"Millenial Mission"
Underground vault holds
Scientology teachings
Santa Rosa Enterprise
February 9, 1992
by Chris Smith

Petrolia, Humboldt County --

The people who have been allowed
to see the colossal tube that's
buried in a velvety green hill just
up the road from Petrolia say it's
the strangest thing they've ever laid
eues on.

And the most mysterious. The huge,
pipe-shaped vault is as wide and
high as the cabin of a Boeing 747.
It is more than 140 feet longer than
one of the jumbo jets.

Disciples of the late L. Ron
Hubbard, founder of what has been
called the world's most ruthless
cult -- the Church of Scientology --
have sunk the herculean cylinder
into the ground like a bomb shelter.

Well out of view, it is embedded
in a cattle-ranch hill high above the
coast. People who have seen it
say all that's visible is one exposed
end and a ventilation tower poking
above the ground like the periscope
on a submarine.

Constructed of concrete-clad steel
and buried under 14 feet of earth,
the nearly completed vault is
designed to last 1,000 years and
withstand any destructive act of
man or God short of a direct hit
by a nuclear bomb

In fact, Greg Bish, a Humboldt
County planning commissioner
who has seen the thing three times,
said he thinks the Scientologists
chose this remote, sparsely
populated area precisely because
it's so non-strategic.

"There is no reason to drop a
nuclear bomb on Petrolia," he
said.

So there is no question the
vault is virtually impregnable
and will be around for a very
long time.

The question in Petrolia is:
"Why is it here?"

"I can see where it is from my
house; it's five or six miles
away," said 67-year-old
Petrolia resident Hardy Hogan,
a retired lumberman.

"But what it's for, I have no
more idea than nothin'."

The Scientologists paid in
excess of $6 million to buy
more than 3,600 acres of
grazing land to build and
then bury the vault.

The construction of the thing,
which began in 1987, was the
grandest undertaking that
people in Petrolia have ever
seen. The spectacle gave rise
to all sorts of rumors about
why the Scientologists would
go to all that trouble and
expense.

"In the beginning," said
Elizabeth Poston McHarry,
publisher of the weekly
Ferndale Enterprise newspaper,
people "thought they were
going to store refrigerated
bodies."

The talk was that the Scientologists
would cryogenically preserve
corpses of church members, perhaps
even the corpse of Hubbard himself,
until they are re-entered by eternal
souls -- Scientology calls them
"thetans."

The people responsible for the
vault have said such talk is
ridiculous and, anyway, Hubbard's
body was cremated following
his death. Beyond those denials,
literature on Scientology says
"thetans" are believed to inhabit
the bodies of newborn babies,
not those of dead bodies.

And at the county seat in Eureka,
Humboldt County officials said
they are fully satisfied the vault
will be used exactly as the owners
have told them it will be used.

The Scientologist's explanation:
The massive capsule will be used
to preserve, through the most
durable and dazzingly high-tech
archival technology available,
the multitudinous words and
writings of the man they value
above all others: Lafayette
Ronald Hubbard.

He was the science fiction writer
who founded the Church of
Scientology and called it
mankind's most important
spiritual discovery. But some
defectors and investigators
hold a decisively different view.

"Scientology is quite likely the
most ruthless, most classically
terroristic, the most litigious
and the most lucrative cult the
country has ever seen," said
Cynthia Kisser, executive
director of the Chicago-based
Cult Awareness Network.

Reverence and Suspicion

At the time of his death in 1986
at the age of 74, Hubbard was a
recluse accused by some high-
ranking defectors of pocketing
about $200 million of church
revenues. But he's so revered
by some Scientologists they use
their own system for counting
years in which A.D. stands for
After Dianteics.

Dianetics, which gave rise to the
creation of Scientology in 1954,
is Hubbard's theory the painful
parts of a person's life can be
erased like unwanted noise on a
recording tape, leaving the person
enlightened or "clear." Scientology
holds that the erasing process
requires a person work with a
trained "auditor," a service that
costs thousands of dollars.

"In reality," said a Time magazine
cover story from last May, "the
church is a hugely profitable
global racket that survives by
intimidating members and critics
in a mafia-like manner."

The organization that bought
the rural ranch land near Petrolia
is the Los Angeles-based Church
of Spiritual Technology, a business
affiliate of Scientology. In papers
filed with Humboldt County, the
organization states it was founded
in 1982 to ensure Hubbard's
collected writings and talks "do not
fall prey to the ravages of time
and will still be in existence in the
centuries to come." The property
at Petrolia is off-limits to the media,
and numerous phone calls. The
Press Democrat made to Scientologists
involved in the project were not
returned.

Nuclear War

Bish, the past chairman of the Humboldt
County Planning Commission, said it
appears to him the people who built the
vault believe eventually "we're all going
to be nuked and gone, and that man
is going to start over."

