How the World Ends (2014) s01e01 Episode Script
Nostradamus
Narrator: Throughout history, humankind has grappled with fears of armageddon.
For many, these fears are justified by doomsday prophecies written more than four centuries ago.
Hogue: Nostradamus saw the end of the world.
and the races which inhabit it, everything will perish.
The man himself was a gift to us to give us that prewarning of what it was to come to pass.
Narrator: But should this notorious prophet be trusted? Nostradamus wrote what essentially is a history of the future.
The past has shown that they happen.
I don't see why the future will be different.
Narrator: Is it the truth revealed or an elaborate sham? Everybody thinks that, yes, there will be an apocalypse.
But somehow, they're going to survive it.
Beach: Society around them has crashed.
We're about to begin a new age.
It's the new age of man.
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Com narrator: Are you ready for the end of the world? Climate change, fundamentalist religious terrorism, economic collapse, global pandemics, social unrest, political upheaval, the threat of nuclear armageddon and, finally, the cosmic end of the world.
These are all the predictions of one man, nostradamus.
His prophecies lead to our times as a time of catastrophe, economically, ecologically, spiritually and, ultimately, some triggering event.
Narrator: Why do nostradamus followers believe this apocalyptic future, collapse, upheaval and global chaos is entirely foretold? Over the course of his lifetime, nostradamus wrote a total of 942 predictions, visions of the future he transcribed into four-line verses called quatrains.
Nostradamus wrote which essentially is a history of the future, goes thousands of years even beyond our time.
He called it simply le profezie, the prophecies of Michel de nostredame.
Narrator: His writings foretell a series of mostly tragic and violent events which seem, with chilling accuracy, to have predicted the future centuries in advance, the fire of London, the French revolution, Hitler, world war ii, the atomic bomb, the rise and fall of John f.
Kennedy.
But as terrible and terrifying as his earlier predictions were, none compare to what he saw as the violent, systematic end of the world.
And according to the 15th-century prophet's followers, the countdown to the end has begun.
November 2014, Russia invades Ukraine and annexes the crimean peninsula.
It's an action that causes global tensions to escalate.
And it's the sign for those interpreting the prophet's words that we're entering the end of days.
Hogue: This is very dangerous.
I never, in all the 30 years I've done this, have ever felt that there was anything significant enough to start the countdown until this incident with the new regime in Kiev.
President Obama: The United States will stand with the international community in affirming that there will be costs for any military intervention in Ukraine.
This is the new cold war.
Narrator: According to nostradamus' predictions, the worsening global political crisis is set to have severe ripple effects, effects so powerful they will plunge the world into an intractable economic depression.
Carrigan: You'll see it'll start with financial collapse.
You'll see it'll start with riots and all this stuff in the states and around the world.
It will look like an unfolding of or an unraveling of our society.
It will be beyond what you can imagine.
He's laid out a pattern of events that tie in with all the other prophecies, that tie in with everything else.
Narrator: It's not long before civil and regional wars break out on every continent.
It's gonna be things that are atrocious, you know, without any regard for human life.
And that's how nostradamus put it.
You know, the more intelligent we are, the more sophisticated we find ways to harm our human fellows.
Narrator: This includes the use of weapons that can inflict harm beyond our comprehension.
D'andrimont: Very soon, uh, like in 2018, according to nostradamus, New York may be the target of a nuclear explosion.
Narrator: Nuking New York will mark the beginning of the end, the start of world war III.
A thermonuclear war, which he describes as killing off two-thirds of the human race.
Narrator: Those who survive will have to contend with a brave new world, one rampant with disease and starvation, toxic with radiation and devoid of all natural resources.
The end of the system of things and the end of the world as we know it.
Hogue: There were many people who made predictions the same way nostradamus made in the 1550s.
Why do we not hear about their prophecies? Why is he the only one that we're talking about and debating? Because there's something more going on here.
He has lived long because he comes right in the clear and says it.
Narrator: Down to names, dates and details that only a true prophet would be able to foresee.
A man surnamed de gaulle shall lead France three times.
We know of one man who led France named Charles de gaulle.
He led the French first as head of the free French during world war ii.
He was the provisional leader of the French provisional government in '46 after the war.
And then in the Algerian crisis, he stood up and became, for a decade, the president of France.
Three times de gaulle leads France.
Narrator: His predictions include events that would be entirely beyond his or anyone's comprehension in the times he lived.
Hogue: The man landing on the moon.
He shall come to travel to the corner of Luna where he shall be placed on alien land.
That's pretty clear.
Luna is the moon.
There are a lot of machines that he describes in his prophecies.
He describes things that are impossible for preindustrial-age man to understand.
Talks about the creation of submarines, air fleets that are piloted by half pig men, describing the oxygen mask.
And where he says, their chants, their orders and demands fly on the very air, radio.
Narrator: One of the most compelling examples of a truly accurate prophecy is the one that propels him to fame in his own lifetime.
Nostradamus predicts king Henry ii will be killed in a jousting tournament.
Here's a prophecy that basically launched nostradamus' career.
"Then he dies a cruel death.
" Narrator: The king, who takes a dim view of all things occult, does not take nostradamus seriously.
Four years later, king Henry participates in a jousting tournament to celebrate a wedding.
The king is bested in his first bout by the much-younger count Montgomery.
Hogue: He would be the old lion who would face the young lion.
Both of them had lions on their shields.
Narrator: His wife, queen Catherine, tries to convince him to pull out.
But he insists on another contest.
And so they do it again.
Montgomery did not get his Lance low enough.
It splintered.
This large splinter went through the gilded visor, went into his eye and cut the retina nerve in his eye.
Narrator: He will Pierce his eyes through a golden cage.
Hogue: There were two wounds.
The prophecy says, "two wounds made one.
" The one being that he died of infection, brain infection, an agonizing death 10 days later.
Narrator: King Henry ii dies exactly the way that nostradamus predicted.
Nostradamus was the talk of the courts of Europe.
Narrator: Until his own death seven years later, which also comes about exactly the way he predicts.
This is considered nostradamus' final prediction.
And he says, "on his return from the embassy, the king's gift put in place, he will do nothing more.
He will be gone to god.
Close relatives, friends, brothers by blood will find him completely dead near the bed and the bench.
" Narrator: The victim of the crippling and painful condition of edema, nostradamus returns home from visiting the king at the embassy of arles.
He went back to his secret study where he had his bed moved up and a special bench that had been made because he had to prop up his leg.
Narrator: At daybreak, friends and family discover his lifeless body.
Hogue: They open the door.
And they found him dead between his bench and the bed.
Narrator: It may have been the final prophecy written by nostradamus.
But since his death, believers say countless more have come true.
Does that mean his prediction for the end of the world will come to fruition? We're just one global economic crisis, one planetary crisis, one thermonuclear crisis away from ending the world.
Beach: They're inevitable.
These things are going to happen.
Narrator: 460 years after his death, nostradamus remains the most famous, most prolific prophet of all time.
Among his nearly 1,000 predictions is a powerful vision of a world thrown into chaos.
For those who follow his words literally, the time to prepare is now.
Beach: The end times talk about a time of great destruction.
There are times and places where things and the nature of the world can be avoided.
