#15 – Colin Sellers

#15 – Colin Sellers

May 19th, 2025

Angus Stocking (00:06.402)
This is Everything is Somewhere, I’m Angus Stocking. My guest today is Colin Sellers, a land surveyor and traveling crew chief who has surveyed in 44 states over the last five years and who is also the founder of Adventureology, a game studio producing a survey-related mobile/PC game for the Quest. But Colin isn’t here today to talk about land surveying or video games. We were introduced by Dustin Gardner who I interviewed in the first episode of this show, because we have a mutual interest in alternative history and because Colin is expert in catastrophism, a subset of alternative history that I’ll let him define. Colin Sellers, welcome to Everything is Somewhere.

Thank you very much, Angus. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Well, it’s a pleasure having you and I was excited about this topic. In one or two sentences, can you give us an overview of what catastrophism is and why it’s important and maybe how it differs from the ordinary view of the history of the world?

So catastrophism is the idea or theory that all of Earth’s history isn’t a gradual series of gradual climate, but it is punctuated by series of extraterrestrial, but comets, comic strikes, massive floods, earthquakes, and volcanism rapidly changing…

Colin Sellers (01:41.388)
…both the climate and the geology of the earth. And with that changes the human history and our adaption to the planet.

And we’ve been talking a little bit leading up to this and some of the major figures that talk about this view of the world would be Graham Hancock and there’s others and things like Atlantis are caught up here, the Younger Dryas Comet Impact, really big changes in the history of the earth. And to my mind, they don’t seem especially unproven or wild or crazy. Comet impact seems like it could well have happened.

But it is at odds with the call it the conventional view. Talk about just briefly, why do you think that is? Why is it so difficult and why do people get more or less canceled, if you will, if they hold this catastrophic view of earth geology?

So we can label what the conventional wisdom about the climate as gradualism just for the sake of the podcast. There’s more money to be made with the gradual side of things than to put money into studying the more explosive world changing events. My problem really is they can both exist at once.

When we, when the earth is experiencing warmer climates, like we’re in right now, there is a more gradual climate. There’s less crazy weather going on. Now, when it gets colder, as odd as this seems, when it starts to cool down, the earth experiences, more catastrophic weather events, whether it be, you know, tsunamis, volcanism, mainland floods…

Colin Sellers (03:38.878)
…or earthquakes, I would say it’s easier to trust the experts. We’ve all heard that phrase over the last decade, more so last five years, but it’s easier to trust the experts when you really think that they know exactly what’s going on. And the way to know what’s going on is the rhythmic, the rhythmic climate where did it rain this last year in April and it rained this year in April. Well next year it’s probably gonna rain in April. How scared would people be if the meteorologist was saying well you know a comet could hit us at any time and completely change our entire lives in a blink you know in a few in a few hours. So I think for the more fringe scientists and fringe people and I hate using that term…

It shouldn’t be fringe. It’s all, it’s all science, but for the fringe scientists, it’s much scarier to say, well, we don’t know what’s going on. We have this evidence and we have a hypothesis and we have researched this into the past. So we have a good idea why culture XYZ failed or completely disappeared.

And then why this kingdom came up so fast in this area, because I really want to press a point about catastrophes in this. It’s not a whole world thing. Most of the time it is regional.

So if a comet hits the Indian sea, there may be super tsunamis going, you know, Northeast, South and West affecting Australia, affecting South India and affecting any coast it can hit. But what will happen in North America? Probably just some rain. Granted in that situation, if a comet did hit the ocean, it’s going to create a plume of gas or the, the, the water will evaporate and then there’s going to be a lot more rain. know what I mean? So it’s, it’s easier to say…

Colin Sellers (06:04.844)
We know exactly what’s going to go on and this is what.

Yeah, if you think about it, very few experts make a living by saying, I don’t know what’s going to happen.

Yeah, it’s pretty much the definition of an expert is that you’re confident about some future outcome, but that is so rarely the case. And you know, the original catastrophists, we’ve all heard the story of Noah’s flood.

Colin Sellers (06:39.246)
200 years ago, know, early 18th century, let’s say the catastrophists would use Noah’s flood as an example. Well, as our, as Western society has become more secular, science has also left religious wisdom or religious stories as nonsense, which I think is really foolish because every single culture on earth that has some form of recorded history in myth has a flood story. Now, again, I don’t think that a worldwide flood happened, but definitely pockets of flooding has happened over even the last 2000 years.

And also, can’t we be quite sure that sea levels have risen, maybe not catastrophically, but definitely hundreds of feet over the last 30, 40, 100,000 years? I mean, we know for sure that there was people and populations and maybe cities living below sea levels now. Can we see that with some authority?

