The CIA, Adam, Eve, and a Guy Named Chan

Our ever-curious team at the Commonplace Fun Facts Department of Dubious Digs and Suspiciously Redacted Reports has unearthed a gem of a story for you. This one features the biblical Adam and Eve, a brilliant and possibly bonkers chap named Chan Thomas, the CIA, and enough apocalyptic flair to make a Mayan calendar look like a daily planner. Strap in, because we’re diving into a saga of pole shifts, government censorship, and geological chaos so wild it could make your high school science teacher go into the witness protection program.

The Book That Launched a Thousand Conspiracies

In 1963, Chan Thomas — who sounds like he should have been leading a jazz trio at a dive bar but was instead busy reinventing global cataclysm theory — published a book called The Adam and Eve Story. Do we classify it as fiction, history, or scientific speculation? Frankly, we’re still not sure, for reasons we will get to.

The Adam and Eve Story proposed that, every 7,000 years or so, the Earth’s magnetic poles just up and shift like a toddler flipping a board game. According to Thomas, this process causes the crust of the Earth to slip, triggering earthquakes, 1,000 mph winds, tsunamis taller than skyscrapers, and the sort of mass extinction event that could really put a damper on your weekend plans.

But wait — it gets weirder.

Who Was Chan Thomas, Anyway?

Before he became the unofficial poster child for cataclysmic pole shifts and CIA redactions, Chan Thomas was an aerospace engineer with a curious résumé and an even curiouser sense of what counted as “science.” He earned a degree in electrical engineering from Dartmouth College, a fact which—on its face—might suggest a respectable scientific background. And to be fair, he did do some legitimate work in the aerospace sector, including stints with companies like McDonnell Douglas during the height of the Cold War, when rocket scientists were basically the rockstars of government contracting.

Thomas even taught at respected institutions like the University of Southern California and worked in advanced propulsion systems and aerospace design. So yes, he had scientific chops—but somewhere between his work on advanced jet engines and designing electronics, he appears to have taken a hard left into ancient astronaut theory, biblical reinterpretation, and Earth-crust displacement armageddon scenarios.

Despite his technical background, Thomas is not known for peer-reviewed scientific contributions. His most infamous work, The Adam and Eve Story, is entirely unmoored from mainstream geology, seismology, or climatology. Instead, it reads like what might happen if a doomsday prepper got hold of a National Geographic and a copy of Genesis, then decided to write fan fiction.

To his supporters, Thomas was a misunderstood visionary with ideas too big—and possibly too terrifying—for the mainstream to handle. To scientists, he’s more of a cautionary tale about what happens when plausible credentials are used to launch deeply implausible claims. Either way, his name now lives in infamy, tied to a theory so fringe it got its own CIA file.

What’s in the Book, and Why Are Scientists Side-Eyeing It?

Chan Thomas’s The Adam and Eve Story reads like a fever dream written by someone who binge-watched Discovery Channel’s apocalypse week and thought, “Not bad, but what if we added ancient survivors and Earth doing cartwheels?” The central premise of the book is that every several thousand years, the Earth’s crust suddenly slips over its molten core—sort of like a loose orange peel rotating around the fruit underneath. This “pole shift” allegedly causes earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and weather patterns so violent they make the disaster at Pompeii look like a rush hour fender bender.

According to Thomas, these cycles of destruction reset human civilization, erasing all traces of our existence except a lucky few who repopulate the world afterward. He suggests this is how we got the story of Noah, the myth of Atlantis, and possibly even the inspiration for the Flintstones (OK, that last one was a bit of a stretch).

The biblical Adam and Eve? Thomas says they were the survivors of the last great planetary reset. What about dinosaurs? They were just victims of an earlier cataclysmic crust-shuffle. It’s the kind of theory that neatly folds every unsolved mystery into one tidy, globe-spinning bundle.

In short, Thomas claimed human history is a repeating loop of high civilizations being smacked back to the Stone Age every few millennia by Mother Earth’s cosmic Etch A Sketch reset.

The Scientific Community Reacts (Spoiler: Not Favorably)

Here’s the problem: the science community, bless their evidence-based hearts, collectively raised one eyebrow and several PhDs at this. The notion of Earth’s basically turning itself inside out when the poles reverse themselves is not supported by any geological evidence. Plate tectonics? Sure. Glacial isostatic adjustments? Yep. Spontaneous planetary corkscrewing? Not so much. In fact, Thomas’s claims about 1,000 mph winds and instantaneous pole flips contradict everything we understand about Earth’s inertia and the structural integrity of, well, everything.

Even more troubling for his credibility: Thomas didn’t cite any data, didn’t publish in scientific journals, and didn’t seem to think peer review was a thing that applied to him. Instead, he stitched together anecdotes, myths, and a smattering of pseudoscientific speculation to create a theory that’s equal parts terrifying and untethered from observable reality.

And yet, despite the scientific side-eye and lack of empirical support, The Adam and Eve Story continues to thrive in conspiracy theory circles. Because nothing says “must-read content” like a book that was once classified by the CIA and sounds like it was ghostwritten by a paranoid Indiana Jones.

When the CIA Comes Knocking

So the book is filled with a lot of dubious and downright-cuckoo notions. So is 86.3% of social media. Why is The Adam and Eve story on our radar?