Some things can be avoided.
Other things cannot be.
Narrator: So convinced is he of the apocalyptic vision of nostradamus, Bruce beach has built a bunker known as the ark two 60 miles northwest of Toronto.
The reason why i built this shelter is because actually of all the places in north America, Southern Ontario, where we are, is most likely to receive the most intense radiation and fallout.
Narrator: The ark two was constructed in 1980 by burying 42 school busses under 2 feet of concrete and 14 feet of earth.
You can see here, uh, how the steel is embedded in the concrete.
We have tons and tons of steel embedded in it.
This is the children's play room right here.
And, uh, this is the children's bunk room.
We have three telephone systems.
These are the three switch boards, again, bought all new.
But we had 'em so long, the batteries wore out.
So we had to have the batteries all replaced after 20 years.
Narrator: Beach claims that at 10,000 square feet, it's the largest nongovernmental shelter in the world and can accommodate up to 500 people.
The reason they'll come to ark two is the society around them has crashed.
Uh, there's no food in the stores.
There's no, uh, security in the cities.
They are just trying to escape from the disaster.
Narrator: But beach doesn't just want to survive the coming nuclear war.
The reason why the shelter is here is basically to, um, rebuild society after doomsday.
When nuclear war happens, the shelter is a safe place for people to come.
And then as a community, just kind of rebuild afterwards.
Come on.
Somebody else have it.
Narrator: Bruce beach and his team believe the only way to survive is to pull together.
Lau: And so what happens is we come together in a like-minded community because that's the only thing that will rebuild the world.
The selfish people that only want to do it for their families, I'm sorry.
It won't work.
This place is designed to hold up to 500 people.
250 of those people will be sleeping.
The other 250 would be up working.
This is just a temporary solution until, you know, until be able to live on the surface again.
We'd be able to live down here for two years before resurfacing.
Narrator: To be able to sustain an orderly, functioning community, the responsibilities and duties within the ark are divided up.
Liberty: I'm the cook.
So you know, in the event of an emergency, my responsibility, of course, would be making sure that everybody's fed.
And so this is the kettle room here.
As you can see at the very end, we've got a very large kettle.
Uh, and this kettle's designed to make large quantities of soup.
Obviously, soup is one of those types of, uh, dishes or, uh, menu items that we could put on that would actually be able to allow us to feed a lot of people with a minimal amount of resources.
Maggiore: The shelter pretty much is a safe haven, you know, for if and when the end of the world does come.
I believe it will come, just like nostradamus had predicted.
Liberty: We don't take nostradamus' predictions lightly.
If we look at today's world's events, everything seems to be pointing in -- in -- in the direction that, you know, some of these predictions that nostradamus made.
Narrator: Nostradamus himself is born into a troubled age.
Europe had only recently emerged from the dark ages.
The bubonic plague is rampant during the 1500s.
And there is a resurgence in Southern France, which is where nostradamus begins his career as a country doctor.
He started traveling on his mule, going to different towns, trying out his ideas for healing the plague.
Narrator: Tragically, he is unable to save his own family from the outbreak.
In 1538, his wife, son and daughter are struck down.
The devastation of losing his beloved family sends nostradamus into a turmoil, what many think to be the catalyst for his prophetic powers.
He decided in the middle of the night to pack his mule and disappear for six years.
With his mourning and grieving and the shock that came to his life, in those six years, there's these stories that come up about how he was gaining these powers.
What makes nostradamus unique in prophetic circles is that he -- he customized his magic.
He used a little of this, a little of that.
Narrator: That includes astrology, oracles, divination and channeling of higher spirits.
[ Bird caws .]
In the sanctum of his study, nostradamus would go through a physical and mental transformation.
He would go through a period of purification, celibacy and probably enter his inner sanctum and take off all of his street clothes and be naked before the gods.
Then take sacred water and pour it over himself to purify himself.
And then he would don all white robe with the white hood.
And this man from the 1550s would shortly start looking like a man from the second-century Rome.
And he would start doing his incantations, just tools to trigger the mind, the body mind, into a meditative or prayerful space where something subjective happens.
Narrator: His visions are enhanced, some believe, by the use of narcotic substances, including sulfur stones.
Hogue: He would then take a Laurel branch in his hand.
He would sit on the brass tripod and meditate in the fumes that he would have boiling up from his pot.
Narrator: In this state, nostradamus receives visions that he translates into quatrains, a cryptic style of non-rhyming poem.
Written in archaic French, hundreds of scholars have tried to decipher their meaning.
But one man believes that nostradamus used a hidden mathematical code to deliver his message and that he has finally cracked it.
D'andrimont: I am the messenger of his prophetic portrayals for the future and the past.
Every word that he said and whatever he wrote, that's what he intended for the world to see.
Narrator: Benoit d'andrimont, a retired Belgian engineer now living in las Vegas, brings his own unique approach to these centuries-old writings.
D'andrimont: I was interested in the future.
Initially, I was skeptical for nostradamus.
My background in electromechanical got me to be more scientific where, for me, I need to have a hard proof.
Narrator: In 2003, d'andrimont set about devising a system to interpret nostradamus using a complex set of mathematical codes.
And I start decoding, converting every quatrain in numbers.
And by doing so, since I'm not a history buff, I did find out years.
And I didn't know what happened there until I went into the history books and then find out that that's exactly the event that he's talking about.
Narrator: D'andrimont scrutinizes one quatrain after another.
Quatrain 828 that talks about the hyper inflation and the great depression in Germany.
Quatrain 2-6, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the atomic bomb.
Quatrain number 35, king Henry ii of France.
Narrator: D'andrimont claims his codes demonstrate that the prophecies are even more accurate than previously thought.
And then I said, "wow.
" I was very surprised.
Narrator: But not nearly as surprised as when he discovers a quatrain that suggests d'andrimont himself might have a special role to play.
D'andrimont: Nostradamus did emphasize, in one of his prophecies, that 500 years later, people will be able to recognize and see the reality of his prophecy and make sense of it.
He was born in 1503.
So 1503 plus 500 years, 2003.
I just happened to discover this code in 2003.
Narrator: Whether he is the chosen one or not, d'andrimont is convinced of the accuracy of his code.
And he has some dark news for humankind's future.
D'andrimont: There is a financial collapse that is announced by nostradamus.
And that is for 2018, 2019, where the well-to-do suddenly will have no more.
Narrator: When war and tyranny resonate around the world, societal structures as we know them will crumble.
One of the things that nostradamus emphasized a lot is the, um, Christian church being demolished totally.
So no more nuns, no more priests.
There'll be massive persecution of christians and all religions.
Narrator: Culminating, he claims, in full-scale global warfare.
There is sign that are leading us right now to believe that world war III is at an embryo stage, uh, due to economics, which is the leading of all wars.
Narrator: D'andrimont believes his role is to warn the rest of the world of the coming cataclysms.
D'andrimont: The past has shown that they happen.
I don't see why the future will be different.
So those things are to happen is a fact.
And I'm just a messenger.
Narrator: He's carrying a message the world might be foolish to ignore.
The man himself was a gift to us to give us that prewarning of what it was to come to pass.