100%. In fact, when we met, I referenced a Graham Hancock book and he was in, that book, he was referencing the, not the sea people, but in the re the Red Sea used to be a lot lower. So people, you know, they migrate toward the O, you know, to the oceans, to the seas, to the rivers, because one, it’s a great source of commerce. It’s a great source of food and water. So as the sea levels have risen, people go out and there are, and I’m not only saying Atlantis, but there are even modern day examples of older civilizations or older cultures being in lakes, being in, you know, inland seas, being in even rivers. Recently, the Tigris…

Colin Sellers (08:56.79)
…or the Euphrates has been drying up and they have found not evidence but actual ruins in the riverbed.

And these are kind of crazy ruins, like tombs and kings and cities, very definite and interesting new archaeological discoveries.

In fact, I believe in Malaysia, literally in the last two weeks, an earthquake happened and revealed ruins. Like a temple or whether it be a temple or some religious facade, it is uncovered by earthquakes. So not only in the sea, but under the topsoil in the United Kingdom, Scotland or Ireland or England. I would say even just over the last 200 years, they’ve been uncovering Roman Mosaic.

When I hear that, that I think to myself, this is so cool. And I don’t suppose there are archaeologists denying that we’re finding this, but there’s still that sort of prevalent view that we know a lot about the past, when in fact, we don’t. Graham Hancock has that saying, stuff keeps getting older. And it sure seems true.

Colin Sellers (10:19.318)
It’s not only that, there is maybe in the, it’s either the late 18th century or the early 19th century. There was a wealthy man who bought an expansive land in Alaska. And he was finding mammoth bones strewn about the entire island.

He actually even called in a land surveyor to survey his property or his land or the island. And the land surveyor came back and he said, this is basically all bones, which I thought was very interesting.

I feel like there’s many different directions we could go here and they’re all interesting. And just to kind of call back to something you said earlier, you hate the word fringe. I’m not fond of it myself, but already in this podcast, several episodes and in my columns and my writing, I come up against that idea quite a bit. For example, we talked in one of our early episodes about crop circles and I was speaking with a scientist who’d done quite a bit of observation and study and it’s not an unknown or unstudied phenomenon and it’s not especially weird.

I mean, it is weird, but it’s measurable. There’s something happening there that isn’t hoaxed and we can establish that very clearly. And it sounds like catastrophism is more of same at a larger scale. We definitely know that things change quickly in some areas and sometimes in history. And we have the living proof remains. And one of the ones that we’ve talked about is in connection with the work of Randall Carlson in the scab lands. Could you tell us who Randall Carlson is, what he’s been saying about catastrophism for a while now? And then maybe if you care to take us through the scab lands and what…

Angus Stocking (12:30.766)
…Carlson says they show and how you feel about that.

For sure. Before I get into that. the cool thing about it is tied to what we’re about to discuss. The cool thing about Randall Carlson is he is getting relevant right now. He just, he would just went on Tucker Carlson’s own show. So this idea of a catastrophism as it is in the scientific literature is becoming… It’s having a moment for sure and Randall’s been on Rogan eight times, so good on him.

So Randall Carlson, would say I like his work best because he has used lidar. He uses modern geology and he still mixes it into the ancient mysteries and myth, much like Graham Hancock, who is also, you know, appearing on Joe Rogan and a lot of people have heard both of the men’s names. So Randall Carlson, he works in, know, geology and ancient studies. He’s also a carpenter by trade, which, you know, that was really cool. And he is a Freemason who goes and speaks about the sacred geometry a lot, or the geometry in general. He owns a school in North Georgia…

Colin Sellers (14:01.336)
…talking about or studying what we’re talking about right now and trying to get a lot of young people into geology and into these studies. So the scab lands point to a single massive flood event.

And where are the scavengers? And have you been yourself?

I haven’t, I’ve been to Washington, but I haven’t been to the scab lands, unfortunately, seen the movies and it’s fascinating to see and certainly the videos I’ve seen and Randall Carlson talking about them. I mean I’m convinced. Tell us what he says they show and maybe weigh in with your expertise on how you feel about the case he’s making.

Are you referring to the Netflix show? The Ancient Apocalypse show?

Angus Stocking (14:49.646)
That and also books by hand, Graham as well. Before America, there was a couple of good chapters about the scablands.

Right. So the scab lands was a cataclysmic flood and a lot of, so a lot of, let me connect this to something that happened recently to kind of paint the picture. So the North Carolina floods or the rain that happened and vastly changed everything, basically shut the state down. That was.

Okay?

Colin Sellers (15:31.094)
What three days of heavy rain and that was a catastrophe all its own. I mean, it was in the news for weeks. People were still suffering the damage. The claim about the scab lands is there was a waterfall. Some size larger than Niagara falls. Not so much taller. I’m just saying the, the, the density of water was so great compared to Niagara Falls, a place I have been and it was taller. I don’t even know if people can imagine that. So the ice sheet that covered North America was the Laurentide ice sheet. And the basic hypothesis in that is that there’s two, there’s two things.

