What People Are Getting Wrong This Week: the World Will End in 2025

Are you already planning your resolutions for 2025? Not so fast—this tweet from The New York Post has been viewed more than 15 million times:

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Baba Vanga, a blind seer from Bulgaria, is not alone in her prediction that the End Times will begin next year. French psychic Nostradamus also predicted that a terrible event would happen in Europe next year – at least according to The Times of India – and this was back in the 16th century!

With two of the best psychics of all time predicting the same thing, we should all probably cash in our 401k and tell our family how we really feel about it, right? No. No, we don’t have to be like that.

Who was Baba Vanga?

Vangelia Pandeva Gushterova was born in 1911 in Bulgaria. Baba Vanga’s early life was quiet until she was 12 years old, when a “tornado” allegedly lifted her into the sky and threw her into a nearby field. Vanga became blind due to injuries sustained in the incident, but after losing her sight, she began making predictions and is said to have started healing people. By the 1940s, people from all over Bulgaria came to see Baba Vanga, mainly to ask her whether their relatives had died in World War II, and if so, where they had died.

Vanga was taken so seriously that the eerily named Institute of Suggestology (part of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences) studied her throughout the 1960s and 70s, trying to prove that she was more than just a strange woman. Vanga herself died in 1996 from breast cancer (I think she saw this coming). Dead or not, Vanga’s legacy lives on. She has a large following in Bulgaria and North Macedonia, and especially in Russia.

Supposedly successful predictions of Baba Vanga

According to believers, Vanga accurately predicted the following:

• Rise of the Islamic State

• Death of Princess Diana

• September 11

• Global warming

• Boxing Day tsunami 2004.

• Chernobyl disaster

• Brexit

• Presidency of Barack Obama

The problem with these (and all other) Vanga’s predictions is that Vanga was either illiterate or semi-literate, so she did not write anything down. Unlike Nostradamus, who published bizarre poems (and a recipe for cherry jelly ) that are open to interpretation and mistranslation, Vanya’s predictions are all based on what people said she told them after the fact. Someone who visited her one day would say, “She completely told me about global warming in 1967!” (Global warming was first formulated in a scientific paper in 1896. )

Unlike most psychics, Vanga enjoyed the support of real scientists, in particular Georgy Lozanov. Lozanov’s methods of suggestionology were studied by UNESCO and were eventually declared “the most cultural and effective teaching method” in second language acquisition. But Lozanov also studied parapsychology and clairvoyance, neither of which stand up to scientific scrutiny. However, association with a true intellectual is the kind of influence a seer needs to live forever, and the desire to protect Lozanov’s reputation may explain some of the after-the-fact predictions.

It’s not all strikes after the fact, however. Sometimes people, including Vanga’s niece , made predictions about the future that supposedly came from Vanga, such as the end of times coming in 2025. Although no one can say with certainty that the end of the world will not begin next year. (at least not until we see who wins the US presidential election next week), we can look at Vanga’s earlier predictions to see how she did it.

Obscurity: The Psychic’s Most Trusted Friend

In 2023, a complete list of Vanga’s predictions for 2024 was published. Here they are:

• Assassination attempt on Vladimir Putin.

• The “Big Country” will conduct biological weapons tests or attacks.

• Global economic crisis.

• Terrifying weather events and natural disasters.

• A major breakthrough in quantum computing.

The more specific a prediction is, the easier it is to disprove, so some of them are just vague ploys: horrifying weather events happen every year, Vanga; it’s just a weak forecast. The rest of the list are things we could bet on for 2024 that still haven’t happened unless we’re in the very possible couple of months.

Even one correct prediction would be enough to convince millions of Vanga’s strength; but even the correct definition of 0% is unlikely to dissuade many people; There’s always next year.

Unsuccessful predictions of Baba Vanga

When Vanga’s predictions are more specific, the likelihood of their fulfillment decreases significantly. Here are some notable misses:

• ISIS did not invade Europe in 2016 .

• Barack Obama was not the last US president (unfortunately)

• Aliens did not land on Earth in 2023 and start a war with Humanity .

• World War III did not start in 2010 and did not end in 2014 .

That’s not all, but you’re probably seeing a pattern: whenever Vanya’s follower gives a specific date in the future, it turns out to be wrong. You will see the same picture with Nostradamus, not to mention all the other people who say they can predict the future. Because no one, not even the blind Bulgarian women or the mysterious French astrologers of the 1500s, can actually see the future, because the future has not arrived, so there is nothing to see.

What will the end of the world be like starting in 2025, according to Baba Vanga?

Just for fun, here is a chronology of future events, according to Baba Vanga:

• 2025: Conflict in Europe devastates the continent’s population.

• 2028: Humanity will begin to “explore Venus as a source of energy.”

• 2033: The polar ice caps will melt, causing sea levels around the world to rise to enormous heights.

• 2076: Communism spreads to countries around the world.

• 2130: Humans will make contact with aliens.

• 2170: Drought devastates much of the world.

• 3005: Earth will go to war with the civilization of Mars.

• 3797: People will have to leave the Earth because it has become uninhabitable.

• 5079: The world will end.

How the world will end, in my opinion

Unlike Baba Vanya and Nostradamus, I can accurately predict the end of the world. You see, in 1994, I was hit by a Toyota Corolla and woke up with the ability to see into everyone’s future. Place your hand on the screen so I can read your aura and we’ll begin:

I see something; something terrible ! It’s the end of the world! And it will come soon! Someday in the next 60 or maybe 80 years, everything will go dark and the world will end—especially for you. Probably in a hospital room, surrounded by selfless assistants.

Please contact me in 2084 (or later) to let me know if I’m right.

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