Carrigan: Everything is programmed.
We can see how it's gonna unfold.
Narrator: According to nostradamus and those who live by his words, the world is teetering on the brink of destruction.
In the coming years, we will experience global economic collapse, civil and region-wide war, nuclear attack and the ruin of planet earth.
Given the current global state of affairs, perhaps the physician turned prophet was right.
World war III, the end times, we can see it now.
We can see that happening.
We can see the posturing for war.
I've coined the phrase the roaring 2020s, not through prosperity, not through what happened in the 1920s with people having a big party, celebrating after the terrible decade of world war I.
No.
This is the roaring, roaring, roaring with storms, roaring with great mega fires from the droughts that are coming, roaring with billions of people who are not being listened to by their governments, who are roaring revolution.
The 2020s will be the most dangerous decade in human history.
Narrator: This is when, according to hogue's interpretation of nostradamus, the simmering cold war between the U.
S.
and Russia explodes.
Even now, the atomic weapons of Russia and America, if you include NATO, the near 16,000 weapons that are available to start nuclear war, they're targeted in such a way that the first bombs that hit their targets will hit the southernmost targets in Russia and in America.
Here's nostradamus describing that.
They shall drop dreadful globes with an invisible death.
The city set on fire, helpful to the enemy.
At daybreak, the fire starts approaching from the south, the march of the flashes from the south to the north.
From the dreadful globes, look inside a nuclear weapon.
The hydrogen bomb's trigger is a sphere, a globe of fission that implodes the hydrogen fusion.
So he's describing it.
Narrator: This isn't just apocalyptic talk.
There are growing fears the next world war is imminent.
The financial crisis that nostradamus foresaw is also a global concern.
People are looking at the economy.
And it's falling apart.
People are calling for reforms, but they're not happening.
And we then are entering a period of revolutions.
That's what happens when the people aren't heard.
And that's when collective intelligence kicks in.
That's what I work towards.
That's what I try to educate with my work, to bring these fears and dangers, uh, out in the open so that we can look at them, have an encounter with them and get creative about solving them.
Narrator: For some, the solution already exists inside each of us.
Brad carrigan runs a meditation retreat in the foothills of the Canadian rockies.
The only way we can really see our evolution and what this whole end-time scenario represents is being able to get above the chatter.
So to start understanding the end times, we have to be able to get clear, go into a place where we can balance ourselves and feel it.
Narrator: He believes that nostradamus and other prophets were capable of reaching an enlightened state of being, the fifth dimension.
Over the years, I've come in contact with a lot of information on very diverse levels of spirituality, physical, metaphysical and scientific.
Nostradamus' accurate predictions would come from the fact that he could tap into the fifth dimension.
And whether he knew it or not, that's what was going on.
He was connected to that fifth dimensional consciousness that where all knowledge is.
Narrator: The fifth dimension is a state of being that supposedly transcends space and time, the ability to see everything that has gone before and everything that is coming.
It's a place that carrigan says we can all reach through the power of yoga and meditation.
Carrigan: People should realize that the prophecies don't come from out here.
They come from within.
And we all have that power to connect to the prophecy.
Need to evaluate what's coming up for yourself in this posture.
Narrator: While the approach to survival is very different from the bug-out bags and bunkers of most preppers, carrigan warns that until we start to practice spirituality, we are doomed to the fate that nostradamus predicted.
Spiritual being recognizes the changes coming.
And there's a need for that change, world war III, the end times.
And we can see it now.
There's a timeline of wars and destruction, pestilence and everything.
And that's what the interest in all the prophecies is about now because everybody is feeling the changes because it's spiritual.
Narrator: Whether nostradamus divined the future from the universe, an oracle or his own meditative visions, there's no denying his star and staying power.
But critics disagree and say that, at best, his writings are fear-mongering, pandering to the dark side of human nature.
Newman: People just seem to like disasters because everybody thinks that, yes, there'll be an apocalypse.
But somehow, they're going to survive it.
Narrator: Yet in 2001, interest in nostradamus rose to an all-time high.
For a short while, his name was one of the most popular search terms on all the major Internet search engines.
Could we have been forewarned of the worst terrorist attack on American soil? Narrator: As nostradamus believers await a global calamity, one dreadful day in September 2001 is used as the evidence that his visions of the future were real.
All because of a quatrain that spreads across the Internet like wildfire.
"In the city of god, there will be a great thunder, two brothers torn apart by chaos.
The third big war will begin when the big city is burning.
" But nostradamus didn't write it.
It was a hoax written by a Canadian student in 1997 as part of an essay showing how a vague prophecy could be interpreted to fit a variety of cataclysmic events.
People want to believe it.
They want to have, uh, a grasp on -- on all the confusing and frightening things that are happening.
That's a pretty natural human tendency.
Smoley: Nostradamus was very, very good at expressing images that lie deep in our psyches and in putting these out in compelling, powerful language.
And this language still speaks to us today.
Newman: He's someone who can convince people of six impossible things before breakfast.
Narrator: He could even be considered the pioneer of the modern-day apocalypse movement.
There were always apocalyptic movements of one sort or another.
But what really set things off was the plague of the 15th century.
With great disasters like that, you have to think the world's ending.
Narrator: Ever since the "book of revelations," the apocalypse genre has become more and more dramatic.
Some would say melodramatic.
"Revelations" was a very hot book.
There was a lot of fascinating things in it.
And it was gory and bloody.
What's not to like? Smoley: Nostradamus' poetic style was very peculiar.
I think if he'd lived in the 20th century, he would have been considered a great surrealist poet.
If you read any of nostradamus' verses, that in translation, and the translation is kind of grammatical and flows normally, that is not a literal translation because his verses are broken, jagged.
Um, he uses funny words.
He uses words that he's invented from Greek and Latin.
So the whole experience is that much more mysterious.
But it does give his verses a strange power and makes them very enigmatic.
And it makes them very evocative.
And I think that's one of the great keys to his success over the centuries.
Narrator: While skeptics admire his style, they're not convinced by his conclusions.
I don't think it's likely that he could see 1,000 years into the future.
I think the prophecies are deliberately open-ended.
And the ones that aren't have been disproven.
The quatrains are like that.
They're just vague enough that you can take them and say, "oh, this is what I've always thought.
And this means this.
" Many of nostradamus quatrains have been used after the fact to say that he had predicted something.
The napoleonic era, which was another chaotic time, that he predicted the shooting of Kennedy.
Talk about the fall of the Berlin wall.
Narrator: Nostradamus shrouds his predictions in confusing and ambiguous prose but for good reason.
Carrigan: Heresy was a big part of what was going on in the world.
If you started saying the wrong things, you were a heretic and burned to the stake.
So he had to disguise what he wanted to say in the quatrains.
But it doesn't take away or diminish what he was trying to say.
Narrator: It's also possible that he disguised his warnings to keep them from falling into the wrong hands.
D'andrimont: He could see that people were going to use his language, his prophecies to -- to make it up for whatever circumstances that are profitable, politically or commercially.
So if, right now, our leaders knew exactly and knew for a fact that nostradamus was exactly on the year on the dot, they will use that to either hide and use that to their benefit.
And nostradamus was very cautious of that.