If a comet, for instance, hit an ice sheet, so far away from its own wall, it would create a lake, especially if it’s not cold enough to freeze again. And then once the ice dam breaks, all that water will leave the ice sheet and come down onto dry land. Gradual, not gradualist, but the modern thinking of the scab lands is gradualism again, that it happened around 20,000 years ago. Randall Carlson’s opinion is that it happened during the Younger Dryas period, 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, give or take, know, just give me, give me a thousand years on that. You know what I mean? Because the Younger Dryas period, the thing about the Younger Dryas period is we’re coming, we were

The earth was coming out of the last glacial maximum. And then for some reason it went right back into its glacial mode. And this all ties into the scab lands. I’m, know, just for the listeners, this is all tied into the scab lands, but there’s so much backdrop background information that needs to be discussed. Because I could just say, well, there was a giant flood and it flooded. It was taller than Niagara falls. And it just…

Colin Sellers (17:54.282)
…washed everything out.

You take all the time you need. That’s kind of what I was hoping for in this interview. A deep dive into your expertise. So please continue. For my part, because I wasn’t at the Laurentide ice sheet, know, none of us were. Let’s say there was, you know, and this is the, this is in the theory behind the Younger Dryas period is that there were a succession of comets that struck the ice sheet and elicited floods from that.

Whether it was right on the wall or it created the, the, you know, the flooding, miles away and it ate down. I’m not sure about that. And I think that’s part of the glory of gradualism. can, it’s, there’s nothing really scary about it. And I think Randall Carlson said this. think I’m getting it directly from him. If you took every river around the world, from every other continent and you compared it to the spill that created the scab lands, it would still be like 10 times more or something. I’m sorry. That would be 10 times less than what catastrophe actually created the scab lands.

Angus Stocking (19:12.782)
And he’s looking at things like canyons that look like they were gouged out, huge rocks thrown up as if, you know, like pebbles, physical evidence that remains of something cataclysmic happening.

There’s also glass spirals everywhere. not everywhere, but there’s physical evidence of glass spirals in the area that so when a comet impacts the earth, the heat of it is so great that it will melt the natural deposits and create glass. But let’s go on to the other side of the planet into the Sahara desert.

And what are those?

Colin Sellers (19:56.034)
There’s, there’s physical evidence there of comet, comet strikes as well. So in those areas, you will find iridium, platinum, and these glass spirals. So just basically glass going out of the impact site where the heat was so great, it melted, you know, the sand or the material surrounding the impact site. That evidence is a positive for the Comet Strike theory. There’s also another theory that the Missoula River drained into it and some other cataclysm. But with the glass being there, just, you know, in surveying, there’s the phrase distance doesn’t lie. And some evidence is like, well, you can’t really look past it.

Yeah, definitely there and your view of the world and geography and history has to account for that one way or another. And sounds like catastrophism is able to and gradualism is not.

Yes, when the, the catastrophes happen, there is a better, what I hate also is that comets strike our planet far more often than what we’re led to believe. Cause I really do think it would just create fear, needless fear. A lot of these structures that come from outer space, they fizzle out by the time they’re actually going to hit land. Obviously sometimes in our past, it doesn’t happen like that. Like the, was it Tunguska? Tunguska. Thank you. You know, with evidence like that and that wiped out, I can’t remember the distance around it, but it was miles of trees just laid over in a circular pattern.

Angus Stocking (21:35.618)
Tunguska.

Angus Stocking (21:52.214)
Yeah, something huge happened there that looks like an explosion of some sort on the scale of a nuclear weapon. And really, we have no idea what happened. And that was what year was that? That was within living memory, right?

Uh, about a little over a hundred years ago. like early 1900s, I can’t remember the date specifically, but at the beginning of, uh, last, the last century this happened, there was another one and it started with a C H that happened within maybe last 40 to 50 years, but I cannot remember how to pronounce it and I cannot remember its name, but it struck down somewhere in Siberia and the sound wave broke like 1500, I don’t know where they get that number, but 1500 glass panes. You know, these events are very important to gather and report on because if…

Colin, I just looked up, since I have the internet here, the Chelyabinsk event in 2013.

That’s the one.

Angus Stocking (23:12.878)
And there was another event in 1947. And those were attributed to meteoroids or meteorites. And I think that Tunguska is sometimes thought to be a meteorite and sometimes thought to be something more exotic. But big cool things keep happening.

And a lot of these, and if we can switch back to the myth, you know, many of the myths, they tell us about these, these things that happen. And for some reason, some reason we have, especially in the West have decided that it is nonsense to listen to ancient peoples, except in certain situations and completely ignore literally planet wide events. There is a Native American tribe that has, I think their oral tradition goes back 2,500 years allegedly. And they have a report of what I think caused the South Carolina, there are South Carolina, can’t remember what they call them. You know, forgive me. There’s a lot of information and there, there are these circular, I’m just going to call it impact sites that are lakes in South Carolina, not South America, South Carolina, all along the coast. And there is a native American tradition that speaks about that event.

