psychoceramics: Book Report: "5/5/2000: Ice, the Ultimate Disaster"

[Bruce Ediger <bediger @ csn.net>]

"5/5/2000: Ice, The Ultimate Disaster", Richard W. Noone, Harmony
Books, ISBN 0-517-56142-5.  Apparently this is a reissue of a book
originally published in 1982, with an additional foreward.  358
pages, lavishly illustrated with about 1 photo, drawing, diagram
or print per page.  The copy I have is a trade paperback, and it
looks like it was typeset using some lesser grade of desktop
publishing package.  The cover of this book appears in Donna Kossy's
"Kooks" in the chapter on The Stelle Group.  Some of the information
Noone presents is also part of The Stelle Group's beliefs.

It's a little hard to summarize this book, as it is literally all over
the map.  Noone attempts to draw on an amazing variety of sources,
using everything from Col. James Churchward's "Mu" books, to the
Christian Bible, the Book of Mormon, Velikovsky's works, Richard
Kieninger's "The Ultimate Frontier" and US Coast and Geodetic Survey
plate tectonics maps.

Needless to say, there are several statements about the odd nature
of the book with respect to mainstream science.  In the preface, Noone
writes:  "Now, fifteen years later in 1995, much of my research,
which seemed so preposterous to many scientists in 1980, has been
confirmed."  In the foreward, he writes, "There are, however,
entrenched powers which oppose human yearnings for perfection at
every turn."  "Pressures still exist today which cause men of genius
to be very careful about what they share with the world...".  There
is a particularly bitter footnote on page 219:

  "Researching our history is like wading through a snake-infested swamp
   barefoot.  If you make it to the other side of the swamp, human snakes
   appear to say venomously that you could not have walked barefoot
   through a snake-infested swamp.  You must have used a boat, they cry.
   Or there were no snakes at all.  What you report must be a lie because,
   if there were snakes you would not have made it.  It is always those who
   have never walked barefoot through a swamp who cry most vehemently and
   and boastfully."

There's an underlying current of Conspiracy, since Noone believes
that the current-day Freemasons are the heirs, and Keepers of the
Secret Knowledge of a civilization that arose at the end of the
last ice age, about 10,000 years ago.  The usual list of US Presidents
that are/were Freemasons makes an appearance, as do two prints of
George Washington depicted as a Freemason.  Many of the other prints
in the book are said to depict Masonic Symbols in Ancient Egyptian
Temples, Masonic Symbols in a Bas-Relief from the Mayan city of
Palenque and Masonic Symbols found in the ruins of Chichen Itza.

Noone also tries to tie together all pyramid-related pseudo-sciences.
Numerology based on the Egyptian pyramids measurements and layout
gets related to Masonry and modern-day astronomical occurances.
The dubious connection of Pre-Columbian Mayan and Aztec pyramids
to the Egyptian pyramids is pointed out as a sort of proof that
Masonic Knowledge spread across the globe.  "Pyramid energy", shown
in "modified" Kirlian photos of model pyramids, gets linked to the
survival of dinosaurs into Classical times, and to a pulsar known
as "Vela X", believed to be the remnant of a supernova that occured
in 4000 BC.  There's also an incoherent attempt to show that the
chambers of the Great Pyramid might have been some sort of
electricity-based life extension technology used by the Pharoahs.

The discussions of the Great Pyramid's measurements is particularly
convoluted.  First, Noone postulates that there is a 1 inch (modern
American inch?) per year "time line" laid out in the passages to
the various chambers inside the Great Pyramid.  He then demonstrates
that various historical events correspond to locations in these
passages.  The intersection of the projection of First Ascending
Passage with the projection of the outer edge of the pyramid is
said to be 4000 BC, "History of Adamic Race Begins".  The date of
the Biblical Exodus is given as 1486 BC, and corresponds to the
intersection of the Descending Passage and the First Ascending
Passage.  The birth and death of Jesus are said to correspond to
a "mystery step" and the "juncture of the Hall of Truth in Light".
Noone says there's a granite marker for 1844 AD, and that a
measurement from this marker to the "granite box in the King's
Chamber" gives a final date of May 5, 2000 AD.  Along the way,
Noone confuses the units of measurement, sometimes using something
called a "pyramid inch" and apparently sometimes a modern American
inch.  He also has the King's Chamber "isolated from atmospheric
pressure, 14.69 psi"

All of the Wonders of the Pyramids, and the Secret Knowledge of
the Masons are said to relate to a vague planetary alignment that
occurs on the titular date of May 5th, 2000.  This alignment will
cause the axis of the planet Earth to "shift", as per some of
Velikovsky's wilder theories.  In his final sentences, Noone claims
that he will be either "in space" or on vacation at one of the
"pivot points" in early May of 2000 AD.  The location(s) of "pivot
points is not given, for fear that the unscrupulous will fence them
in and charge high prices for admission during the catastrophe.

The physical mechanism proposed for the pole shift is utter
nonsense:

   The earth is like a round ball spinning in space.  As the earth
   spins it also "wobbles." As the south polar ice mass grows, it
   becomes heavier and heavier.  As the ice becomes heavier, the
   massive accumulation of ice creates an imbalance, with its enormous
   weight, in the earth's wobble.  Year by year the ice grows heavier
   and heavier, until the tilt of the arth can no longer overcome the
   centrifugal force of the spinning earth.  At this critical point
   the polar ice masses are thrown with devastating speed toward the
   earth's point of greatest spin - the equator.  When this pole-shift
   takes place, most of civilization is destroyed in the same way the
   super-civilizations of the past have been obliterated.

All in all, the book "5/5/2000: Ice the Ultimate Disaster" is a
mess, a concoction of bad scholarship, paranoiac conspiracy theories,
rhetorical excesses and scientific and historical ignorance.  It's
not worth pointing out all the inaccuracies and internal contradictions
present in the book, but the weirdest one has to be the idea of
being at a "pivot point".  In light of the proposed mechanism of
the "pole shift", there will be only two "pivots", the North and
South poles.