Entering college, students are told that with enough effort they'll make it out in one piece. But the class of 2012 may not be so fortunate, at least according to Patrick Geryl. If he's right, the only chance this year's freshmen have at survival is to chuck their color-coded flash cards in favor of more practical measures: $10,000, survival gear and a one-way ticket to the South African Kingdom of Lesotho.
That's where Geryl, 53, and his growing group of survivalists plan to be in four years - when he thinks the world will come to a volcano-erupting, tidal-wave-crashing, nuclear-reactor-melting end.
Apocalypse nowGeryl is one of the world's best-known supporters of the increasingly popular belief that a series of catastrophic events will befall the Earth in 2012, a year supposedly pegged for doom millennia ago by the ancient Maya civilization.
"It will be the single most destructive event in the history of the human race," Geryl said from his home in Antwerp, Belgium. "Everything will be gone."
On the agenda for the destruction of the world is a massive increase in heat from the sun, a change in the spin of the Earth and the eruption of volcanoes everywhere, the biggest of which will burst out from beneath Yellowstone National Park's famous geyser, Old Faithful. Geryl said the only livable place on Earth will be Africa, since it is the only continent without a nuclear reactor.
Inspired by this "ancient calculation," Geryl left his oil company job two years ago after having saved enough money to pay for six years of food, 72 months of bills and an 11-page manifest of survival items.
The now famous "survival list," which has made its way around online discussion boards and blogs, covers everything an intrepid survivalist will need, with a few extra amenities: food, shelter, transportation, clothing, paragliders, wooden abacuses, catapults and rechargeable batteries.
"We're going to build bunkers, bomb shelters with two meters of ground overtop of them," Geryl said. "We'll need to rebuild all of civilization after the catastrophe."
These concerns, which now attract millions of believers and Google hits, can be traced back to ancient stone inscriptions found in a few ruined Mesoamerican cities. The Maya are known for their cyclical understanding of time, and believers in these "prophecies" say that when the current millennium-long cycle comes to an end in 2012, the result will be similar to the last time the cycle ended: destruction.
'Ritual renovation'While more and more people fret over the coming apocalypse, at least one man hopes talk of the 2012 theory will end long before the world does.
Professor of Anthropology Stephen Houston is one of the world's leading experts on Mayan civilization, with a specialty in deciphering Mayan texts. The author of numerous books on the Maya, Houston has recently appeared in the popular media opposite Geryl and other doomsayers, defending a less sensational interpretation of the prophecy - if it can be called a prophecy at all.
"Most of it is based on spurious information and a pretty shoddy understanding of the material," Houston said. "There are a variety of readings of highly esoteric information."
Houston said it may be the case that a Mayan cycle will end in 2012, but that the end is neither significant nor relevant. The Maya kept track of thousands of cycles, he said, so it's important not to key in on one and ignore the others.
"It's kind of like a clock. There's a cog that turns on the second, another cog on the minute and another cog on the hour," he said. "Imagine such a complicated clock that it would contain thousands of these cycles, and that's the way to understand Maya time."
Houston said the end of a Mayan cycle is no more an "end" than the end of a modern month or decade - it just starts up again afterwards.
But what has Geryl and others worried is what the Mayan writings describe the last time this cycle ended - collapsing buildings and devastating infernos - and what that could mean this time around.
Houston, again, was skeptical. He said the writings describe a "ritual renovation," which can sound frightening if misinterpreted but is actually quite harmless.
"To be honest, it's not terribly apocalyptic," he said. "It's about the changing of hearths and the kindling of fires - a household metaphor writ large."
In addition to being quoted in stories for ABC News and other media outlets, Houston said he has been approached by PBS and the History Channel to appear in documentaries and special episodes about the phenomenon, a prospect he welcomes, if cynically.
"I'm always happy to inform people who are genuinely interested," he said, "but this isn't really about the Maya evidence. It's about obsession."
Doom for saleDespite the efforts of people like Houston, 2012 fever continues to spread all over the Internet and into popular books. And whether or not Houston is right, 2012 is increasingly becoming about money.
Dennis McClung, 28, recently left his job and home to devote all of his time and resources to 2012supplies.com, an online business he runs with his wife. The Web site sells "everything you need to survive 2012," including portable generators, gas masks and even a full-body "nuclear biological chemical public safety suit" for $495.
McClung, who had previously worked at Home Depot for over a decade, said the first thing that came to mind when he heard about 2012 was how much his employer had profited just over a decade earlier.
"Back in '99, when everyone was scared of Y2K, I remember Home Depot selling out of power generators," he said. "There wasn't really one place to go for everything you needed if you wanted to survive."
McClung said his best-selling products are water-purifying tablets, emergency medical supplies and ready-to-eat meals, "which is a bit surprising since it's four years away," he said.
The young entrepreneur recently moved from Scotsdale, Ariz., to Zanesville, Ohio, with his wife and two children. He said they plan to purchase a small house and build a bomb shelter, relying on his Web site for income.
McClung said he doesn't know what will happen in 2012 but that he'd like to be prepared for anything.
"There are so many theories. I'm not a firm believer in any one," he said. "But I want to be completely independent, self-reliant, off the grid. Just building a structure is already a giant leap over what everyone else will be doing."
Understanding ArmageddonHouston said he does not expect to convince many 2012'ers that they have nothing to fear - not that he'd necessarily want to. Asked if he might defend Mayan anthropology the same way Professor of Biology Ken Miller has defended the theory of evolution, Houston said the comparison was unfair - "what Ken Miller does is important."
Instead, Houston said that what interests him more than weeding out bad scholarship is understanding why people are so captivated by grand and disastrous predictions of world destruction.
"It's one of those classic millenarian movements that recur throughout human history," he said, citing the Y2K obsession and even the Lyndon LaRouche Political Action Committee as modern examples. "Why do humans think this way?"
According to Professor of Psychology Joachim Krueger, the answer lies in an obsession with salvation.
"It's not that they like the idea of their own death," he said. "It's more like a crude form of self-enhancement. 'We have been chosen, we're going to have eternal bliss.'"
Krueger called evangelical Christianity's "rhetoric" on Armageddon or rapture key examples of this way of thinking, which is also linked to a desire to be exceptional.
"They think they have this special insight and special predictions that no one knows about," he said. "The world's going to end, but there's always this 'out' for yourself, that you know how to be saved and you know where to go."
Krueger agreed with Houston that many of those already hooked by the 2012 predictions are unlikely to be swayed, even if presented with extraordinary evidence to the contrary. He cited a famous example in the psychological literature of a 1950s alien-worshipping cult that predicted the destruction of the world at the hands of extraterrestrials.
"When the date came and nothing happened, some people got the message and went home," Krueger said. "But others only had their beliefs reinforced. They believed the aliens witnessed their incredible faith and spared the world."
Houston also pointed out that bold predictions of apocalypse might be symptoms of desperation in a world that is "quite scary," which he said should make the 2012 theory even more popular.
"There is so much uncertainty in this world with wars, jobs, a tanking economy," he said. "I can only see these people getting more interested in this."
Geryl is no stranger to opinions like Houston's and Krueger's. He said he's used to being called crazy, but over time he has learned to brush it off. As much as he'd like to spread his message to as many people as possible, the Kingdom of Lesotho is only so big. "Anyway," he said, "it is impossible to save everyone."