So he was not too keen about revealing an easy way to find and -- and see the future, for that reason.
Narrator: But critics just aren't buying it.
The writings don't say what they're supposed to mean.
And they don't tell you when they're going to happen.
And they don't tell you any of that.
So you can easily retroactively use it.
Narrator: Still, forecasting has always been big business, even in this rational, scientific age.
Baker: We're all interested in understanding more about the future so that we can better prepare for the future.
Narrator: Roger Baker is a modern prophet for the 21st century.
He's a geopolitical analyst at stratfor, which provides economic, political and military strategic forecasting.
Baker: Strategic forecasting is really looking at the future trends of history.
It's not trying to identify events.
It's not trying to understand exactly what's going to happen.
But rather, what are the frameworks that we're going to be seeing, particularly in a global context.
And so forecasting is not necessarily saying, this is going to happen, this event is going to happen.
But it is giving you the directionality.
So when I look at history.
And I say, "history repeats itself," that doesn't mean history has to repeat itself.
But if I see a repetitive pattern in history, then I want to identify, "why did that pattern repeat?" Narrator: He thinks it's likely that nostradamus used a similar method.
Baker: I imagine that nostradamus certainly looked at history.
And if you think about the time in which he's living, this is the time of great global exploration.
And when you're working towards writing on prophecy that forecasts crisis and doom, there's a ton of history to draw upon that you can look at.
And you can see in totally different places what appears to be very similar things.
And those things probably, ultimately go back to human nature.
And therefore, history helps reveal commonalities of human nature that you can then try to apply in forecasting.
Narrator: And one of the major common threads throughout history is warfare and unrest, a nostradamus speciality.
Baker: I think the idea that there's going to be further war in the world is pretty easy to predict.
Um, it -- it doesn't take a lot to -- to recognize that there are going to continue to be conflicts between nations, uh, over territory, over resources, over markets, over population flows, um, over ideology.
Those are going to happen.
I think you see these cycle up and down and cycle up and down, um, throughout history.
Narrator: Perhaps this is simply the way of the world, a constant cycle of ups and downs, peace and war, calm and catastrophe.
And preparing for that gives us a sense of security.
Newman: Do I believe we're living in the end times? I have no idea.
I don't think anybody does.
Certainly as I've grown up and watched the way the world is going, it always looks like it.
But as a historian, I realize that every time, because we don't know how this story turns out, we imagine the worst.
Nostradamus may have believed that he was a prophet.
I don't think that he had anything definite in mind for most of the prophecies he wrote.
They may have just been sort of jumbled feelings that he had.
But if people want to believe them today, I think if they don't hurt anybody else with it, believe what you want.
If it keeps you, you know, from hiding under the bed, then be happy with it.
I just can't quite go along with it.
Narrator: Perhaps belief in the prophecy is a way of avoiding a bigger issue -- death.
The sad, frightening, scary fact is that your world is gonna end in a few decades, at most.
This is irrevocable and inexorable.
Narrator: Personal mortality aside, one specific prophecy says humankind is facing a planetary cataclysm that few can survive.
Hogue: Nostradamus saw the end of the world.
He wrote a detailed account and dated it.
Narrator: For the vast majority of the 3,400 years of recorded history, humans have been at war, killing an estimated 1 billion people in the process.
According to the interpreted prophecies of nostradamus, the next war will kill 4 billion.
The planet will be all but destroyed.
And survivors will contend with the future of famine, deadly pollution and disease.
Nostradamus is, by far, the most pessimistic prophet I've ever studied.
I think he did this in the compassion to scare people straight.
Narrator: Perhaps nostradamus does not seal our fate.
Perhaps he is trying to warn us against it.
It seems like it's preordained, but it's not.
The future isn't written in stone.
He was motivated to write his prophecies to stop a future from happening.
Narrator: Could nostradamus have been trying to halt the tragic cycle of history? Sometimes, uh, you can't stop the predictability of people.
It's like a machine.
It's unstoppable sometimes.
And that's what's got to be understood about prophecy.
What can we do to stop conditioning each generation to be seeded to repeat the past and call it the future and repeat all the stupidities and the miseries of the past in the future? And very much nostradamus was -- was about changing the incline of destiny.
Carrigan: Nostradamus setting the tone for these times was also sent to warn this age of humankind that we were coming into these, uh, the prophecies or into these end-time scenarios so that we could prepare spiritually.
I mean, it may sound doom and gloom.
But it's a source of love for us to prepare.
It's like having a child.
The storm's coming.
You got to put on your boots.
Nostradamus set the table for warning us something was coming.
Narrator: In other words, we're at a crossroads.
And unless people and world governments the world over recognize the danger, we're doomed, especially when even the most rational observers are preparing for the worst.
I think the concept of a nuclear confrontation is not unreal.
I don't think that can be ruled out at all.
I think the thing to prepare for is not nuclear war as such.
It is to gain a better understanding of the way in which the world system works, to understand the compulsions and constraints on different countries, the way they perceive a threat and what they're doing to act to mitigate that threat.
And that, I think, is the main purpose of forecasting is to give people the ability to play out on their part potential scenario options to deal with that crisis and think through it before they come to the crisis.
Narrator: Even those who predict the end of days, a crisis so great that humankind might perish, believe we can steer our own destiny.
Beach: There's some things that are avoidable and some things that are not.
It's avoidable to step out of the back of an airplane.
But once one does, it's unavoidable they're going to hit the ground.
Lau: Instead of being distracted with all that is out there, why don't we pay attention to nostradamus and then become proactive, do something, take an action? Don't just talk about it.
Don't run away in fear.
Act.
Narrator: There is one event that his followers believe is set in stone, the cosmic end of the planet earth.
Hogue: Suddenly, he starts writing about his perpetual prophecies, that they'll last a long, long time.
He says they are perpetual properties, for they extend from now to the year 3797.
The world will see many floods and such high inundations as there will remain scarcely any land not covered by water.
And this will last so long that outside of the topography of earth and the races which inhabit it, everything will perish.
And there shall fall from the sky such a great amount of fire and flaming meteors that nothing will remain unconsumed.
All this will happen a short time before the final conflagration.
Narrator: Planet earth will be destroyed.
But according to hogue, nostradamus offers us a glimmer of optimism, a chance to start over.
Hogue: For although the planet Mars will finish its cycle at the end if its, earth's, last stage, Mars will start again.
Humanity will gather for several years in aquarius.
Others in cancer for a longer time and for ever more.
So he's talked about the races of humanity, man, surviving when everything else is consumed on earth.
I can't imagine that's possible unless we're not on earth anymore.
It would seem to be true that if we become free of this earth, if we become a galactic civilization, we cannot be destroyed by whatever could destroy a planet.
We will, as a human race, go on and on and live as long as this universe lives.
Narrator: This prophet of doom is a beacon of warning and of hope, hope that mankind will survive in its new galactic home and a warning that we must face the challenge of the coming apocalypse head on.
I don't think I want to give people peace of mind.
Your house is on fire.
You don't need somebody to say, "there, there.
You'll make it.
The house will be fine.
" No.
It won't be fine.
You have to put the fire out.
So that's what I'm saying.
