Doomsday: May 21, 2011

Life as we know it is coming to an end.

Scholars have long credited the Maya civilization with predicting the end of the world in 2012.

But a California man says judgment day is much closer than you think.

We are obsessed with how it might end — not just our lives, but the world.

The mayhem, destruction — the sheer spectacle of time stopping and never again restarting, and our imaginations could soon become reality.

But, how will it happen? A natural disaster?

“We’re already beginning,” said Robert Vicino, president of Vivos, a company that builds doomsday shelters. “The earth changes a la Haiti, Chile, New Zealand, Japan. It’s working it’s way around the Pacific rim, or the rim of fire.”

Just look at the deadly rash of tornadoes recently barreling through the Midwest and the South, he said, as well as Hurricaine Katrina, or the Australian floods.

Turmoil in the Middle East and Southwest Asia also sparked fears that mankind will be its own undoing.

But, according to one man, that is just the tipping point.

“Time is running out, exceedingly rapidly,” said Harold Camping, 89, a Christian broadcaster and president of Family Radio which is based in Oakland.

He predicts “the rapture” is less than 24 hours away.

That’s the day Evangelicals say Jesus Christ will rise from the dead, gather his true believers and carry them to heaven.

Everyone else will stay on earth.

Five months of death and destruction will follow and the world will end on Oct. 21.

“God not only can prophesize what the future is, but he can make it come to pass,” said Camping.

We spoke with Camping over the phone in Palm Desert, while he sat in his studio in Oakland.

“So, what’s exactly going to happen on May 21?” we asked.

“In any city or area of the world where the calendar says May 21 and from everything we know from the Bible, it will be about 6 p.m. in the evening, there’s going to be this great earthquake,” said Camping. “Because it begins only when it’s about 6 p.m. in any country or in any area, all the rest of the world will instantly know that judgment has begun.”

Camping then read a few verses from the King James version of the Bible, which he said proves his theory.

“There was a great earthquake,” said Camping. “Such as was not since man were upon the earth. So mighty an earthquake and so great.”

“I appreciate you reading those verses to us, but I did not hear in any of them the date of May 21,” we said.

“They don’t give the date here. But, you asked me what is going to happen,” said Camping.

He said he came up with the date through math and science — a process that took decades of studying scripture.

“From what I’m reading, just in your history, is it true that you once predicted the end of the world also in 1994?” we asked.

“Yes, because that was when my research in the Bible was not nearly completed,” said Camping. “Now, I’m not embarrassed by that. It’s like anybody, any scientist or technician that invents something, they don’t come out with the final product the first time they announce it.”

“End of the world” signs along Interstate 8 can be found throughout San Diego.

They clearly states that May 21, 2011 is judgment day and more specifically that the Bible guarantees it.

Family Radio paid for them.

More than a thousand of the signs can be found throughout the world.

The one in Cathedral City along Date Palm Drive just south of Vista Chino is unaffiliated with Camping, but it sends a similar message.

One atheist group in Oakland responded with their own sign, calling the prediction “nonsense.”

“What it does is it puts Christianity, mainstream Christianity and God under the circus tent,” said Pastor Tom Aversa, of Valley Community Chapel in Yucca Valley.

He calls Camping an extremist.

“In the gospel of Mathew, gospel of Mark, we are specifically told that no man knows — or, ‘you do not know,’ is the exact quote, you do not know the day that the Lord will come,” said Aversa. “I’m not sure what part of ‘you do not know’ people don’t understand, and particularly, Mr. Camping and his followers.”

Either way, preparations have already been made to elude Armageddon.

“Terrorism, war, a pandemic, you name it and we’ve thought of every possible threat,” said Vicino.

His company, Vivos, launched about three years ago.

He builds doomsday shelters.

There are six across the country including, one in Nebraska and another in Barstow.

The shelter in Europe spans 250,000 square feet.

All are at undisclosed locations.

All are built underground.

“It’s setup more like a 4-star hotel, with kitchen areas, bakery, gyms, classrooms, theater, security and medical area — actually a little hospital, a dental clinic, and then big lounge areas — similar to what you have on a cruise ship,” said Vicino.

The cost to build the shelters is passed on to the members.

Vicino calls it fractional ownership.

The shelters range between $10 million to $30 million to construct.

That amount is then divided by the number of members living in the shelter.

For example, 200 people in a $10 million shelter will cost each person $50,000 — that’s the average cost.

“Nothing’s been used yet,” said Vicino. “As we complete each shelter, we fully outfit it with all the clothing, the food, the water, the fuel, medicine — everything that’s needed for up to one year of autonomous survival. That means with the doors sealed. No contact with the outside world and you’d survive.”

Vicino started his businesses by promoting there were only “1,000 days left.”

That’s a reference to the infamous date of Dec. 21, 2012.

But he says that was just a marketing tool.

May 20 doesn’t mean much to him either.

“I’m really shocked that anybody would step out with that kind of statement,” said Vicino, who doesn’t subscribe to a specific doomsday scenario.

But, the ancient Maya civilization has long been credited with predicting the end of the world.

However, historians at the San Diego Museum of Man said that’s not entirely accurate.

Mark Van Stone is a professor of art history at Southwestern College in Chula Vista and author of “2012: Science and Prophecy of the Ancient Maya.”

“No, the world is not coming to an end in 2012 any more than in 2011 or 2013,” said Van Stone, who is working on a 2012 exhibit to be showcased at the Museum of Man next year.

“The reason that people say that the end of the Maya calendar or the end of the world is coming in 2012 is that that is the year that the Maya long count calendar reaches the number in Maya 13 zero zero zero,” said Van Stone. “13 zero zero zero is a magical number — it’s kind of like Y2K.”

But Van Stone said that number simply means the Maya calendar resets.

However, he said scholars and pop culture hijacked the year 2012 and turned it into a cult phenomenon — the end of days.

“But the information that I found was that the Maya believed that time would go on,” said Van Stone. “The calendar would continue. The world would continue. In fact, there’s a prediction in a monument at Palenque that in the year 4772 AD, the calendar will have gone up past 13 to 14 to 15 and on up to 20.”

So when will when will time stop?

The world is at odds on if or when this planet and universe will be wiped out.

But, tomorrow could be the day, at least according to one man, the end of the world is next.