During and following the capsizing of the Earth, incredible surface devastation occurs as the planet absorbs the phenomenal kinetic energy which the rollover has generated.

There will be general chaos -- torrential rains, electrical storms unbelievable in their intensity, dust storms, hurricanes, typhoons, massive and extensive earthquakes, a multitude of volcanic eruptions and, most devastating of all, a monstrous deluge as tidal waves of fantastic power sweep all oceans at close to the speed of sound, pounding continents to pieces, inundating whole mountain ranges, submerging great land masses, and exposing land which was heretofore seemingly at too great a depth ever to move above sea level. Existing mountains will be raised or lowered in relation to sea level, old ranges will be flattened and new ones will appear.

There will be no gradual withdrawal of ice, as theorized in the prevailing "Ice Age" concepts. The ice caps, now directly on the equator and fully exposed to the blazing heat of the sun, will begin to melt at once and, while it may have taken thousands of years for them to reach their enormous size, it may take only brief decades for the total thaw to occur.

As it melts, the ice caps will leave evidence of their former presence. Enormous depressions will remain in the surface of the Earth where they sat, and these will be ringed by circular ranges of hills or elevated plateaus, rising gradually from the center of the depression and then falling away sharply on the outside of the rim -- the residue of the materials squeezed from beneath the ice caps as they grew. Glacial striations will clearly show on many of these rocks. Riverbeds will form and glacial runoff will carve itself deeply into the Earth's surface as vast quantities of water rush from the melting ice. At the same time, the tropical areas which were suddenly shifted to the polar regions will undergo a quick-freezing process, and will soon under below layers of snow gradually turning into glacial ice as new ice caps begin to form even while the old ones are melting.

As the great ice caps continue to melt, ocean levels will rise, inundating still more areas and, as the isolated ice mass is reduced and its weight is distributed as water throughout the oceans, earthquakes of great violence will continue to occur as the equatorial bulge adjusts and readjusts to equalize the rearrangement of such a weight.

At last the violent disturbances will settle down and a new stability will become evident. Little animal life will remain on land, but what is there, including human life, will adjust to the new conditions.

Much marine life will also be wiped out, but much will remain, though it too must adjust, for the ocean temperatures will have been greatly lowered by the volumes of icy water rushing into the sea. Also, the ocean water will have a greatly reduced salinity.

When at last the old ice caps have wholly disappeared and the ocean levels are relatively stabilized, the slow but inexorable process begins all over again. As the weight of the ice increases, the caps cause the mud and rock under them to squeeze out from under them. As the pressure becomes ever greater, this extruded material forms a raised rim around the perimeters of the ice caps.