Put the fire out because I don't think you are going to make it if you don't.
For many, these fears are justified by doomsday prophecies written more than four centuries ago.
Hogue: Nostradamus saw the end of the world.
and the races which inhabit it, everything will perish.
The man himself was a gift to us to give us that prewarning of what it was to come to pass.
Narrator: But should this notorious prophet be trusted? Nostradamus wrote what essentially is a history of the future.
The past has shown that they happen.
I don't see why the future will be different.
Narrator: Is it the truth revealed or an elaborate sham? Everybody thinks that, yes, there will be an apocalypse.
But somehow, they're going to survive it.
Beach: Society around them has crashed.
We're about to begin a new age.
It's the new age of man.
For subtitling services, contatct: Waqas.
Zahoor89@gmail.
Com narrator: Are you ready for the end of the world? Climate change, fundamentalist religious terrorism, economic collapse, global pandemics, social unrest, political upheaval, the threat of nuclear armageddon and, finally, the cosmic end of the world.
These are all the predictions of one man, nostradamus.
His prophecies lead to our times as a time of catastrophe, economically, ecologically, spiritually and, ultimately, some triggering event.
Narrator: Why do nostradamus followers believe this apocalyptic future, collapse, upheaval and global chaos is entirely foretold? Over the course of his lifetime, nostradamus wrote a total of 942 predictions, visions of the future he transcribed into four-line verses called quatrains.
Nostradamus wrote which essentially is a history of the future, goes thousands of years even beyond our time.
He called it simply le profezie, the prophecies of Michel de nostredame.
Narrator: His writings foretell a series of mostly tragic and violent events which seem, with chilling accuracy, to have predicted the future centuries in advance, the fire of London, the French revolution, Hitler, world war ii, the atomic bomb, the rise and fall of John f.
Kennedy.
But as terrible and terrifying as his earlier predictions were, none compare to what he saw as the violent, systematic end of the world.
And according to the 15th-century prophet's followers, the countdown to the end has begun.
November 2014, Russia invades Ukraine and annexes the crimean peninsula.
It's an action that causes global tensions to escalate.
And it's the sign for those interpreting the prophet's words that we're entering the end of days.
Hogue: This is very dangerous.
I never, in all the 30 years I've done this, have ever felt that there was anything significant enough to start the countdown until this incident with the new regime in Kiev.
President Obama: The United States will stand with the international community in affirming that there will be costs for any military intervention in Ukraine.
This is the new cold war.
Narrator: According to nostradamus' predictions, the worsening global political crisis is set to have severe ripple effects, effects so powerful they will plunge the world into an intractable economic depression.
Carrigan: You'll see it'll start with financial collapse.
You'll see it'll start with riots and all this stuff in the states and around the world.
It will look like an unfolding of or an unraveling of our society.
It will be beyond what you can imagine.
He's laid out a pattern of events that tie in with all the other prophecies, that tie in with everything else.
Narrator: It's not long before civil and regional wars break out on every continent.
It's gonna be things that are atrocious, you know, without any regard for human life.
And that's how nostradamus put it.
You know, the more intelligent we are, the more sophisticated we find ways to harm our human fellows.
Narrator: This includes the use of weapons that can inflict harm beyond our comprehension.
D'andrimont: Very soon, uh, like in 2018, according to nostradamus, New York may be the target of a nuclear explosion.
Narrator: Nuking New York will mark the beginning of the end, the start of world war III.
A thermonuclear war, which he describes as killing off two-thirds of the human race.
Narrator: Those who survive will have to contend with a brave new world, one rampant with disease and starvation, toxic with radiation and devoid of all natural resources.
The end of the system of things and the end of the world as we know it.
Hogue: There were many people who made predictions the same way nostradamus made in the 1550s.
Why do we not hear about their prophecies? Why is he the only one that we're talking about and debating? Because there's something more going on here.
He has lived long because he comes right in the clear and says it.
Narrator: Down to names, dates and details that only a true prophet would be able to foresee.
A man surnamed de gaulle shall lead France three times.
We know of one man who led France named Charles de gaulle.
He led the French first as head of the free French during world war ii.
He was the provisional leader of the French provisional government in '46 after the war.
And then in the Algerian crisis, he stood up and became, for a decade, the president of France.
Three times de gaulle leads France.
Narrator: His predictions include events that would be entirely beyond his or anyone's comprehension in the times he lived.
Hogue: The man landing on the moon.
He shall come to travel to the corner of Luna where he shall be placed on alien land.
That's pretty clear.
Luna is the moon.
There are a lot of machines that he describes in his prophecies.
He describes things that are impossible for preindustrial-age man to understand.
Talks about the creation of submarines, air fleets that are piloted by half pig men, describing the oxygen mask.
And where he says, their chants, their orders and demands fly on the very air, radio.
Narrator: One of the most compelling examples of a truly accurate prophecy is the one that propels him to fame in his own lifetime.
Nostradamus predicts king Henry ii will be killed in a jousting tournament.
Here's a prophecy that basically launched nostradamus' career.
"Then he dies a cruel death.
" Narrator: The king, who takes a dim view of all things occult, does not take nostradamus seriously.
Four years later, king Henry participates in a jousting tournament to celebrate a wedding.
The king is bested in his first bout by the much-younger count Montgomery.
Hogue: He would be the old lion who would face the young lion.
Both of them had lions on their shields.
Narrator: His wife, queen Catherine, tries to convince him to pull out.
But he insists on another contest.
And so they do it again.
Montgomery did not get his Lance low enough.
It splintered.
This large splinter went through the gilded visor, went into his eye and cut the retina nerve in his eye.
Narrator: He will Pierce his eyes through a golden cage.
Hogue: There were two wounds.
The prophecy says, "two wounds made one.
" The one being that he died of infection, brain infection, an agonizing death 10 days later.
Narrator: King Henry ii dies exactly the way that nostradamus predicted.
Nostradamus was the talk of the courts of Europe.
Narrator: Until his own death seven years later, which also comes about exactly the way he predicts.
This is considered nostradamus' final prediction.
And he says, "on his return from the embassy, the king's gift put in place, he will do nothing more.
He will be gone to god.
Close relatives, friends, brothers by blood will find him completely dead near the bed and the bench.
" Narrator: The victim of the crippling and painful condition of edema, nostradamus returns home from visiting the king at the embassy of arles.
He went back to his secret study where he had his bed moved up and a special bench that had been made because he had to prop up his leg.
Narrator: At daybreak, friends and family discover his lifeless body.
Hogue: They open the door.
And they found him dead between his bench and the bed.
Narrator: It may have been the final prophecy written by nostradamus.
But since his death, believers say countless more have come true.
Does that mean his prediction for the end of the world will come to fruition? We're just one global economic crisis, one planetary crisis, one thermonuclear crisis away from ending the world.
Beach: They're inevitable.
These things are going to happen.
Narrator: 460 years after his death, nostradamus remains the most famous, most prolific prophet of all time.
Among his nearly 1,000 predictions is a powerful vision of a world thrown into chaos.
For those who follow his words literally, the time to prepare is now.
Beach: The end times talk about a time of great destruction.
There are times and places where things and the nature of the world can be avoided.