And I believe it may have happened in like the early 19th century because we have also written settler documentation about it that said comets were coming down, down from the sky. Also across the Atlantic ocean, we have European specifically, a United Kingdom area who saw the exact same event. Now.

Colin Sellers (25:29.408)
If you ask mainstream scientists, and again, I hate these terms because they’re not as expansive or they’re not under the right umbrella that I’m trying to go to. I don’t really want to separate a science from another science. know what I mean? Especially in the same realm. Sure. To be fair, but they’re questioning why these, these divots in the earth are there. And it’s like, well, dude, if we have an oral tradition from the Native Americans, if we have settler documentation about it, think it was 1816. If we have all these documentations about it, can you not come up with a hypothesis that it has nothing to do with a gradual change, but it has something to do with a comet or meteoroids that come down and just change your landscape?

Now, let me tell the listeners, I don’t know if those were created by comets. I am just going by the written documentation that I’ve read on the subject and I just put two and two together.

You have a refreshingly modest take on all of this and I appreciate it. Sounds like what you’re saying is that in trying to figure out what happened in some regions of the earth and what caused the features that remained, in some cases there’s very, very good evidence that the change happened quickly, not in accord with predominant views in geography.

You’re simply insisting that the available evidence be accounted for. If I could put words in your mouth.

Colin Sellers (27:22.424)
Yeah, no, that’s exactly what it is. I don’t think it’s catastrophism or gradualism. Can we say there has been gradualism through like the last 100 years? Of course. Like I said in the beginning, April this year, it has rained. 10 years ago, did it rain in April? Yes. But when we have these extreme weather events, whether they be, you know, comets or volcanism or earthquake, let’s be adults and say, well, you know, that was a catastrophe. No one in our age is going to say, well, North Carolina things change gradually. I was like, dude, that was three days.

That was within a week that things changed. And, and I hate to say it, but you know, the, own government and I’m not going to get into the very far by our own government’s response to that was horrifying. So, and that’s the real danger. If we are not aware of these catastrophic events, how do we prepare for them? If we’re going, it’s just been a hundred years of this happy, easy living. Fine. But if there’s no, well, hey, check it out.

This happened this year, this might happen again and soon. So we just need to be ready for that specific situation or a situation that is similar to it. It has the taste of bad faith to me when people don’t pay attention to the evidence that we have and that we’re presented, especially by nature.

I often feel that among my friend group, I am the wild-eyed conspiracy theorist or sometimes uncomfortable. But a lot of times, the point I’m trying to make is that there is weird evidence that is real. And I’m not saying necessarily that I don’t know exactly what it means, but I am saying that any explanation of reality or what we see must account for this real data.

Colin Sellers (29:45.132)
Let me say this also, people are probably afraid, especially in not high ranking, but in land surveying in the sciences. You don’t want to be laughed at. I disagree with that. Laugh at me all you want, because if by the time I get to the end of what I’m trying to investigate, I get to where I want to be, which is either proving myself right or proving myself wrong.

Yeah.

Colin Sellers (30:12.194)
Then it doesn’t matter how hard you laugh because I’m going to be at the end of my theory. I’m going to be a, I have tested my hypothesis. have seen whatever result and conclusion I’ve gotten to. And I think it’s a lot of it’s fear. No one wants to go outside, especially with government grants and know, NGO grants and all that stuff. No one wants to go outside of not even their wheelhouse, but outside of what is going to make me look like a fool versus what is going to propel me forward, not so much in my career, but my understanding of what I’m doing. And with that, I, a few years ago, and this is my, on my Instagram, Conan the Surveyor, I was reading a book by, or I was reading the biography of Charles Marie de la Condamine. Okay, okay.

French names, French and Russian names get me. So Charles Marie Condamine was a land surveyor. He was an explorer, a geographer, scientist, mathematician, you know, one of those guys in the past that was a multifaceted guy. He went to Peru and went on top of the mountains to measure a certain latitude and to get those readings and bring it back, you know, to the scientific community. I wanted to myself. And this is going to sound silly. So please excuse me. I know it sounds silly and I got, dude, I got that you’re in a safe space.

Colin Sellers (31:57.742)
I wanted to prove the world was round. That there was a, there was in fact, and I, again, I know.

No, I’ve been in the exact same place because I’m into conspiracy theory, right? So I have given a fair hearing to the flat earthers. And what it came down to for me is that in my daily trade of land surveying, I had to apply earth curvature to get good distances. so, and let alone GPS and satellites are up there.

Well, I went a step further because it drove me insane. Obsessed over this for a year. Did several experiments over, first it was a mile and then it was five miles. Those are not a good enough distance to prove what I was going for. So one day I was reading about Charles Murray.

