As the year comes to a close, the news is getting grimmer, folks -- at least according to long-dead, divining daddy Nostradamus.
As the year comes to a close, the news is getting grimmer, folks — at least according to the prophecies of long-dead, divining daddy Nostradamus. The French-plague doctor, astrologer and seer published his famed and widely quoted book “Les Prophéties” in 1555. Chock full of poetic predictions, the book foretells the coming of wars, natural disasters, assassinations, nuclear attacks and revolutions.
Aptly referred to as the Prophet of Doom by his contemporaries, Nostradamus was far from sunny in his future outlook. Inspired by biblical texts and his own plague time trauma, his prose is heavy on words like pestilence, famine, blood, sorrow and fire — and mostly reads like a bedtime story written by a Norwegian black-metal band.
Much like the high on fumes oracle at Delphi, Nostradamus’ predictions are intentionally vague and open to myriad interpretations. For 2021 he alluded to the onset of a zombie apocalypse writing, “Few young people: half-dead to give a start.” Bleak, right? Not if you consider the possibility that Nos was warning us young folk that we are not really living, man, but simply existing. More Matthew McConaughey pep talk than certain quasi-death, dig? He also prophesied that 2021 would bring about a world-ending asteroid that so far (she types with abject trepidation) has yet to make an impact.
So it is with a pocket full of dread — and a thimble full of skepticism — that we take a look at what that bearded harbinger of ruin forecasted for 2022.
Inflation, starvation and cannibalism?
Nostradamus predicted that inflation and starvation will befall us in 2K22, writing, “So high the price of wheat/That man is stirred/His fellow man to eat in his despair.” An essential human truth is that people get hungry and then they get mean — and with US inflation the highest it’s been in nearly four decades, Nos’ warning proves, so far, so true. No word on whether the rising price of wheat inspired this guy or this guy to take a bite out of their fellow man.
AI becomes MVP
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| A new robot that looks straight out of a science-fiction movie is the latest technological breakthrough. |
While easily confused with Björk lyrics, that passage appears to reference the escalation of artificial intelligence. Cue Elon Musk, Time Magazine’s Person of the Year and an unequivocal alien in his own right, taking to robot-making and moving his headquarters south to Austin, Texas. Further evidence that man is destined to be overtaken by immortal machines can be found in the teachings of the aesthetic prophet Jared Leto.
Nuclear drought...