So if modern man's successors begin a
new civilizaton and come upon the
exotic archives inside the vault, he said,
"they'll have L. Ron Hubbard."
Even if members of the future race don't
find the Petrolia cylinder, they might
stumble upon one of at least two others
near San Bernadino and in New Mexico.

Before Petrolia was discovered by
Hubbard's followed, it was a contentedly
unknown logging and ranching town
30 miles South of the famed Victorian
village of Ferndale.

Petrolia's previous claim to fame came in
the early 1860's, when California's first
oil well was drilled there. The coastal
settlement had been named Mattolia,
for the close-by Mattole River, but was
renamed Petrolia in anticipation of an
oil rush that never quite happened.

Word spread fast among the approximately
500 residents of the Mattolw Valley when,
in 1984, some uncommunicative strangers
began buying up ranches and homesteads
in the gorgeous, sea-view hills near
Petrolia.

And people really started buzzing when
they heard the newcomers had acquired
more than 3,600 acres of land and were
going to sink into the fertile soil an
armored cylinder 20 feet in diameter --
that's wide enough to drive a big-rig
truck through -- and 373 feet long.

The Church of Spiritual Technology
people are secretive with locals and the
media, but county officials said the
spiritual technologists have been forthright
with them.

"They've been totally open," said Stan
Dixon, the county supervisor whose
district includes Petrolia. In fact, Dixon
said, now that work on the vault is
virtually done, he and other county
officials have been invited by
Spiritual Technology to come for a
tour later this month.

Mammoth Dimensions

In essence, the vast project involved
scraping away the top of the a remote
hill. A ponderous concrete base, 4 feet
thick, 20 feet wide and 373 feet long,
was laid in a trench.

Then, the cylindrical vault was assembled
from great, interlocking steel panels.
A second floor was installed down the
center of the great tube.

Once the vault was fully assembled, it
was encased in several inches of
concrete, then covered over with 14 feet
of gravel and dirt. All that's visible is the
one exposed end and the ventilation
building equipped with fans that push
air down into the crypt.

Todd Sobolik, Humboldt County's chief
building inspector, remarked, "It's very
impressive."

The Church of Spiritual Technology used
local labor for the vast excavation and for
construction of the concrete foundation,
of miles of paved roads and of a stately,
8,000 square foot staff house, located
some miles form the vault. The property
owners have assured Humboldt County
only "four to six" church members will
live in the house.

"Good for Business"

Locals said money seems to be no object
with the Scientologists and that the
project pumped a windfall of cash into a
remote, rural area in need of work and
income.

"It's been good for business," said a
publicity-shy worker at Petrolia's
Hideaway restaurant. "They've put a
lot of people to work."

The project is profitable for the county, too.
The Church of Spiritual Technology will
pay $64,500 in property taxes, a large
sum in Southwestern Humboldt.

By this time, suspicions the vault might
store frozen corpses have pretty much
died out.

Because Scientology members so revere
Hubbard, said kisser, of the Cult Awareness
Network, "It's quite possible" the only
intended use is to preserve the writings
and lectures. A Los Angeles Times series
in mid-1990 said Scientology has spent
$15 million to carry Hubbard's word far
into the future.

Right to Inspection

Should the vault's Petrolia neighbors
ever come to suspec the thing is being
used for something other than the stated,
archival purpose, county Supervisor
Dixon said Humboldt officials could
insist on an inspection.

"Certainly we have the right to see
that people are doing with the property
what they said they would," he said.

In documents filed with Humboldt
County, the Church of Spiritual Technology
says most conventional methods of
preserving written and spoken words
are subject to deterioration -- paper
yellows and recording tapes decay.
The documents say the organization was
created "with the purpose of researching
methods and ways to counteract these
factors."

Archives have not yet been moved into
the vault, but the documents in Eureka
say the high-cost, high-tech methods of
preserving Hubbard's spoken and
written words, as well as other materials
from the Bible and other religious
sources, may include:

-- Audio discs made of gold
-- Writing that is chemically etched into
stainless steel
-- Long-playing records that are made of
steel and, in the absence of electricity,
can be played on a hand-crank phonograph.
-- Archival paper that looks new for
centuries.
-- Gas-filled titanium time capsules in which
records are preserved for "a minimum of
1,000 years."

If all goes according to the Church of
Spiritual Technology's plan, a successor
of modern man might find the Petrolia
vault a millenium from now, even if all
else on Earth has been lost.

But, because they would not talk to the
Press Democrat, officials of the
organization could not be asked how that
future being might get at the wisdom of
Hubbard -- that is, how the being will
open the impregnable vault.

"That's a good point," said Bish, the
county's planning commissioner who
has toured the great underground
cylinder with Scientologists.
"They never explained that to us."