And I was like, you know, he’s going to the top of mountains to do what he’s doing. So at that time I was in, I was doing some work in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and there was the Sierra Crest mountain that was 10,679 feet above sea level. 65 miles away, 65 and a half miles away.

Perfectly West was Mount Taylor at 11,301 feet. So I spent some money. I rented a surveyor level from a survey shop down there. And I also had a total station and they’d both been recently calibrated. The total station, not as recent as the level. Anyway, I digress. I brought them both up to the top of the Sierra Crest.

Colin Sellers (34:02.582)
I set them up and on a flat plane, if the sited mountain is higher on a flat plane, it would be shooting straight into the mountain. It was shooting right above the mountain. And I was like, awesome. So I set up the total station. I knew the proposed height elevations of both mountains. I wheeled the vertical on the total station down to the top of Mount Taylor and that gave me diff that gave me 18 minutes and 58 seconds I took and I just made a triangle out of it I is so 65 and a half miles is 345,840 feet.

There’s a 622 foot difference between the two mountains. I calculated the distance between, you know, the crosshairs and the top of Mount Taylor. That gave me 19, 1908 feet roughly. I added the rest of the feet. I compared it to what the curvature should be. Obviously there was a curve and I’m within 300 feet of the curve. And it was also, fun fact, almost a perfect degree of the earth. The distance between where I was sitting or where I was standing and that other, that other mountain was almost perfectly due west and almost perfectly one degree of the planet’s circumference. And I was really proud of it. And, you know, this all ties into what I’m talking about. I had friends and I had family and they’re like, why are you trying to prove this?

Why are you trying, you know, why are you so obsessed about it? And it’s not that I’m obsessed about it. I mean, I was, don’t get me wrong, but I wanted to prove it. I didn’t want to, not only could no other surveyor tell me the exact experiment to do, which drove me insane. Every other surveyor friend, I said, well, just look at the data. Well, no, I’m not going to look at the data.

Colin Sellers (36:22.422)
I see your data. I agree. I’m, I want an experiment I can do and see. And so I took me like, it took me like 18 months, but I figured out how to do it exactly by myself. And to anyone else is like, well, that’s embarrassing. Like you just found out what everyone else knows. And it’s like, well, you don’t know it. If you believe it, know, belief is the enemy of knowing you believe what you’ve been told.

I wanted to prove it for myself because I think as land surveyors, we should know how to do these experiments and be like, well we know beyond the shadow of a doubt, can tell you exactly how to do it. And this is how you do it. It’s that level of embarrassment and fear with going over what’s already been established or looking past what’s already been established and creating new experiments and new ways of doing things that I think is destroying the scientific community and it’s all based in fear of being laughed at. And that’s what I think is the catch between catastrophism and gradualism. People are so caught up in gradualism that they cannot even wrap their minds around these events that go on in very rapid succession or a one-off that changes in, excuse me, changes in entire region.

My mentor in land surveying in Atascadero, California, Ken, he used to use the phrase, he would go out looking for evidence, something he could hang his hat on, whether it was an old stone mound that someone hadn’t been to for a while or a better measurement. He would spend as much time in the field as necessary to get sufficient evidence that he was sure…

Angus Stocking (38:22.634)
…of what he was saying or showing on a map and sounds like that’s where you were too. You probably largely believe that the earth was round, but it would be nice to have your own gathered evidence so that you could be absolutely sure in telling other people that the earth was round.

And it was fun. mean, don’t get me wrong. It was fun also.

All this stuff is, it’s lots of fun.

And it’s just, you know, I like to be the person who someone can ask, Hey, how does this work? Like, well, let me either show you or let me tell you. Also, I was maybe a month ago in Morro Bay just down the road from Tuscadero.

I lived there for five years.

Colin Sellers (39:13.506)
Love that rock, the rock next to the sea. Was a really pretty, really relaxed little town. So sorry for going on that tangent, but it grinds my gears.

Sure, yeah.

Angus Stocking (39:27.534)
Oh no, I’m here for it. You know, I’m looking through the outline that you so helpfully provided and we’ve gotten to a lot of it here. There’s something we haven’t necessarily talked about that I’m interested in and that’s Bonneville Lake and subsequent floods. And I know Bonneville from the land speed records, but what’s the catastrophic take on Bonneville Lake?

Colin Sellers:
So Bonneville Lake was, so you have the Great Salt Lake. That was part of a greater lake system that extended from, I’m in Idaho right now. So it extended roughly from the Snake River Basin all the way, the lake would cover Salt Lake City and it would go down probably to like

Provo But that’s north to south on that on the eastern part on the western part. It would go from Idaho all the way to I think what is now severe Lake and probably some Probably several miles south of that To beaver River so that entire area used to be water and

I, so I used to live in, I used to live in Utah in North Utah and I’ve had some good times in South Utah. And with the right eyes, you can see where the water level had been sitting at on the, on the ridges of the mountains, especially if you go, let’s say North of Salt Lake city to a town called Tramontaine and you look East.

