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 THE
GERYL CODE
(Getting ready to start over.)
By Gene Farinet
You probably aren’t familiar with the name,
but Patrick Geryl says money is no problem and that he can live
comfortably for the next four years.
After that, he predicts “it won’t be worth the paper it’s printed
on.”
And why not?
December 12, 2012, is dooms-day in the Geryl code.
Patrick is one of the leading players in the “end of our days”
prophecy game.
Two years ago, the 51-year-old Belgian quit his day job as a
laboratory
research worker to crusade full-time as leader of a group (sect, if
you prefer)
of die-hard D-Day watchers in Europe.
Unlike many prophets, Geryl was willing to stick his neck out and
redlined a specific day in the near future. Most prognosticators
have
always stuck with a less precise calendar, outside their own
lifetimes.
Geryl’s literary success had come as author of nine books, with the
same thesis:
that cataclysmic events will overwhelm our planet on December 12,
2012.
Since the widely read “ Onion Prophecy” in 2002, Geryl has been
beating
the drums, with follow-ups like “How to Survive 2012” and
“The World Cataclysm in 2012.”
A Google search for “2012 -- end of the world” brings nearly
three hundred thousand hits. You Tube hosts more than 65,000 clips
about it.
Geryl’s Dooms-Day scenario involves a shift in the world’s crust,
upheavals
in the sun’s magnetic field, and an unstoppable series of natural
disasters.
Up will be down. North America and Europe will shift north hundreds
of miles.
The North Pole will become the South. The sun will rise in the West.
According to recent news reports, Patrick and his followers are
spending the
summer in Belgium gathering materials necessary to survive.
Such things as water purifiers, wheelbarrows (with plenty of spare
tires), seedlings,
packaged foodstuffs. In fact, the list is eleven pages long.
Geryl says he intends to start civilization all over again. Re-live
the story of Noah.
Maybe a book, “Noah II.”
Countless prophets have been forecasting the end-of-our-days game
throughout
history. But an unblemished record of failures has never deterred
true believers.
On a rational level, troubled modern times has been a seedbed for
gloom and doomer's.
Natural anxiety is widespread in this young century. Remember the
2YK flap?
Prophetic heavyweights talked in terms of a “millennium bug “ and
the threat of
computer outages. With a bleak energy future. Natural disasters at
an accelerated rate.
Katrina, Asian tsunamis. Killer quakes.
Judging from a flurry of current surveys, fixation on rougher days
ahead is even more common. Living is heavy with clear and present
dangers.
More items than we can cram into daily newscasts.
A mortgage crisis, foreclosures, runaway food prices, a war that
seems
to have no end.
A deep stream of environmental pessimism.
Slow poisoning of ourselves. Toxic wastes. Deforestation. Air
pollution.
Oil spills.
Even a caveman can sense a wide shift of public optimism to public
pessimism.
But why spend time dwelling on abstract apocalyptic notions about
the future?
Leave that to Hollywood, the TV crowd, the best seller lists --- all
of which
specialize in end-of- the-world scenarios.
There have been doomsday predictions for centuries,
And undoubtedly will be, until …
Well, until doomsday.
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Gene Farinet, an award winning veteran newsman, spent much of his long
career at NBC News as a writer and producer working with Frank McGee,
Ed Newman, John Chancellor and Tom Brokaw, covering space, politics
and special projects everywhere in the world.
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