Thomas’ book might have faded into complete obscurity into the void of 1960s pseudoscience, except for one notable event: the CIA got involved. That’s right. The Central Intelligence Agency — the organization that made the indoor wearing of sunglasses and trench coats extremely cool read his book and declared, “Yeah, this is the kind of speculative geophysical horror show we should keep secret.” So they classified it. The clamped down on it with the same fervor that they apply alien autopsies and the file about Elvis faking his death so he could serve as Earth’s ambassador to Gallifrey.

Parts of the book remained under wraps until 2013 when a declassified version was released — and people noticed it had been, well, sanitized. Entire chapters were missing. Pages vanished. One imagines a CIA analyst redacting it with the enthusiasm of a teenager with a highlighter and a final exam he didn’t study for.

So… Why Did the CIA Classify It?

Now, we know what you’re thinking: “Sure, this book reads like a geological thriller written by a doomsday cultist with a thesaurus, but why on Earth (or off it?) would the CIA get involved?” A fair question—and one that invites exactly the kind of speculation that Chan Thomas would have loved. Naturally, this led to the internet conspiracy machine doing what it does best: making wildly confident assertions while eating Cheetos at 2:00 AM.

Let’s start with the official reason: the CIA hasn’t really given one. The sanitized version of The Adam and Eve Story was quietly declassified in 2013 without so much as a “Dear Citizens, here’s why we were hoarding your apocalypse fanfic.” This, of course, was like dumping a bucket of gasoline on the bonfire of internet conspiracy theorists who were already convinced that the agency is hiding everything from free energy to the recipe for KFC’s eleven herbs and spices.

The lack of explanation from the CIA should not be particularly surprising. They are in the secrecy business, after all. That’s why if you write a tell-all book about being a CIA assassin while operating under the cover story of being the host of The Gong Show, it’s a little difficult to disprove your claims. If it’s true, the CIA is not going to admit or deny it. Likewise, if you made it all up, the CIA is not going to admit it or deny it.

When Top Secret government entities classify part or all of a book, they can’t explain why they classify it or they might as well admit the truth (or their concern) about the very thing they are trying to keep under wraps.

That doesn’t stop us from joining in the speculation, of course. One plausible theory? The book contains descriptions of natural disaster scenarios so extreme that, during the Cold War era, the CIA might have feared public panic or misuse of the ideas. After all, Thomas wasn’t just talking about earthquakes—he was describing a planet-wide reset event that wipes out entire continents. In an age when nuclear war drills were a standard school activity, adding “planetary crust slip obliteration” to the mix may have seemed… unwise for public morale.

Another possibility: Thomas was, in fact, employed in the aerospace industry, and some of his background research may have overlapped with classified materials. It’s not impossible that the CIA’s interest wasn’t about the pole-shifting madness, but about something tangential—like an appendix in the book that inadvertently referenced sensitive satellite data, defense technologies, or even atmospheric phenomena under military study. In which case, the classification was less “this man has predicted the end of the world” and more “whoops, he mentioned that thing we weren’t supposed to be acknowledging in public.”

And, of course, there’s always the most entertaining explanation: the CIA knows something. If you’re the kind of person who keeps a bug-out bag and has bookmarked maps of ancient flood zones, you might believe that the government classified the book because it actually tells the truth—a terrifying, cyclical truth about Earth’s periodic temper tantrums. In this theory, the redactions weren’t just editorial—they were strategic omissions to prevent mass hysteria, toilet paper shortages, and people trying to build DIY arks in their backyard.

Perhaps the reason is much more mundane, as in someone simply wanted some reading material while chilling at the most classified Starbucks in the country.

We don’t know which—if any—of these theories is true. But the CIA’s historical track record of classifying everything from pigeon photography to a 1960s project involving telepathic goats doesn’t exactly scream “we’re just trying to tidy up the bookshelf.” (Take a look at some of these declassified examples to get an idea of what was once considered too hot to let anyone touch). Whatever the real reason, the classification and selective declassification of The Adam and Eve Story ensured one thing: it became the literary equivalent of a blinking neon sign that reads, “CONSPIRACY NUTS, INQUIRE WITHIN.”

And as every good mystery-loving reader knows, nothing boosts a book’s sales—or its mystique—like the words “previously classified.”

Why This Story Won’t Die

But credibility hasn’t stopped the internet from running with it like a caffeinated gazelle. Theories have cropped up everywhere. Some people tie it to the Book of Enoch. Others to ancient aliens. TikTok influencers have started warning of another pole shift, probably sometime next Tuesday, so get your canned goods and start reinforcing your basement with tinfoil.

In truth, the story of Chan Thomas and his apocalyptic bedtime story is a fascinating case study in how fringe science, Cold War paranoia, and the ever-mysterious government black-marker brigade can come together to create something that’s part science fiction, part spiritual allegory, and part… well, hot mess.

Final Thoughts from the Department of Dubious Digging

So what’s the takeaway here?

Sometimes, all it takes is a typewriter, an imagination the size of a tectonic plate, and a few redacted pages to launch a legend. Whether you believe Chan Thomas uncovered a buried truth, or just got a little too enthusiastic with his copy of Chariots of the Gods, one thing is certain: if the CIA ever classifies your blog post, you’re probably onto something. Or you’ve really confused them. Either way, we salute you, Mr. Thomas, prophet of pole flips and patron saint of improbable geology.

Now, if you’ll excuse us, we need to rotate our globe 23.5 degrees and make sure our canned soup stash is alphabetized. Just in case.

Further Reading:

• Declassified and sanitized 57-page version of The Adam and Eve Story
• A version of The Adam and Eve Story published in 1993 that claims to be the uncensored edition.

---