Some things can be avoided.
Other things cannot be.
Narrator: So convinced is he of the apocalyptic vision of nostradamus, Bruce beach has built a bunker known as the ark two 60 miles northwest of Toronto.
The reason why i built this shelter is because actually of all the places in north America, Southern Ontario, where we are, is most likely to receive the most intense radiation and fallout.
Narrator: The ark two was constructed in 1980 by burying 42 school busses under 2 feet of concrete and 14 feet of earth.
You can see here, uh, how the steel is embedded in the concrete.
We have tons and tons of steel embedded in it.
This is the children's play room right here.
And, uh, this is the children's bunk room.
We have three telephone systems.
These are the three switch boards, again, bought all new.
But we had 'em so long, the batteries wore out.
So we had to have the batteries all replaced after 20 years.
Narrator: Beach claims that at 10,000 square feet, it's the largest nongovernmental shelter in the world and can accommodate up to 500 people.
The reason they'll come to ark two is the society around them has crashed.
Uh, there's no food in the stores.
There's no, uh, security in the cities.
They are just trying to escape from the disaster.
Narrator: But beach doesn't just want to survive the coming nuclear war.
The reason why the shelter is here is basically to, um, rebuild society after doomsday.
When nuclear war happens, the shelter is a safe place for people to come.
And then as a community, just kind of rebuild afterwards.
Come on.
Somebody else have it.
Narrator: Bruce beach and his team believe the only way to survive is to pull together.
Lau: And so what happens is we come together in a like-minded community because that's the only thing that will rebuild the world.
The selfish people that only want to do it for their families, I'm sorry.
It won't work.
This place is designed to hold up to 500 people.
250 of those people will be sleeping.
The other 250 would be up working.
This is just a temporary solution until, you know, until be able to live on the surface again.
We'd be able to live down here for two years before resurfacing.
Narrator: To be able to sustain an orderly, functioning community, the responsibilities and duties within the ark are divided up.
Liberty: I'm the cook.
So you know, in the event of an emergency, my responsibility, of course, would be making sure that everybody's fed.
And so this is the kettle room here.
As you can see at the very end, we've got a very large kettle.
Uh, and this kettle's designed to make large quantities of soup.
Obviously, soup is one of those types of, uh, dishes or, uh, menu items that we could put on that would actually be able to allow us to feed a lot of people with a minimal amount of resources.
Maggiore: The shelter pretty much is a safe haven, you know, for if and when the end of the world does come.
I believe it will come, just like nostradamus had predicted.
Liberty: We don't take nostradamus' predictions lightly.
If we look at today's world's events, everything seems to be pointing in -- in -- in the direction that, you know, some of these predictions that nostradamus made.
Narrator: Nostradamus himself is born into a troubled age.
Europe had only recently emerged from the dark ages.
The bubonic plague is rampant during the 1500s.
And there is a resurgence in Southern France, which is where nostradamus begins his career as a country doctor.
He started traveling on his mule, going to different towns, trying out his ideas for healing the plague.
Narrator: Tragically, he is unable to save his own family from the outbreak.
In 1538, his wife, son and daughter are struck down.
The devastation of losing his beloved family sends nostradamus into a turmoil, what many think to be the catalyst for his prophetic powers.
He decided in the middle of the night to pack his mule and disappear for six years.
With his mourning and grieving and the shock that came to his life, in those six years, there's these stories that come up about how he was gaining these powers.
What makes nostradamus unique in prophetic circles is that he -- he customized his magic.
He used a little of this, a little of that.
Narrator: That includes astrology, oracles, divination and channeling of higher spirits.
[ Bird caws .]
In the sanctum of his study, nostradamus would go through a physical and mental transformation.
He would go through a period of purification, celibacy and probably enter his inner sanctum and take off all of his street clothes and be naked before the gods.
Then take sacred water and pour it over himself to purify himself.
And then he would don all white robe with the white hood.
And this man from the 1550s would shortly start looking like a man from the second-century Rome.
And he would start doing his incantations, just tools to trigger the mind, the body mind, into a meditative or prayerful space where something subjective happens.
Narrator: His visions are enhanced, some believe, by the use of narcotic substances, including sulfur stones.
Hogue: He would then take a Laurel branch in his hand.
He would sit on the brass tripod and meditate in the fumes that he would have boiling up from his pot.
Narrator: In this state, nostradamus receives visions that he translates into quatrains, a cryptic style of non-rhyming poem.
Written in archaic French, hundreds of scholars have tried to decipher their meaning.
But one man believes that nostradamus used a hidden mathematical code to deliver his message and that he has finally cracked it.
D'andrimont: I am the messenger of his prophetic portrayals for the future and the past.
Every word that he said and whatever he wrote, that's what he intended for the world to see.
Narrator: Benoit d'andrimont, a retired Belgian engineer now living in las Vegas, brings his own unique approach to these centuries-old writings.
D'andrimont: I was interested in the future.
Initially, I was skeptical for nostradamus.
My background in electromechanical got me to be more scientific where, for me, I need to have a hard proof.
Narrator: In 2003, d'andrimont set about devising a system to interpret nostradamus using a complex set of mathematical codes.
And I start decoding, converting every quatrain in numbers.
And by doing so, since I'm not a history buff, I did find out years.
And I didn't know what happened there until I went into the history books and then find out that that's exactly the event that he's talking about.
Narrator: D'andrimont scrutinizes one quatrain after another.
Quatrain 828 that talks about the hyper inflation and the great depression in Germany.
Quatrain 2-6, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the atomic bomb.
Quatrain number 35, king Henry ii of France.
Narrator: D'andrimont claims his codes demonstrate that the prophecies are even more accurate than previously thought.
And then I said, "wow.
" I was very surprised.
Narrator: But not nearly as surprised as when he discovers a quatrain that suggests d'andrimont himself might have a special role to play.
D'andrimont: Nostradamus did emphasize, in one of his prophecies, that 500 years later, people will be able to recognize and see the reality of his prophecy and make sense of it.
He was born in 1503.
So 1503 plus 500 years, 2003.
I just happened to discover this code in 2003.
Narrator: Whether he is the chosen one or not, d'andrimont is convinced of the accuracy of his code.
And he has some dark news for humankind's future.
D'andrimont: There is a financial collapse that is announced by nostradamus.
And that is for 2018, 2019, where the well-to-do suddenly will have no more.
Narrator: When war and tyranny resonate around the world, societal structures as we know them will crumble.
One of the things that nostradamus emphasized a lot is the, um, Christian church being demolished totally.
So no more nuns, no more priests.
There'll be massive persecution of christians and all religions.
Narrator: Culminating, he claims, in full-scale global warfare.
There is sign that are leading us right now to believe that world war III is at an embryo stage, uh, due to economics, which is the leading of all wars.
Narrator: D'andrimont believes his role is to warn the rest of the world of the coming cataclysms.
D'andrimont: The past has shown that they happen.
I don't see why the future will be different.
So those things are to happen is a fact.
And I'm just a messenger.
Narrator: He's carrying a message the world might be foolish to ignore.
The man himself was a gift to us to give us that prewarning of what it was to come to pass.
Carrigan: Everything is programmed.