You can see where the edge in the top of the water used to rest and see the geological changes between the mountain and the river. Excuse me, the lake. And the idea was there is a place near Yellowstone…

Colin Sellers (41:56.046)
…closer to the Snake River Basin called Red Rock Pass. And that is where it spilled out at. this is gradual and it got faster. So the water eventually tore through the Red Rock Pass, the softer material, and then it hit the under layers, the harder rocky under layers and it stayed. So it released into the Snake River Basin and it flooded that area. But then that lake persisted at a lower level. And then eventually the same way it drained the first time it broke again, the natural dam broke again.

And eventually the entire river, excuse me, the entire Lake Bonneville flooded out. And now we have the, the salt desert, the Bonneville flats, salt Lake, the actual Lake persisted. And if you go to Google earth and you just kind of look around the area, you, you can see, and this isn’t the right term, but you can see fissures in on the land as if there were heavy amounts of water that rushed rushed down it there are chevrons when the great tidal wave hits the coasts and then there are dune-like things when water is flowing over it in succession so I can’t tell you like a specific area on Google Earth, but if you go into the general area, especially to the south, you can see the areas where the water would have flowed to. That being said, if you look at the Salt Lake, especially west of it, you can see the Great Salts, the, what did they call it? The 40 mile desert. My family’s really into pioneer history also.

Colin Sellers (44:23.938)
I think it’s called the 40 mile desert. think that’s wrong. I’m sorry, guess someone’s going to correct me on that one, but you can see patches of water through the desert, east of Wendover, which is on the Nevada line on 80, north and south of 80 on that area. It wouldn’t be hard to imagine. Well, if there was just a few more feet of water, that entire area would be flooded so that’s, that’s the, that’s the Bonneville flood or that, excuse me, that’s the Bonneville lake thing I was referencing on the itinerary. And if you look up the pictures, it’s, it’s also really neat to look at. So the lake would have went over, what it, so I lived in box elder County. It would have been there. Salt Lake County.

I can’t, I can’t remember what counties are North of Salt Lake, but south of Box Elder. And I’m pretty sure east, no, excuse me, west of Salt Lake County is Tuella, Tuella County. And going all the way down past the Beaver River would be the extension of the Bonneville Lake. But you know, until I started looking into catastrophism, I would have never known. It just goes to show.

These things are important.

I was going to comment on just that. It’s a metaphor for my own life that I use. I used to live in the suburbs of Los Angeles when I was in middle school. And I spent a lot of time outdoors and walking to school or up in the hills around there. And I would have told you that there wasn’t a very exciting bird life around. But then I started to hang out with birders and

Angus Stocking (46:21.118)
learned something about bird life and looking for them. And all of a sudden in my own yard, I started to see woodpeckers and California thrashers with their big curb beaks. Learning about bird watching gave me new eyes for seeing different things that I would not have guessed was there. And it sounds like for you, researching and learning about catastrophism has given you another way of looking at the world of reading the landscape around us.

Definitely. And now I’m always looked so I’ve worked in 45 States now. I have to change that. I finally got to work in Arizona and all across our nation. There is clear evidence of massive, maybe not flooding in every single situation and maybe not catastrophes in every single situation.

But definitely within the umbrella of what I’m talking about, there’s clear evidence of great things happening and there’s no explanation in gradualism that I can latch onto and be like, yeah, that makes sense. That’s one for the books.

Well there’s the Lancer band connection.

Yeah, no, yeah, exactly. No, that’s, and you know, all of this is also important for land surveying because it gives us a better idea of how to read the earth. Because as land surveyors, we’re here to observe, measure, define, you know, where this thing we’re dwelling in, you know, the earth. And the more we can understand or at least comprehend the world around us and why it’s shaped how it is, the better…

Colin Sellers (48:15.956)
…land surveyors we can become because it’s our job to understand or it’s our jobs to comprehend what is going on and why not, not only why we’re making the maps that we do or, know, detailing or defining the land as we define it, but surely part of our profession is deeply rooted in a need to know what’s going on.

I agree with you and to be honest Colin, you’ve given me in that last couple of sentences, I think the perfect place to draw to a close. That was lyrical and poetical. Thank you for that. I do have one more question. I would like your take on a looming catastrophe, if you will, that I’m sure you’ve thought about or heard about. And that would be the Yellowstone caldera.

I have more theories about the Idaho caldera than the Yellowstone caldera because if you haven’t even heard of that.

Angus Stocking:
Please, do tell.

