AR14 - RICHARD NOONE By J. Douglas Kenyon

Ancient Mysteries

Future Science

Unexplained
Anomalies

Super Search On:

Douglas Kenyon

Richard Noone

Books & Videos on Earth Changes

Books & Videos by
Richard Noone

Your Ad Here

Shop Atlantis Rising Online

Home | Archives | Discussions
Back Issues | Subscribe | Links

	RICHARD NOONE by J. Douglas Kenyon
Index of Issue 14

When in 1982 Astraea, a small and struggling Atlanta publishing house, introduced a gigantic, profusely illustrated hardback by previously unknown author Richard W. Noone, not too many noticed. At that time the threat posed by enormous polar ice buildups coupled with factors such as global warming and unfortunate astronomical alignments had been considered only by a very few. Fewer still took seriously the work of unsung scientists such as Charles Hapgood, Augustus LePlongeon, Immanuel Vilikovsky, and many others cited. Nevertheless the new volume slowly began to generate respectable sales and in 1986 Crown Publishing of New York took notice and added 5/5/2000 Ice: The Ultimate Disaster, to its list. In the intervening years the book has never once been out of print, with total sales running into six figures. And, in fact, as its following has steadily grown, it has become something of an underground classic.

Followers of today's new research into ancient mysteries are drawn to the book's vast collection of hard-to-come-by evidence of advanced prediluvian civilization and of a lost heritage of ancient wisdom, replete with warnings of awesome dangers yet to be faced. 5/5/2000, says Graham Hancock, author of Fingerprints of the Gods, is an extraordinary treasury of knowledge, hard facts, brilliant intuition, and formidable research. It has played a unique role in waking a generation up to the deep and abiding mystery of the human past and to the uncertainty of our future.

In June of 1997 Crown released a new edition of 5/5/2000, and sales have now accelerated. The first printing was quickly sold out. Apparently caught off guard by the volume of orders, Crown found itself temporarily unable to keep up. By November, though, a second printing reportedly was coping with demand.

Noone takes great pride in pointing out that the second edition contains his original text without changes. Nothing that has transpired in the last 15 years, he believes, has served to refute his original assertions. New in the second edition, however, is a lengthy epilogue containing hitherto little known facts and focusing primarily on the theories of Edward Kunkel concerning construction methods in the Great Pyramid.

When he is not pushing his book, Noone runs a nonhazardous chemical business which, between editions, has been his principal means of support. When Atlantis Rising visited him recently at his home in Ellijay, Georgia, we found him as he has been for most of his adult life, preaching the wonders of ancient achievement, an unabashed evangelist with a southern drawl, completely convinced that the ancients rose to heights far exceeding our own, albeit by means which may be difficult to comprehend today. One ancient enigma, though the means by which the Great Pyramid was constructed he considers solved. But more on that later...

Noone's initiation into the arcane world of ancient mysteries began shortly after he finished high school in Chattanooga, Tennessee (He had grown up on nearby Lookout Mountain). On a camping trip with a couple of friends to Central America in 1964 he visited many of the major pyramid sites including Monte Alban. At one point he left his friends and their guide and climbed to the top of nearby ruins, whereupon he was overcome with what he describes as an incredible feeling of deja vu. Ancient engineers had leveled the top of the mountain as if with a giant razor blade and had built a beautiful rectangular pyramid complex. The mathematical perfection of the layout left him with an indelible memory which inspired him to years of research. Ultimately he stumbled across a paperback The Great Pyramid: Man's Monument to Man by Tom Valentine. Today Noone still clearly recalls the effect made on him by the book. Either this guy is the world's greatest liar, he said to himself, or I wasn't given a correct view of history. Subsequent research was to support the latter conclusion.

Soon afterward, another friend referred him to Peter Tompkins' Secrets of the Great Pyramid, and in the weeks that followed he read everything that he could on the subject. By now it was 1975, and he found himself with the money and time to pursue the things that interested him most pyramids. His first intention was to focus on the structure of the Great Pyramid of Egypt. I was so naive, he recalls, that I just assumed I could call these people (pyramid experts) up, so I picked up the phone and offered to sponsor Tom Valentine for a lecture. Valentine accepted. Soon Noone was talking to many other authorities, including Peter Tompkins (who ultimately guided him in much of his research) and Charles Hapgood (with whom he was to carry on a lengthy correspondence).