We can see how it's gonna unfold.
Narrator: According to nostradamus and those who live by his words, the world is teetering on the brink of destruction.
In the coming years, we will experience global economic collapse, civil and region-wide war, nuclear attack and the ruin of planet earth.
Given the current global state of affairs, perhaps the physician turned prophet was right.
World war III, the end times, we can see it now.
We can see that happening.
We can see the posturing for war.
I've coined the phrase the roaring 2020s, not through prosperity, not through what happened in the 1920s with people having a big party, celebrating after the terrible decade of world war I.
No.
This is the roaring, roaring, roaring with storms, roaring with great mega fires from the droughts that are coming, roaring with billions of people who are not being listened to by their governments, who are roaring revolution.
The 2020s will be the most dangerous decade in human history.
Narrator: This is when, according to hogue's interpretation of nostradamus, the simmering cold war between the U.
S.
and Russia explodes.
Even now, the atomic weapons of Russia and America, if you include NATO, the near 16,000 weapons that are available to start nuclear war, they're targeted in such a way that the first bombs that hit their targets will hit the southernmost targets in Russia and in America.
Here's nostradamus describing that.
They shall drop dreadful globes with an invisible death.
The city set on fire, helpful to the enemy.
At daybreak, the fire starts approaching from the south, the march of the flashes from the south to the north.
From the dreadful globes, look inside a nuclear weapon.
The hydrogen bomb's trigger is a sphere, a globe of fission that implodes the hydrogen fusion.
So he's describing it.
Narrator: This isn't just apocalyptic talk.
There are growing fears the next world war is imminent.
The financial crisis that nostradamus foresaw is also a global concern.
People are looking at the economy.
And it's falling apart.
People are calling for reforms, but they're not happening.
And we then are entering a period of revolutions.
That's what happens when the people aren't heard.
And that's when collective intelligence kicks in.
That's what I work towards.
That's what I try to educate with my work, to bring these fears and dangers, uh, out in the open so that we can look at them, have an encounter with them and get creative about solving them.
Narrator: For some, the solution already exists inside each of us.
Brad carrigan runs a meditation retreat in the foothills of the Canadian rockies.
The only way we can really see our evolution and what this whole end-time scenario represents is being able to get above the chatter.
So to start understanding the end times, we have to be able to get clear, go into a place where we can balance ourselves and feel it.
Narrator: He believes that nostradamus and other prophets were capable of reaching an enlightened state of being, the fifth dimension.
Over the years, I've come in contact with a lot of information on very diverse levels of spirituality, physical, metaphysical and scientific.
Nostradamus' accurate predictions would come from the fact that he could tap into the fifth dimension.
And whether he knew it or not, that's what was going on.
He was connected to that fifth dimensional consciousness that where all knowledge is.
Narrator: The fifth dimension is a state of being that supposedly transcends space and time, the ability to see everything that has gone before and everything that is coming.
It's a place that carrigan says we can all reach through the power of yoga and meditation.
Carrigan: People should realize that the prophecies don't come from out here.
They come from within.
And we all have that power to connect to the prophecy.
Need to evaluate what's coming up for yourself in this posture.
Narrator: While the approach to survival is very different from the bug-out bags and bunkers of most preppers, carrigan warns that until we start to practice spirituality, we are doomed to the fate that nostradamus predicted.
Spiritual being recognizes the changes coming.
And there's a need for that change, world war III, the end times.
And we can see it now.
There's a timeline of wars and destruction, pestilence and everything.
And that's what the interest in all the prophecies is about now because everybody is feeling the changes because it's spiritual.
Narrator: Whether nostradamus divined the future from the universe, an oracle or his own meditative visions, there's no denying his star and staying power.
But critics disagree and say that, at best, his writings are fear-mongering, pandering to the dark side of human nature.
Newman: People just seem to like disasters because everybody thinks that, yes, there'll be an apocalypse.
But somehow, they're going to survive it.
Narrator: Yet in 2001, interest in nostradamus rose to an all-time high.
For a short while, his name was one of the most popular search terms on all the major Internet search engines.
Could we have been forewarned of the worst terrorist attack on American soil? Narrator: As nostradamus believers await a global calamity, one dreadful day in September 2001 is used as the evidence that his visions of the future were real.
All because of a quatrain that spreads across the Internet like wildfire.
"In the city of god, there will be a great thunder, two brothers torn apart by chaos.
The third big war will begin when the big city is burning.
" But nostradamus didn't write it.
It was a hoax written by a Canadian student in 1997 as part of an essay showing how a vague prophecy could be interpreted to fit a variety of cataclysmic events.
People want to believe it.
They want to have, uh, a grasp on -- on all the confusing and frightening things that are happening.
That's a pretty natural human tendency.
Smoley: Nostradamus was very, very good at expressing images that lie deep in our psyches and in putting these out in compelling, powerful language.
And this language still speaks to us today.
Newman: He's someone who can convince people of six impossible things before breakfast.
Narrator: He could even be considered the pioneer of the modern-day apocalypse movement.
There were always apocalyptic movements of one sort or another.
But what really set things off was the plague of the 15th century.
With great disasters like that, you have to think the world's ending.
Narrator: Ever since the "book of revelations," the apocalypse genre has become more and more dramatic.
Some would say melodramatic.
"Revelations" was a very hot book.
There was a lot of fascinating things in it.
And it was gory and bloody.
What's not to like? Smoley: Nostradamus' poetic style was very peculiar.
I think if he'd lived in the 20th century, he would have been considered a great surrealist poet.
If you read any of nostradamus' verses, that in translation, and the translation is kind of grammatical and flows normally, that is not a literal translation because his verses are broken, jagged.
Um, he uses funny words.
He uses words that he's invented from Greek and Latin.
So the whole experience is that much more mysterious.
But it does give his verses a strange power and makes them very enigmatic.
And it makes them very evocative.
And I think that's one of the great keys to his success over the centuries.
Narrator: While skeptics admire his style, they're not convinced by his conclusions.
I don't think it's likely that he could see 1,000 years into the future.
I think the prophecies are deliberately open-ended.
And the ones that aren't have been disproven.
The quatrains are like that.
They're just vague enough that you can take them and say, "oh, this is what I've always thought.
And this means this.
" Many of nostradamus quatrains have been used after the fact to say that he had predicted something.
The napoleonic era, which was another chaotic time, that he predicted the shooting of Kennedy.
Talk about the fall of the Berlin wall.
Narrator: Nostradamus shrouds his predictions in confusing and ambiguous prose but for good reason.
Carrigan: Heresy was a big part of what was going on in the world.
If you started saying the wrong things, you were a heretic and burned to the stake.
So he had to disguise what he wanted to say in the quatrains.
But it doesn't take away or diminish what he was trying to say.
Narrator: It's also possible that he disguised his warnings to keep them from falling into the wrong hands.
D'andrimont: He could see that people were going to use his language, his prophecies to -- to make it up for whatever circumstances that are profitable, politically or commercially.
So if, right now, our leaders knew exactly and knew for a fact that nostradamus was exactly on the year on the dot, they will use that to either hide and use that to their benefit.
And nostradamus was very cautious of that.