Colin Sellers (49:28.91)
So, okay, a few years ago, wasn’t the paradigm. So let me, I’ll, will lead you to where I’m talking about. just get, know, let me paint the picture. It all started when a few years ago, I don’t know if I think it was 21, 2021, there was a series of fires in North California that were particularly bad. And I’m not talking about the paradise fires from a few years, I think 2018, those were rough.

Those were terrible, dude. I’ve listened to the people that were in it. Horrific. I could, I had to stop listening sometimes. It was just too much. A lot of heroes though. Let me say that before I go on. Anyway, I started looking at things. Started kind of doing more deeper dives into earthquakes. So the fires led me to earthquakes and the earthquakes led me to the calderas, especially in Idaho.

Because in Idaho around the calderas, there were fires coming up. Not so much from the caldera, but there was patches of super hot ground. And it just so happened that the fire started there. Now, am I saying the caldera started the fires? No. But if there was an increased level of heat at those positions, that is the breeding ground.

It’s not crazy, don’t wonder.

Colin Sellers (50:55.062)
Yeah, it’s not crazy to kind of link stuff. So there, it led me to a man who does a pod, not a podcast, kind of podcast. He, a live stream, a live stream and his name is Dutch Sinse. And that guy has for the last decade plus followed the earthquakes all around the world. And he actually advises the geological services for the United States of America sometimes now because of what he has seen in the earthquake. see how earthquakes are connected. So earthquakes, I promise this will wrap around the caldera. The earthquakes are not isolated in one area.

Once a, what’s an earthquake, if there is a 7.0 earthquake in one area, there are earthquake rivers or there are fault lines, fault lines that expand, you know, expand out from there. So if you have a 7.0 earthquake, let’s say in region A, and there is a fault line connecting that area to area B, there is most likely going to be an earthquake like a five, a, an earthquake at a lesser power level than the initial earthquake. So if you get a seven here, you’re probably going to get a five here. And if that one’s powerful enough, it’ll cause, you know, like a three or lesser in other areas. So he was the first to note that and really crack it down and make it into a science. Dutch, D U T C H S I N S E on YouTube is where I, where I watch him a lot.

Angus Stocking (53:02.36)
I’ll put a link to that in the show notes.

Great guy, great guy. Never met him, but he seems like a really genuine guy. So I was following the caldera, the possible activity over there and researching, you know, what could be, what would happen if a caldera became active and exploded? Because I know a few years ago it was, you know, people started worrying, well, Yellowstone’s a super caldera. It’s going to explode and it’s going to kill everyone. And it would, but I’m not so worried about that and we didn’t touch something and I didn’t add it into itinerary, but I meant to the, the polar shift.

I feel like that’s a show in itself.

Yeah, dude. It is.

Angus Stocking (53:46.048)
Let’s make a pact to get back to that in a future episode.

Well, sorry, I didn’t add that in, it ties into everything ties into everything, you know? So the, the core of the earth being molten material and the pole shifts happen happening gradually. And I, I don’t think, I think we would have much more warning of Yellowstone erupting. And I think it’s so wide.

That the pressure it would be required to explode. would have to be struck by a comet to break the, to break the crust all the way down to really explode. think there’s so much pressure in it that it would have smaller exit to, or lava shafts. I don’t think the pressure would just pop and we’re all dead. think there would be a succession of several releases, not one giant pop. And that’s kind of what I was getting into in the Idaho calderas. was spot spots of elevated heat under the ground that was being observed, not one giant mass. And again, going back to the polar shifts, if the pole is shifting, if the revolution of our planet is creating a wider center and you know, north and south are kind of being pushed down. If the poles hit over time, everything inside of the earth is going to have to reform to how that magnetic pull is going. So unless everything just goes absolutely crazy, there’s also tying in with that. There’s also

Colin Sellers (55:47.362)
theory that volcanoes attract comets.

I do tell I’d never heard of this.

Well, so I literally just stumbled on this, but I haven’t been able to like research. I’ve been working, I’ve been working for like five weeks straight. Wherever there are, and this is kind of, I sent you a book link and it’s an old one, but in that one or volume two, it’s, it shows or it, it alleges that there have, there were, there are comets that come before volcanic eruptions.

So whether that is attracting the comets to come into that area because of an increased magnetic pull or something like that, I can’t really go on profoundly about it, but there’s something to be said about that. Additionally, after comet drop, a comet drops, there is also, it has also been observed that the temperature of the area goes down substantially, thought that was interesting, but that’s another round of research for me.

Angus Stocking (56:59.778)
I’m glad I asked about the Yellowstone caldera because I hadn’t heard the idea that it would take up comet impact to set that one off. As we’ve established in this conversation, comet impacts hardly ever happen. And I hadn’t heard of Idaho at all. And if I was understanding that correctly, you’re saying that that one might be actually more likely to explode.

Well, that’s just my opinion.

