This New York Times article quotes Barton Biggs who says that people should “assume the possibility of a breakdown [Pluto] of the civilized infrastructure [Capricorn].” Biggs is not an astrologer but the former chief strategist at investment firm Morgan Stanley.

Faced with a confluence of diverse threats — a tanking economy, a housing crisis, looming environmental disasters, and a sharp spike in oil prices — people who do not consider themselves extremists are starting to discuss doomsday measures once associated with the social fringes.

“I’m not a gun-nut, camo-wearing skinhead. I don’t even hunt or fish,” said Bill Marcom, 53, a construction executive in Dallas.

Still, motivated by a belief that the credit crunch and a bursting housing bubble might spark widespread economic chaos — “the Greater Depression,” as he put it — Mr. Marcom began to take measures to prepare for the unknown over the last few years: buying old silver coins to use as currency; buying G.P.S. units, a satellite telephone and a hydroponic kit; and building a simple cabin in a remote West Texas desert.

“If all these planets line up and things do get really bad,” Mr. Marcom said, “those who have not prepared will be trapped in the city with thousands of other people needing food and propane and everything else.”

The frenetic stockpiling of resources at the end of 1999 as we rounded the corner to Y2K was more silly than survivalist – the notion that the world would end at the turn of the millenium was superstitious at best. Today’s survivalists are of course tapping into the sense that there will indeed be a breakdown of the social order, and they want to be ready.

Those of us who understand the work of Pluto will not be afraid – we will welcome the work of the Great Destroyer who comes to sweep the world clean. Like Shiva, the Great Destroyer, Pluto performs the Dance of Destruction which scatters the dormant energies of that which is destroyed so that new forms can be created in its place. We know what to expect, so we can be prepared for the storm.