The Tau Project


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  1. Origin
  2. Contacts and Links
  3. Beliefs
    1. Views of Other Groups
  4. Organization
  5. Redoubts
  6. Logistics
    1. Habitation
    2. Military
    3. Vehicles
  7. Anachronistic Technology
  8. Current Conditions

the symbol used on TP uniforms and equipment

 

Origin

 

     James Belef Rabnell (b. 1917, d. 1989) had obtained a degree in aeronautical engineering at Los Angeles City College in 1939; he married his wife Jean in 1941. He joined the Army Air Corps just after the Pearl Harbor attack, and spent the war as an engineering officer. After the war, he left the Army, and began working for the Lockheed Corporation in 1946. Much of his career was spent analyzing new inventions, and making recommendations for development and marketing.

     He and his wife had two daughter, Eleanor (b. 1942) and Amy (b. 1947). Rabnell served as a speaker and Bible teacher at various Southern California non-denominational evangelical churches from 1969 onwards. He was ordained to the ministry in 1976.

     In the 1970s he became aware of the Morrow Project. While never a member of the Project, and not cleared to know anything officially, some of the ways, means and goals gradually came to his attention. The Project was not, however, central to his beliefs about the future -- just an item of evidence.

     Rabnell retired in 1977 as a senior manufacturing engineer at the Burbank "Skunk Works" plant, and moved himself, along with his wife, daughters, sons-in-law and grandchildren to a ranch near Amarillo, Texas. He devoted himself to his church and to studying the coming End Times, producing radio broadcasts and cable television programs, and eventually a book:  "The End of Planet Earth" (it predicted the apocalypse would happen in 1989). He realized that many people in America were planning to survive a nuclear war before the end of the millennium.

     Unlike many charismatic preachers, Pastor Rabnell had a solid technical background, and many connections in the aerospace industry. His book had sold 6 million copies by 1982.

     He began planning for a way for his family and his view of American Christianity to survive the Tribulation Times (as he called the period after the Atomic War).

 

Contacts and Links

 

     Various individuals within corporations (including members of the Council of Tomorrow) and the American government were sympathetic to Pastor Rabnell. These included some senior military officers and a couple of NASA administrators.

     The Capsheaf movement had many links to Zionist and ultra-Orthodox Jewish groups in Israel.

 

Beliefs

 

     The Capsheaf Church is a branch of post-tribulational dispensational non-denominational evangelicals. They had a general feeling that the seven years of tribulation would start at the time of the Atomic War. In their view, the Morrow Project's plan to restore peace and stability by uniting the world's nations ("Is that a thing we do?") marks Bruce Morrow as the Antichrist, or a tool of the Antichrist. Their incomplete knowledge about the Morrow Project has led them to some interesting interpretations of Morrow symbols, goals, and organization.

     A complicated timeline of predictions sort-of matched some actual post-Atomic War events -- heavy fallout that blanketed the Middle East, low casualties in Israel from the direct attacks in the Atomic War, the Yellowstone volcanic eruption (as the "Wrath of the Lamb" earthquake), the biowarfare plagues and the nuclear winter. Other events, such as a temporary treaty between Bruce Morrow and Israel, and a symbolic pattern formed by Morrow depots, boltholes and caches, seem hard to understand for non-believers ("But of course you would deny that!"). The establishment of post-War communications networks by the Morrow Project, and any currency they might issue, can also be made to fit into the predictions. The impact of a 1 kilometer diameter comet in February of 2149 will be taken to be the Wormwood Trumpet.

 

... the Earth was destined to be destroyed or “purified” by nuclear war; there is nothing good Christians could (or should) do about this inevitable prophecy ...

 

     In general, the destruction of the Morrow Project by Israel (with the help of the Tau Project and various saints, etc.) is one of the last things that must happen before the Second Coming. The Jews are considered "God's chosen people", with an eternal covenant with the Lord; they are expected to return to a monarchy.

 

The Morrow Project will be asked, "Have you contacted Israel yet? Or formed an alliance with them?

There's only a decade or so left, you know, before the Wormwood Trumpet."

 

     For a while, their leaders believed that the current date was in the very early 21st Century (due to the Windows clock error).

     The symbology of the Tau Project is biblical:

 

from the Book of Ezekiel, chapter 9

     "And the Lord said unto him, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof.

     And to the others he said in mine hearing, Go ye after him through the city, and smite: let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity:

     Slay utterly old and young, both maids, and little children, and women: but come not near any man upon whom is the mark; and begin at my sanctuary. Then they began at the ancient men which were before the house.

     And he said unto them, Defile the house, and fill the courts with the slain: go ye forth. And they went forth, and slew in the city."

The mark was traditionally regarded as being the letter tau,

last letter of the Semitic alphabet,

derived from the hieroglyph meaning "mark"

(which was in fact a simple X).

 

     The tau-on-the-forehead mark also represented the hope for an end to the evil age and the restoration of Zion.

     The Capsheaf Church uses the Schofield Reference Bible as their usual text; this is the King James Bible with commentary and cross-referencing on every page.

 

Views of Other Groups

 

     The spread of godless world communism was a terrible offense against the Lord.

     Various other groups were seen as undermining Christianity and America:  the Catholic Church, the Trilateral Commission, the NAACP, Planned Parenthood, the mass media, many large philanthropic foundations, the UN, most major universities ...

     The Illuminati are an evil, satanically-inspired centuries-old conspiracy. The Jews have a sort of in-between status.

     Some forces for good:  the John Birch Society, the Moral Majority movement, and the Unification Church.

 

Organization

 

     Each of the Redoubts is led by a Pastor; the residents form a Capsheaf congregation James Rabnell was "Senior Pastor". A Redoubt has about 500 persons in twenty-five 20-person cryoberths; 400 of the persons are wives and children.

 

Redoubts

 

     The Tau Project constructed six underground bunkers to withstand the Atomic War. Five of them were in the mountainous parts of the western United States; one was in Kentucky.

 

     The bunkers are 40 meters in diameter and 7 levels deep, with a central open core and five radial passages on most levels; the top level is about 50 meters below the surface.

 

An example of a Tau Project bunker (in this case, the Stronghold bunker).

 

     These were built in a hurry, beginning in 1980; they each have a fusion reactor powering their systems.

 

Logistics

 

     Huge diesel fuel tanks were built into the redoubt; but despite anti-oxidants, fuel stabilizers, and high sulfur levels, etc. the fuel went bad within 20 years.

 

Habitation

 

     Supplies for tent housing for 500 people:  porta-potties, military kitchens, cots, medical supplies, water tank on stilts, refrigerators, barbed wire, water testing kits, a bailey bridge, etc.

 

Military

 

     Personal arms and equipment: 

 

 

     Ammunition and spares:

 

 

Vehicles

 

     A typical set of vehicles in a redoubt (local conditions will change this).

 

 

Anachronistic Technology

 

Current Conditions

 

     The redoubts were filled with very dry air. Unlike the Morrow Project boltholes, depots and bases, items stored here have deteriorated over a century and a half.