So he was not too keen about revealing an easy way to find and -- and see the future, for that reason.
Narrator: But critics just aren't buying it.
The writings don't say what they're supposed to mean.
And they don't tell you when they're going to happen.
And they don't tell you any of that.
So you can easily retroactively use it.
Narrator: Still, forecasting has always been big business, even in this rational, scientific age.
Baker: We're all interested in understanding more about the future so that we can better prepare for the future.
Narrator: Roger Baker is a modern prophet for the 21st century.
He's a geopolitical analyst at stratfor, which provides economic, political and military strategic forecasting.
Baker: Strategic forecasting is really looking at the future trends of history.
It's not trying to identify events.
It's not trying to understand exactly what's going to happen.
But rather, what are the frameworks that we're going to be seeing, particularly in a global context.
And so forecasting is not necessarily saying, this is going to happen, this event is going to happen.
But it is giving you the directionality.
So when I look at history.
And I say, "history repeats itself," that doesn't mean history has to repeat itself.
But if I see a repetitive pattern in history, then I want to identify, "why did that pattern repeat?" Narrator: He thinks it's likely that nostradamus used a similar method.
Baker: I imagine that nostradamus certainly looked at history.
And if you think about the time in which he's living, this is the time of great global exploration.
And when you're working towards writing on prophecy that forecasts crisis and doom, there's a ton of history to draw upon that you can look at.
And you can see in totally different places what appears to be very similar things.
And those things probably, ultimately go back to human nature.
And therefore, history helps reveal commonalities of human nature that you can then try to apply in forecasting.
Narrator: And one of the major common threads throughout history is warfare and unrest, a nostradamus speciality.
Baker: I think the idea that there's going to be further war in the world is pretty easy to predict.
Um, it -- it doesn't take a lot to -- to recognize that there are going to continue to be conflicts between nations, uh, over territory, over resources, over markets, over population flows, um, over ideology.
Those are going to happen.
I think you see these cycle up and down and cycle up and down, um, throughout history.
Narrator: Perhaps this is simply the way of the world, a constant cycle of ups and downs, peace and war, calm and catastrophe.
And preparing for that gives us a sense of security.
Newman: Do I believe we're living in the end times? I have no idea.
I don't think anybody does.
Certainly as I've grown up and watched the way the world is going, it always looks like it.
But as a historian, I realize that every time, because we don't know how this story turns out, we imagine the worst.
Nostradamus may have believed that he was a prophet.
I don't think that he had anything definite in mind for most of the prophecies he wrote.
They may have just been sort of jumbled feelings that he had.
But if people want to believe them today, I think if they don't hurt anybody else with it, believe what you want.
If it keeps you, you know, from hiding under the bed, then be happy with it.
I just can't quite go along with it.
Narrator: Perhaps belief in the prophecy is a way of avoiding a bigger issue -- death.
The sad, frightening, scary fact is that your world is gonna end in a few decades, at most.
This is irrevocable and inexorable.
Narrator: Personal mortality aside, one specific prophecy says humankind is facing a planetary cataclysm that few can survive.
Hogue: Nostradamus saw the end of the world.
He wrote a detailed account and dated it.
Narrator: For the vast majority of the 3,400 years of recorded history, humans have been at war, killing an estimated 1 billion people in the process.
According to the interpreted prophecies of nostradamus, the next war will kill 4 billion.
The planet will be all but destroyed.
And survivors will contend with the future of famine, deadly pollution and disease.
Nostradamus is, by far, the most pessimistic prophet I've ever studied.
I think he did this in the compassion to scare people straight.
Narrator: Perhaps nostradamus does not seal our fate.
Perhaps he is trying to warn us against it.
It seems like it's preordained, but it's not.
The future isn't written in stone.
He was motivated to write his prophecies to stop a future from happening.
Narrator: Could nostradamus have been trying to halt the tragic cycle of history? Sometimes, uh, you can't stop the predictability of people.
It's like a machine.
It's unstoppable sometimes.
And that's what's got to be understood about prophecy.
What can we do to stop conditioning each generation to be seeded to repeat the past and call it the future and repeat all the stupidities and the miseries of the past in the future? And very much nostradamus was -- was about changing the incline of destiny.
Carrigan: Nostradamus setting the tone for these times was also sent to warn this age of humankind that we were coming into these, uh, the prophecies or into these end-time scenarios so that we could prepare spiritually.
I mean, it may sound doom and gloom.
But it's a source of love for us to prepare.
It's like having a child.
The storm's coming.
You got to put on your boots.
Nostradamus set the table for warning us something was coming.
Narrator: In other words, we're at a crossroads.
And unless people and world governments the world over recognize the danger, we're doomed, especially when even the most rational observers are preparing for the worst.
I think the concept of a nuclear confrontation is not unreal.
I don't think that can be ruled out at all.
I think the thing to prepare for is not nuclear war as such.
It is to gain a better understanding of the way in which the world system works, to understand the compulsions and constraints on different countries, the way they perceive a threat and what they're doing to act to mitigate that threat.
And that, I think, is the main purpose of forecasting is to give people the ability to play out on their part potential scenario options to deal with that crisis and think through it before they come to the crisis.
Narrator: Even those who predict the end of days, a crisis so great that humankind might perish, believe we can steer our own destiny.
Beach: There's some things that are avoidable and some things that are not.
It's avoidable to step out of the back of an airplane.
But once one does, it's unavoidable they're going to hit the ground.
Lau: Instead of being distracted with all that is out there, why don't we pay attention to nostradamus and then become proactive, do something, take an action? Don't just talk about it.
Don't run away in fear.
Act.
Narrator: There is one event that his followers believe is set in stone, the cosmic end of the planet earth.
Hogue: Suddenly, he starts writing about his perpetual prophecies, that they'll last a long, long time.
He says they are perpetual properties, for they extend from now to the year 3797.
The world will see many floods and such high inundations as there will remain scarcely any land not covered by water.
And this will last so long that outside of the topography of earth and the races which inhabit it, everything will perish.
And there shall fall from the sky such a great amount of fire and flaming meteors that nothing will remain unconsumed.
All this will happen a short time before the final conflagration.
Narrator: Planet earth will be destroyed.
But according to hogue, nostradamus offers us a glimmer of optimism, a chance to start over.
Hogue: For although the planet Mars will finish its cycle at the end if its, earth's, last stage, Mars will start again.
Humanity will gather for several years in aquarius.
Others in cancer for a longer time and for ever more.
So he's talked about the races of humanity, man, surviving when everything else is consumed on earth.
I can't imagine that's possible unless we're not on earth anymore.
It would seem to be true that if we become free of this earth, if we become a galactic civilization, we cannot be destroyed by whatever could destroy a planet.
We will, as a human race, go on and on and live as long as this universe lives.
Narrator: This prophet of doom is a beacon of warning and of hope, hope that mankind will survive in its new galactic home and a warning that we must face the challenge of the coming apocalypse head on.
I don't think I want to give people peace of mind.
Your house is on fire.
You don't need somebody to say, "there, there.
You'll make it.
The house will be fine.
" No.
It won't be fine.
You have to put the fire out.
So that's what I'm saying.
Put the fire out because I don't think you are going to make it if you don't.