BALLARAT, Australia – The new millennium and a worldwide wave of natural disasters have many people thinking twice about Armageddon. But it's all old news for Australian survival experts Stan and Holly Deyo.
Earthquakes, global warming, and coronal mass ejections – giant clouds of hot plasma gas belched from the sun that could engulf the earth – are just a few of the non-technological mishaps the expat Americans have their eyes peeled for.
"When the sun has a bad day," said Stan Deyo, a native Texan, "we all have bad day."
The Deyos have been spreading the word about disaster preparedness for years through their books, Web site, and radio spots on the nationally aired Art Bell Show, and Jeff Rense's Sightings radio show.
"Stan's abilities to analyze and project the El Niño effect from satellite photos and geological maps is a matter of record," Rense said. "He was really the first person to speak about it loudly and with any conviction on the Internet. He's accrued a lot of respect for his measured, intelligent analysis of potentialities that no one can actually foresee."
Holly Deyo's newly released survival guide Dare To Prepare covers every possible disaster that could befall the planet – including the apocalypse predicted in the New Testament – as well as how to save provisions, function without utilities, and take care of pets during a disaster.
The Deyos plan to ride out the millennium in a windy rural town an hour and a half northwest of Melbourne. Their disaster stockpile includes 110 kg of grain, 43 kg of dairy products, 18 kg of rice and pasta, 17kg of legumes, 500 servings of vegetables, 428 rolls of toilet paper, a box of Ritz crackers, a package of Juicy Fruit gum and 1.75 liters each of rum, tequila, vodka, triple sec, and Jack Daniels.
"Everyone wants to tie everything in with Y2K, but that's just a small part of the problem," Holly Deyo said.
"In the last 10 years natural disasters are three times more frequent compared to the 1960s," she said, citing research insurer Munich Re. "It costs world economies eight times as much and insurance companies 14 times as much – even after adjusting for inflation."
Don Jacks, deputy director of public affairs for the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), says natural disasters aren't necessarily increasing. It's just that media coverage has changed.
"The ability to get pictures from an area and get them around the world in just seconds is one way that we know so much about what's going on. Natural disasters are news," said Jacks, although he conceded that hurricane numbers in the last few years have increased from nine to 14 annually, possibly due to El Niño.
While the Deyos ground their survival message in facts and common sense, Stan Deyo's other theories are much more controversial. He entered the public eye in 1978 when he released The Cosmic Conspiracy, an intimidating tome exposing what he felt was an international conspiracy by the Illuminati, the freemasons, and the Club of Rome, among others, to take over the world using man-made natural disasters, war, anti-gravity devices, and bogus extraterrestrials.
Deyo claimed he was hired by hydrogen bomb inventor Dr. Edward Teller on behalf of an unnamed "transnational organization" to come to Australia to work on antigravity advanced propulsion systems. When his work was done, the former US Air Force cadet knew he was in trouble.
"I'd become a liability, because I'd seen too much," he said.
Deyo has not had the chance to build his antigravity advanced propulsion systems so as to prove his theories.
"Who would I get to back it?" he said. "If you walked into an office and said you wanted to make a flying saucer, you'd get laughed at so fast it wouldn't even be funny."
"Everyone has their own spin on the international moneyed elite and their agenda," Rense said of Deyo's theories. "[The couple] may talk about extreme scenarios, but when it comes right down to the bottom line, they are extremely logical and competent in the way they analyze people's inability and inappropriate predisposition towards being prepared."
FEMA's spokesman, Don Jacks, said he couldn't comment on the conspiracy theories, but he did agree with Deyo's preparedness message.
"Disaster rescue is not a spectator sport," Jacks said. "You can't just sit there and let the federal government do everything."
Whether people prepare for a possible earthquake or plan to fend off an international plot for global domination is irrelevant to the Deyos, they just want folks to be prepared.
"Listen to whatever dings your chime," said Stan Deyo, "just have some food and water put away."
