By Nick Allen
Moscow - People fearful of epidemics, terrorism, regional conflicts and earthquakes need fret no more - the solution, apparently, lies in the numerous pyramids rising on Russia's skyline.
They may pale beside the Great Pyramids of Giza, but 24 smaller examples built in Russia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan by mathematician Alexander Golod, including a 44-metre-high showpiece in Moscow, have baffled scientists with their healing and preserving properties.
As for cataclysms and global misfortunes, they result from distortion of the space around us, says Golod, 53. Not to worry, the pyramids' harmonising power radiates ever further beyond Russia.
"The effect is European. I think in another couple of years Berlin will also see a sharp statistical drop in cases of diseases like flu," he predicts, pointing to Moscow's lowest influenza rates in a century since the largest structure was completed in 1999.
Made of fibreglass with no metal fastenings or nails, they are all aligned with the Pole Star, like those at Giza (which Golod says have "the wrong form" to correctly harness the forces around us today).
It's hard to say where straight physics moves into the uncharted realms of science or meets cosmic mysticism and the power of faith.
Tests by the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper among others showed that food items stored inside the large pyramid in summer kept longer than in comparable conditions elsewhere.
No mystery here, says Dr. Arif Narimanov of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Biophysics.
Temperature distribution and air circulation is different in a pyramid because of its shape, causing moisture to evaporate twice as fast, he explains.
The pyramid works like both a refrigerator and a drying machine, allowing better storage of meat or milk - or an Egyptian mummy.
From this point on it gets tricky, as staff of the academy's Mechnikov Vaccine Research Institute found out at Golod's 11-metre structure at Ramenskoye near the Russian capital.
Batches of mice were kept a few days in the pyramid and others in control conditions outside. They were all then infected with typhus.
"Groups that were in the pyramid showed a considerably higher resistance to infections. I can find no explanation," Professor Natalya Yegorova told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. Her findings cited in Golod's books gave "pyramid mice" a tenfold greater survival rate.
Objects kept in the pyramids like water, rocks and crystal matrices also seem to absorb and convey positive effects if removed.
Down the corridor from Narimanov at the biophysics institute, cell research expert Dr Yury Korystov cites his own experiments two years ago involving water "charged" in the 44-metre structure.
Mice who drank the water sustained far less cell degeneration in conditions of stress, he told dpa. And, again: "I can't explain why."
Monitored by microphone for five days, mice Korystov caged beside charged crystals from the pyramid were also 3.5 times less likely to fight. In other words, pyramids have a social harmonising effect.
He did not publish his results for fear of derision. But he freely tells how a matrix he wears in a bandage does wonders for his bad knee. "I don't believe in the effects - I receive the effects."
Building pyramids since 1989 has been an expensive hobby, consuming most of Golod's earnings in business and as director of a meteorological instrument-building company. The 44-metre structure alone cost 600,000 U.S. dollars.
But though funds are tight, an 88-metre pyramid is on the drawing board, and occasional commissions like an 11-metre pyramid in the garden of a French-Russian couple in Nice keep things ticking over.
Meanwhile, crowds of visitors continue to make pilgrimages in hail and snow to his largest example, 38km west of Moscow.
In the gloomy interior, security guard Sergei tends a stand with handsomely marked-up bottles of pyramid-powered mineral water. He is a firm believer. "See how cold it is in here? I haven't sneezed once in a year," he says.
Accepting a bag of rocks from a visitor, Sergei vanishes into a chamber in the pyramid's base, banging noises are heard, and he emerges, explaining "I charged these up for her with a few spins in the centrifugal machine."
Take it or leave it, but for elderly residents of the surrounding Pavlovskaya Svoboda region, the pyramid could be the most effective remedy or placebo on earth, either way. - Sapa-DPA