Only a few unshakable optimists will remember 2021 as their favorite year. It could have been much worse if fortune tellers’ predictions had come true. For example: Russian scientists are spreading a virus that is causing a worldwide zombie plague. Asteroids hit Earth and wipe out much of life. A “strong dragon” takes over the world, by the way with the help of the numbers 100, five and a few zeros.
Anyone who would take such dark prophecies of fortune tellers seriously would have to say “Waaah!” scream and lock yourself in a bunker. Fortunately, however, the zombie apocalypse did not materialize in the year that was coming to an end, as did the discovery of a monster monkey or a military coup in the USA. By the end of 2020, these and similar frightening predictions were in various European Tabloid media to read. “As expected, they turned out to be absolute nonsense”, summarizes the Society for the Scientific Investigation of Parasciences (GWUP) in its annual evaluation of esoteric interpretations of the future.
The result of the investigation could also have been foreseen, because oracles and horoscopes rarely offer tangible facts. While the clairvoyants were completely in the dark in 2019 when it came to the Covid-19 pandemic, Corona was a top topic of the self-proclaimed augurs at the turn of the year 2020/21. “Here optimistic forecasts of an imminent end to the pandemic and warnings of further, worse effects were roughly balanced,” says the Mainz mathematician Michael Kunkel, who has been collecting and analyzing forecasts of this type for 20 years.
Shutdown of the Internet? Nothing
The absolute true failures when it comes to Corona come from the ranks of the so-called lateral thinkers. The website “Prophecies of the lateral thinkers“Lists more than 500 predictions and allegations by Corona deniers with sources. Most of them turned out to be completely wrong. Conspiracy suspects several times predicted the complete shutdown of the Internet, the death of all those vaccinated in September or the overthrow of all political systems by an ominous one “New World Order.” None of this happened at the time of going to press.
Most astrologers – like many political experts, by the way – were wrong in the general election. For the astrological life advisor Taufiq Mempel, Armin Laschet was “the man for this time until 2024”, the map reader Sylvie Kollin Markus Söder commuted as the next Federal Chancellor – and was as wrong as the one interviewed by the SWR Oracle dog Lucy. The death of the Queen has been a constant topic of celebrity predictions for years, but Elizabeth II did not vacate the throne even at the age of 95. Melania and Donald Trump did not get a divorce despite all the oracular remote analysis in lifestyle magazines, Joe Biden did not step down from the presidency.
The GWUP skeptics evaluated more than a hundred prognostic texts from books, astrological almanacs, YouTube videos, blogs and newspaper articles as far as possible for their truth check. Many predictions are formulated so vaguely that it is difficult to pin down their truthfulness. Conversely, this systematic swirling of clairvoyance suits clairvoyance. Two lines by the Renaissance poet Nostradamus from the 16th century are interpreted as a prediction of climate change: “Like the sun, the head will seal the shining sea. The living fish of the Black Sea will almost boil.”
The cryptic prognoses of the “blind seer” Baba Wanga from Bulgaria are taken seriously by many people as if they were scientific facts. Baba Wanga has been dead for 25 years, her followers spread the vague prophecies on dubious esoteric pages and decorate them dramatically. For 2021, Baba Wanga saw an assassination attempt on Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump’s deafness and world domination of the dragons coming. She is said to have forecast a new pandemic for 2022, triggered by a virus that has previously been preserved in the Siberian permafrost, as well as an attack by aliens on Earth. Let’s see!