Will the World End in 2012?
Thousands Worldwide Prepare for the Apocalypse, Expected in 2012
By CHRISTINE BROUWER
July 3, 2008
July 3, 2008
Two years ago, Patrick Geryl, then 51, quit his job as a laboratory worker for a French oil company. He'd saved up just enough money to last him until December 2012. After that, he thought, he wouldn't need it anyway.
Unprecedented catastrophe will precede the end of the world in 2012, believers say, such as massive earthquakes, tidal waves and volcanic eruptions, among other calamities.
(ABC News Photo Illustration)Instead, Geryl, a soft-spoken man who had studied chemistry in his younger years, started preparing for the apocalypse. He founded a "survival group" for likeminded men and women, aimed at living through the catastrophe he knew was coming.
He started gathering materials necessary to survive — water purifiers, wheelbarrows (with spare tires), dust masks and vegetable seeds. His list of survival goods runs 11 pages long.
"You have to understand, there will be nothing, nothing left," Geryl told ABC News from his home in Antwerp, Belgium. "We will have to start an entire civilization from scratch."
