The price of Venezuelan oil rose by six per cent and the Survivors’ profits exceeded $10 million on an investment of less than $1 million. Evidence has also been uncovered that the Survivors have siphoned $300 million of their profits into overseas bank accounts. The most likely explanation for this is that the Survivors are financing Help Earth.
As in all intelligence work, it is essential to gather as much information as possible before making the target aware that it is under investigation. There is already enough evidence to prosecute Lomborg Financial and the Survivors with fraud and money-laundering offences. However, ASIS and MI5 feel that any fast move would involve turning down an opportunity to probe deeper and reach into the heart of Help Earth, perhaps even destroying the organisation entirely.
To this end, ASIS has devised a number of schemes to penetrate the Survivors’ organisation. They believe that a family unit, utilising CHERUB agents, will stand the best chance of allaying suspicions and infiltrating the secretive cult.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE SURVIVORS
In 1961, Joel Regan quit a moderately successful career as a vending-machine salesman. He purchased a disused church building on the outskirts of Brisbane and began to preach his own brand of the gospel.
Regan claimed that he had received a message from God, telling him that nuclear war was imminent and to build an Ark in the Australian outback. Regan said that his true followers would emerge from the Ark as the only survivors of the war and rebuild civilisation as a Christian paradise.
Most people expected the 38-year-old’s kooky brand of homespun Christian values and predictions of an apocalypse to fizzle out, but they had not counted upon Regan’s experience as a salesman, or his training as an intelligence officer in the Australian army.
Locals who attended Regan’s meetings as a joke often found themselves surrounded by attractive members of the opposite sex imploring them to return and many did. Regan also opened his church to local community groups, including single and divorced mothers, war widows and recovery groups.
Members of these groups were often lonely individuals, who took up Regan’s invitations to join his religious services and enjoyed the friendly atmosphere within the group, which Regan called the Ocean of Love.
But once a church member felt comfortable inside the Ocean of Love, the more sinister side of Regan’s religion would come to the fore. Using a mixture of traditional salesmanship and sophisticated mind control techniques he’d learned as an intelligence officer, Regan would invite his members to group therapy sessions where they would be asked to relive the most traumatic and upsetting times of their lives.
The sessions were designed to produce the effect commonly known as brainwashing. Regan would make stark contrast between the horrors of the outside world and the comfortable and friendly world of the people he called ‘Survivors’. After as few as three or four intensive sessions, members who were susceptible to the mind control techniques would begin to show radical changes in their thoughts and behaviour. They would become distrustful of formerly close friends and family members and spend increasing amounts of time involved in group activities with the Survivors.
As sessions continued, Regan would begin to emphasise the more eccentric elements of his religion. In particular, the need to build an Ark in the Australian outback. The Ark would have to be completely self sufficient and strong enough to withstand seven years of turmoil following a nuclear war.
Building the Ark would require vast sums of money. Once they had been successfully recruited, Regan’s followers were asked to move into basic accommodation adjacent to his church, donate all of their personal wealth to help build the Ark and serve as a disciple of the church.
The work of Survivors varies. Some work inside the church, preaching, counselling and recruiting new members. Others are sent out to earn money, as cleaners, farm hands, construction workers and even carrying on Regan’s original business as vending-machine salesmen.
THE SURVIVORS TODAY
A two-hour flight into the outback from Brisbane will take you to one of the most spectacular and eccentric structures on the planet. Forty-four years after being founded, the Survivors’ Ark is a spectacular A$5billion construction, combining the high walls and dormitory-style accommodation of a prison, with a 150-metre-high temple, airport, modern offices, educational facilities and a palatial sixty-room residence that is the official home of 82-year-old Joel Regan. He is Australia’s richest and most controversial man.
The Survivors have more than 13,500 full-time members living on 23 global Survivor communes. Another 17,000 regularly