5/5/2000 was to contain transcripts from many of his interviews. World renowned architect Wilfred Gregson was one. Most of the books written about the Great Pyramids, says Noone, were written by historians or religious scholars. Who would know more about one of the world's most ancient and complex buildings a historian, a religious scholar, or an architect? I chose architect. Gregson supplied great insight into the actual technical requirements for creating a structure like the Great Pyramid, thus countering many of the unproved theories of mainstream Egyptology.

By now Noone was wondering, If there was this technologically advanced society that built the Great Pyramid, what happened to it? The work of Charles Hapgood supplied him with many of the answers. Hapgood had theorized that earth's crust like the skin on a bowl of gravy, was subject to rapid displacement. The sudden shift of polar ice after thousands of years of buildup, triggered by the gravitational forces of a unique planetary alignment, could set the process in motion, thereby releasing catastrophic forces of unimaginable proportions.

Unlike Rand and Rose Flem-Ath, who have also intensely pursued Hapgood's theories and written about them in their book When the Sky Fell, Noone believes the next episode of earth crust displacement could be immanent. The Flem-Aths share his belief that earth crust displacement accounts for the destruction of high ancient civilization (see the article by Rand Flem-Ath beginning on page 30) but do not expect another such event for yet many millennia. Noone, on the other hand, thinks the next likely trigger could be an intense lineup of planets on May 5, 2000.

In the introduction to the second edition of his book, Noone finds new corroboration for his view. In September 1992, Atlanta astronomer James E. Summers computed the planetary alignment for May 5, 2000. He found that in addition to Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, people on Earth would also see a new moon on the night of May 4, 2000. That new moon, he discovered, will move into alignment with the planets on the night of May 5, 2000.

Noone goes on to cite Smithsonian Magazine from August 1993, every 7,000 years' the weight of ice (in the Arctic) turns the rock under it into a toothpaste consistency providing lubrication and When this happens, the entire ice sheet over Hudson Bay could slide out into the North Atlantic.' Should this happen today, the resulting tidal wave would be approximately three hundred feet high when it hit New York City.

With such views, it is not surprising to find that Noone has given considerable thought to personal survival. His own preparations for disaster include, in addition to stocking up plenty of food and water, leaving his comfortable brick and cedar dwelling, moving to higher ground and into a new dome home which he is planning to build. A Texas company he has investigated blows up a large balloon, which is then sprayed with shotcrete. After the material hardens, the structure is surrounded with rebar reinforcement and then additional layers of concrete, or other such materials, are added until the desired strength is attained. Like the Boy Scout motto, you've got to be prepared, he chuckles.

Construction methods applied in building the Great Pyramid are not so easily determined, but Noone is not without strongly held views on that subject too. While most conventional scenarios are certainly more complicated than shotcrete and balloons, they remain thoroughly unsatisfying. Especially so are notions involving mud ramps and bronze age slaves. The mystery of how a million-plus giant stone blocks were moved into place, however, Noone believes has been solved by an obscure hydraulic engineer named Edward Kunkel.

Kunkel believed that the mysterious inner chambers of the Great Pyramid were, in actuality, the components of a giant pump which employed conventional hydraulic principles to draw water from underground passageways to flood the area within the sides of the pyramid. The pump was built in miniature by Kunkel, and in 1955 he succeeded in obtaining a patent for it. According to his scenario, stones were floated into place on large wooden rafts within the 13-acre flooded enclosure provided by the four sides. As the walls were raised, a system of locks on the outside was used to float new blocks in from the Nile and lift them to the appropriate level. Regarding Kunkel's theories, Rand Flem-Ath is in complete agreement with Noone, volunteering that until a better explanation comes along Kunkel's scenario seems the most plausible.

The next scenario for 5/5/2000 may be of the Hollywood variety. Noone has been in negotiation with several motion picture producers to use a fictionalized script which he created. One deal with a producer recently fell through when an injury to the leading man in another of the producer's films led to financial losses that aborted plans for the 5/5/2000 project. At the moment Noone expects Crown soon to auction rights to the highest bidder and for something to be in the theaters by Christmas of 1999.

Noone does not believe the potential disasters foreseen on May 5, 2000, are by any means inevitable, but, as he says at the conclusion of the epilogue in the second edition to his book, it is as if we are on some ancient astronomical timetable, prepared millennia ago, whereby here, at the eleventh hour, something incredible about our past is about to be revealed to us.