small canyon cuts. The torn and lacerated limbs and trunks of these trees give every indication of violent but not lengthy transportation to their present situation. Intermittently, however, with these violent erosional evidences, are lenses of peat apparently representing a static ground level at that particular stratum for at least several years. The total of these evidences indicates the alternate and intermittent periods of violent erosion such as would dismember animal remains and splinter trees, interspersed with other periods of comparative quiescence so as to allow the growth of 'forests' and peat bogs in the same area."
Multiple layers of peat and forest. Nothing tropical is indicated.
I have not come across the claim of an alternating tropical/polar sediment layering by any other catastrophist. Ben Davidson is the only person that I know who promotes this idea. His claim that the book, World in Peril, provides evidence of an alternating tropical/polar sediment layering is not true. Without the alternating sediment layers of tropical and polar organisms, the entire 90-degree flip theory falls apart. Unless Ben Davidson or someone else can procure these sediment studies, I think we can consider the claim that the Earth consistently flips 90-degrees during a geomagnetic excursion, as a dead theory.
CONCLUSION
World in Peril by Ken White, does deserve a place on the catastrophist's book shelf and it is worth a read, but it does not hold the level of importance that Ben Davidson attributes to it. The book's Introduction, Appendices, and Chapters 27-30 are the sections pertinent to the cataclysm. The rest is military and aviation history. I do not consider the evidence contained in the book as supportive of the 90-degree flip hypothesis. The book does not make any predictions about the locations of the poles after the next flip. Ken White does, however, suggest support for the 12,000 year disaster cycle hypothesis.
When Ben Davidson first mentioned the alternating polar and tropical sediment layers, I was really intrigued. So I went and read Ken White's book, World in Peril.
I noticed some major discrepancies between what the book actually said and how Ben Davidson portrayed the information in the book. I was very dismayed by this. I initially thought that Mr. Davidson had made some mistakes. So I emailed him several times about my concerns and received no reply. So then I went back and did a closer analysis and found the many issues discussed in this article. Davidson's "best evidence" for his theory falls apart under scrutiny.
If Ben Davidson (or anyone else) can provide references for his statements, I would be happy to adjust my assessment as appropriate and correct any mistakes that I may have made. Ben Davidson claims to have a mild form of hyperthymesia. Davidson's claim to have such an incredible memory seems contradicted by the fact that he does not seem able to correctly remember the details of Ken White's book (or at least his story about it).
In this video Ben Davidson shows a copy of World in Peril with blue highlighter marks on the pages indicating that Davidson was noting important points of the book. Ben Davidson discusses Maynard E. White's and Project Nanook's findings in all of his books: Earth Disaster Cycle: The Cycle Resets Soon (2023), Observer Supplement 2022/2023, The Next End of the World - The Rebirth of Catastrophism (2020), and Weatherman's Guide to the Sun, (2020). I would think that Davidson would revisit the book, World in Peril, each time he published a new book about it to make sure that he gets his facts straight. I also presume that Davidson re-reads World in Peril from time to time as he receives questions about it and because he considers White's book to be the best evidence for his theory. Lawyers are known for doing detailed analysis of the facts. Ben Davidson is supposed to have a background in the legal field, yet does not seem able to get his facts straight about the contents of the book, World in Peril.
When I consider how extreme Ben Davidson’s misrepresentation of Ken White’s book is, I have to wonder if Davidson’s interpretation is a deliberate fabrication. I have resisted this idea but it seems like the most logical conclusion. Why would Mr. Davidson lie to us? I don’t know. At best, Davidson's summary of World in Peril, is extremely sloppy and discredits Mr. Davidson as a reliable source of information. Whether or not Ben Davidson has intentionally or accidentally misrepresented the information in World in Peril does not matter, he has shown himself to be incapable of accurately conveying the important details of the book. Because we are talking about the survival of our species and the stakes are so high, such inaccurate reporting by Davidson is unacceptable. The extremely high amount of errors in Davidson´s summaries of the book seriously undermines his credibility.
I am not going to be able to understand and research every aspect of the catastrophe cycle to the degree that I would like, within my lifetime. So I may have to rely on the judgments of others in this field for some aspects of the disaster. Of the people that I know, Davidson is among the most interesting and convincing theorists of catastrophism. I would like to feel as though I can trust his words. Unfortunately, my fact-checking of his claims has led me to seriously question his ability to make accurate, objective, and honest assessments. I am actually angry with him for misrepresenting so much of the information in World in Peril, and consider many of his statements in this regard to be a serious disservice to humanity. Few of Davidson's many followers are likely to do in-depth analysis of his claims, as I have done here. I am concerned that Mr. Davidson may be wrong in his assessments and that his followers (putting their trust in him) will be led to a decision that greatly jeopardizes their lives. The amount of science that Davidson covers is overwhelming, and people are relying on his interpretations to make decisions about the safety of their families.
I am very troubled by this. If Davidson is so greatly distorting the information presented in Ken White's book, what other false statements is he making?
Ben Davidson does seem to make many important connections and offers a believable model for the galactic interactions for a disaster cycle. But if I had the time to fact-check every claim he makes and read all of the scientific papers that he flashes in his videos, how many other errors or falsifications would I discover?
I will remain indebted to Ben Davidson for introducing me to Catastrophism. I use his framework as a starting point and try to verify information that I am using to make an important life decision. For me, putting together this article was a firm reminder that we need to check the facts. You are ultimately the only person responsible for your well-being.
Since my time is limited, I will only be able to research some of the most pressing questions that pertain to our survival in a global geophysical catastrophe, such as:
continued investigations into the earth flip and past pole locations, to try to decipher a pattern,
the evidence for a solar blast pattern (if we are dealing with a micronova or similar phenomenon),
how high is high enough to be safe from the ocean's flooding onto the continents?
how deep should we build our underground shelters?
Along with other similar inquiries. I do plan to cover two arguments that could be used to argue in favor of the 90-degree Earth flip hypothesis in the near future. These are the arguments that I consider to be the best evidence in favor of that idea.
Sign up to my Substack for the latest posts on these topics. I hope to contribute some valuable insights into how we can best prepare. Please contribute your thoughts and research into these important issues in the comments below.
Read more of the…
CATASTROPHISM SERIES
More Problems with the 90° Earth Flip Theory (this article)