APOCALYPSE PRETTY SOON: Travels in End-Time America.

APOCALYPSE PRETTY SOON: Travels in End-Time America by Alex Heard W.A. Norton & Company, $24.95

IT TOOK YEARS OF PLEADING before writer Alex Heard finally convinced pod-owner Bob Hieronimus to let him have a look around his underground bunker. Anticipating the coming apocalypse, Hieronimus constructed the refuge deep beneath his home, somewhere in the vicinity of Baltimore. (The address is cloaked to throw off would-be marauders.) Heard takes in the giant boxes of Tampons, the 40 bunk beds, the stockpiles of canned goods, the escape hatch. But he needs more visceral input, so he asks Hieronimus to let him crawl through the hatch. Inside, Heard inhales the scent of raw dirt and mildew and lays a hand on the cool metal. Closure at last, he thinks.

After a decade poking around wacky American beliefs in future earth changes, extraterrestrial visits, and other assorted phenomena, it is no wonder that Heard developed a need to check things out for himself. A reporter turned magazine editor, Heard ponders "revelation physics" and immerses himself in esoteric texts, wiggling both his body and his mind through elaborately constructed responses to the end of the millennium. The result is both a meticulous catalogue of social dysfunction and a riveting travelogue of the wellsprings of American faith and inventiveness.

This is a guide to an America where human beings are as easily matched up with "Space Brothers" as they are with Big Brothers/Big Sisters, where a vengeful earth deity is in control, and perpetual motion and eternal life are one simple scientific discovery away. While such beliefs are easily mocked, it is instructive to remember that polls show that most Americans--that is mainstream, Super Bowl-watching, 401K-investing Americans--are convinced of the possibility of extraterrestrial life. Most believe in angels and many think that Christ will return in their lifetimes. Given the short distance between acceptable and far-out spiritual views, the conviction of many people that these are the Last Days can be troubling, especially when they arm themselves in anticipation of violent upheaval. The big question is: Should we worry?

One weakness of this rollicking account of millennial enthusiasms is that Heard deliberately steers clear of the most dangerous fringe elements. Authorities consider groups like Christian Identity a real threat. Heard halfheartedly tries to contact one such group and quickly gives up. The vast majority of the believers he meets are reassuringly mired in banality. A would-be leader of the Branch Davidians seeking to step into the shoes of David Koresh gripes that his followers are unable to decide on pizza toppings. At a "friendship renewal" ceremony held by Unarians--a group awaiting contact from super-intelligent space brothers--participants recall past lives of wanton violence. The reason for these bloody testimonials? Distress over common foibles like unemployment, envy, weight gain, and masturbation.

It is probably asking too much to expect Heard to identify the next Aum Supreme Truth, especially when the alternative he offers to earnest warnings and dire predictions is so much more amusing. And as he amply demonstrates, many of these endearing, obsessed, narcissistic oddballs are no stranger than the man next door, and, one might assume, no more threatening. (Barring the unforeseen event that the man next door turns out to be Charles Manson, that is.) Their bizarre world views, as experienced by Heard, can be understood as all-too-human responses to death, meaninglessness, boredom, loneliness, and failure.

The therapeutic aspect of the millennial groups can be explicit. For example, a leader of the Earth Changes movement lectures on "12 steps" to the aftertime--an odd coda to the movement's creed that an angry earth mother will kill off most of the planet during the next few years. The apocalypse can be forestalled, it turns out, if human beings start to behave better, if they are nice to each other and to the planet. "That sounded awfully wee--the Four Horseman of the Inner Child?" Heard muses. But, as he points out, it makes sense.

Indeed, the notion of the millennium as therapy may explain why so many way-out beliefs are being embraced by the mainstream. In the short span of time since Heard finished his book, pods have proliferated. No less august a body than the U.S. Senate is advising people to stockpile water and canned goods in order to be prepared for year 2000 computer glitches. Now everyone can experience the cathartic thrill of anticipating a disaster. Insiders--those with an esoteric faith or an E.T. connection--can congratulate themselves on being both prepared and in the know.

And if disaster never comes, they can take credit for that, too. What could be more American than self-improvement, mixed with rugged individualism, as a means of world redemption?

ELISE ACKERMAN is a senior editor at U.S. News and World Report.