The Tusk has an exciting announcement. For many months a project has been underway to develop a crowdfunding campaign to finance a significant and continuing expansion of research into the YDB impact and related phenomena. Drs. Allen West, Ted Bunch, Chris Moore and I are directing the effort, which launches on November 1 and will introduce the opportunity to assist the mission of the newly formed Comet Research Group.
A crowdfunding effort is long overdue and desperately needed for our research. Pure science funding of the kind needed to expand our knowledge of the YD impact event is already a dwindling resource. But when your subject is as controversial as ours — and gores so many influential oxen — such funding is very nearly impossible to obtain. It is fair to say that the subject is “black-balled” for grants by critics and ninnies despite the quality of our publications. Sigh.
But now we have a chance to change things — big time. Despite the smug and willful ignorance of the grant review boards and journal editors, the intense popular demand for information in this field is evident in hundreds of television shows, countless books, and movies on the subject. By allowing the millions who maintain an interest in ancient catastrophes an opportunity to assist our efforts through donations, I am convinced we will discover an untapped demand to professionally investigate the profound and ancient question of whether our ancestors were visited by catastrophe from above.
If the appeal to these millions is only minimally successful, it will allow us to perform research that would otherwise be impossible in the near term. We have defined three initial research objectives with a combined budget of only $106,000:
1) An exploration of the suspected “Charity Shoals” crater in Lake Superior, which may date to the time of the event ($28,800);
2) An expedition to Greenland to further sample the ice cap for ET and impact related material ($27,500);
3) A more detailed investigation of a suspected airburst in the Jordan Valley at Tall el Hammam in ~1800 BC ($49,900).
Additional details on these expeditions and the progress of the campaign will be forthcoming at variety of sources (Friend us on Facebook!).
While the Indiegogo site is still under construction, and private until the launch, the supporting website is now available and readers should enjoy jumping over to cometresearchgroup.org to take a look. The site is intended to provide a more in-depth source of information for people interested in knowing more about the YDB body of research than will be available on Indiegogo. It should prove helpful and will expand and improve over time as new information is developed, plans are refined, and money is raised, spent and accounted for.
The new website will also feature another blog, for which your’s truly will have some responsibility. In fact, I intend to cross-post this message there as the inaugural communication. That blog will be somewhat different than the Tusk, since it will feature relatively plain vanilla information about the research and updates on the discoveries, without the joshing around and teasing of critics we are accustomed to here, or some of the wilder speculation entertained on these pages.
And finally, we have another aspect of the appeal produced, one which I will now make available exclusively to Tusk readers. The video that will go on Indigogo and elsewhere November 1:
The crowdfunding video has been embargoed until November 1st
If any further proof is required of my selfless dedication to this effort, I cannot supply it. I resisted the approach initially and imagined it as a dry narrative featuring electron microscopes, lab coats, and archaeology pits — not my living room. But as things progressed it became clear that one person needed to go on camera, and I volunteered in order to play a helpful role, but also to a degree to spare anyone more credentialed than myself from having to beg for money on YouTube. (Cringe.)
I was also a bit reluctant at first to focus so directly on future impacts. For what it is worth, and you may have noticed, I decided long ago this blog would focus on impacts in the peopled past. The internet is already well populated with information, discussion, speculation — and complete bullshit — with regard to the threat of future impacts. I figured the Tusk would be of more interest to me, and distinguish itself, if it left calls to “Repent now!” or launch exotic protective measures into space, to others.
But this crowdfunding thing was more “broadcast” than “narrowcast” and needed a different approach. Tusk readers, I hope and trust, always keep in mind that there is another dimension to our six-year discussion here that bears not on the fate of spear-chuckers and furry elephants in the past, but on our kids and their kids’ kids. If our contentions about the relatively recent past are true, it goes without saying that we must seriously prepare to protect our future. But it was decided to make the case, in this case, to the vast majority of people without inference or subtlety.
I welcome your suggestions and comments about this project, now and as things progress. And, of course, your contribution if you are so inclined.