Page 8 - 200911 - The 'X' Chronicles newspaper - November 2009

november2009_june_july_2009.qxd 23/11/2009 4:37 PM Page 8 8 15 Doomsday Prophecies 8 15 Doomsday Prophecies 2012: 15 DOOMSDAY PROPHECIES AND 2012: 15 DOOMSDAY PROPHECIES AND HOW THEY TURNED OUT HOW THEY TURNED OUT Sci Fi Wire Type of Prophecy: Biblical apocalypse. Medieval Europe was psyched for the second Sci Fi Wire coming and the start of the Millennium, the Prophet: Roman theologian Sextus Julius 1,000-year reign of Jesus and the righteous Not many people working today, aside Africanus mentioned in the Book of Revelation. That from Blofeld or maybe Lex Luthor, have Thiota later admitted she was in the apocalypse hatched as many plots to destroy the world as Details: Africanus, writing in the early 220s, biz strictly for the cash should have clued director Roland Emmerich (certainly not on uses the Bible as a template to puree Chaldean, people in on how seriously they should take such a grand scale). In Independence Day, he Judaic and Egyptian history with Greek end-of-the-world rants. The looming advent of used a worldwide alien assault to blast human mythology and Christianity in his five-volume the year 1000 led to all kinds of fun things, like civilization to rubble. In The Day After Chronographiai. After hammering out the Holy Roman Emperor Otto III believing himself Tomorrow, he flooded the world and then flash- entirety of history from the moment of creation destined to counter the coming Antichrist; froze it like some kind of Clarence Birdseye to the year 221 (let's give the guy points for visionary cults; self-flagellation cults; the with delusions of godhood. ambition), he works out that the second coming disinterring of the body of Charlemagne so that Emmerich is prepping his new disaster would happen at the very latest by 500 A.D. he can get up and fight the Antichrist like some movie 2012 for release on Friday. This time he's kind of Romero super-zombie and other things basing his world-smashing destruction on a How It Turned Out: World still here. people would reasonably assume that John bunch of theories floating around the Cleese, Graham Chapman and company only blogosphere and the nutosphere that state that Number 2: Date World Ends: 1000 A.D. made up for Monty Python and the Holy Grail. the world will end sometime during late 2012, around the time of the winter solstice in the How It Turned Out: World still here. Northern Hemisphere. So, in light of Emmerich's new plot to Number 3: Date World Ends: 1340s-1350s destroy the world, and with tinfoil hats firmly in place, we thought it'd be worthwhile to look over 15 end-of-the-world prophecies from the past 1800 years or so and see how they turned out. (Emmerich's 2012 opened Nov. 13, ensuring at minimum three years of box office returns.) Number 1: Date World Ends: 500 A.D. Type of Prophecy: Biblical apocalypse / millennial Type of Prophecy: The Black Death Prophet: Trend started by Thiota of Mainz and Prophet: Simon de Covino, Matteo Villani, picked up by Holy Roman Emperor Otto III and others others Details: Well, with most of the world dying Details: Apocalypses love nice, round numbers, while covered in enormous, frostbite-colored and what could be rounder than Y1K? With a sacs of pus from India to Iceland, thinking the good priming of the cultural pump from the so- world was about to end might not have seemed called "pseudo-prophetess" Thiota in 847, that unreasonable a supposition. (Cont’d Pg 9)