Colin Sellers (57:18.178)
Hahaha

Colin Sellers (57:28.864)
Maybe not explode, but definitely like release something somewhere whereas the Yellowstone caldera is getting all the press. Anyway, keep a happy thought, I guess. Colin, this has been a real pleasure. I was hoping for a wild conversation with a lot of good research, and you’ve certainly provided that. And for me, it was an amazing bonus to get the Flat Earth experiment, disproving Flat Earth, and I appreciate that. And I certainly hope we can talk again specifically about polar shift, because I feel that…

I wouldn’t worry about it.

Angus Stocking (58:02.432)
It’s something that is happening now. There’s a lot of evidence, a lot of people kind of going crazy, but it’s also being suppressed. It’s a such an active field of science and also anti-science and conspiracy theory and mainstream theory. It’s just super. So can we do that again in the future? Polar shifts. Would you like to talk a bit about adventureology? Is that something people should know about or can I put a link in the credits for you?

Colin Sellers (58:30.968)
For sure. So, adventurology, there’s a short story that goes along with it. My wife and I, my wife Laura and I, we have three children and one on the way. With my first son, Ragnarok, we decided that we were going to homeschool him and homeschool all of the children. And this is actually going crazy well, but we were throwing the idea around to make it like a school because in some states you have to register your home school as a school. So, you know, what would we call it? It’s like, you know, the school of adventurology, the study of adventure. So we never ended up starting the school because we weren’t in a state that required it. You know, we were just having fun with it. Then it became our company. And for a while it was just a sole proprietorship.

And I was working under the name Adventureology for a land surveyor data collection under the supervision of a registered land surveyor. That turned into the video game studio more than the data collection side, because I wanted, I’ve been to so many section monuments across the PLSS system where I’m just like, wow, this is beautiful.

And no one knows where this is and it’s on public land or in, you know, national forest or something. People really need to go there. So I had an app idea. it was called quest board and I was basically just going to, know, like, Hey, these are the coordinates you should go to go have a picnic, you know, go have fun. Well, that didn’t work out because it seemed too much like a travel agency. And I’m not that guy. Don’t have it in me, but I still wanted to show people.

You know, the section monuments and the beauty of our country. So I kicked it around for a while. was like, you know, I’ll just make a video game to go around with the apps. So now the video game is directly tied with the PLSS system. Um, and it’s called for the quest and adventureology is producing or developing it. And then I extended it again, back into data collection. So it’s part that it’s a, adventureology is a part data collection company…

Colin Sellers (01:00:49.998)
…and partly the video game studio. And we’ve been developing for the quest for about two and a half years now and just got a 3D artist on board and we have two developers and Dustin is actually working with us now as our lore master. I don’t know if he wants to keep that name, but I told him that I’d be down just, that’s what I’m going to call him.

So yeah, so I, have a little team together now. Adventureology is doing, you know, doing well aiming for, for the quest to be out at the end of summer. But since I’ve been moving around so much are I basically sapped all my funds. So we’ll be doing a Kickstarter in about hopefully a month and a half from now. And every, everyone can find information about for the quest at four.

for.the.te.quest on Instagram or they can go to my Instagram page at Conan the Surveyor.

Okay, I’ll get links to both of those. All that said, I think I’m gonna say goodbye and I appreciate your time. Colin, this has been amazing.

No, it was really cool to be here. I really appreciate you have me on here. don’t get to talk about catastrophism to many people.

Angus Stocking (01:02:11.5)
Really, who does?

Angus Stocking (01:02:22.488)
You’ve been listening to Everything is Somewhere for more than a few episodes. You may have wondered, what is this podcast about? We’ve had episodes about survey and infrastructure technology, about crop circles and Ohio’s serpent mound, about land surveying lore encoded in vampire mythology. We’ve had a couple of episodes about the influence of Christopher Alexander on architecture and infrastructure. I’ve interviewed authors about early surveying on the Mississippi River and about symbolic urbanism, and all that is just in our first 14 episodes. And now comes an interview about Catastrophism, a field so out there in some ways that even Colin acknowledges that it is sometimes considered fringe. The common thread that weaves all these topics together is that they all examine obscure geospatial patterns that profoundly affect culture, civilization, and, well, reality itself.

Put another way, this podcast is about everything and everything is somewhere. I always appreciate feedback that lets me know how I’m doing. But please let me know what you think. You can send me feedback directly at angusstocking at gmail.com or anonymously at amerisurv.com slash podcast. You can follow me on X or Twitter at twitter.com/Surveying.

Also, if you enjoyed this episode, I hope that you will subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or Spotify or rate the podcast or the episode. And if you’re feeling especially magnanimous, leave a review. It really helps us a lot. And I hope to keep doing this and keep recording interesting conversations with interesting people. Finally, if LinkedIn is your thing, I hope that you will reach out and connect with me. I’m easy to find. There is only one Angus Stocking.