This will seem utterly bonkers to most of you. But while reading this please bear in mind that very young children, many as young as 14 and younger, have been driven to the edge of suicide by these prophesies. More on this later but I want to open out by showing to them how bonkers his ideas are. The rest of you may find amusement in it too. But it has a very serious side to it. Remember this chap is making people suicidal with his prophesies, and he is heavily promoted by the Daily Express. What can we do about it? It's a major societal problem.
The papers never give all his predictions in one go and leave out the most bizarre ones. So for any of you reading this who have been scared by his prophesies - hopefully this gives you a chance to laugh aloud, and maybe get some perspective on it all.
David Meade predicts that Trump and Pence with over a billion Christians will disappear in the rapture. This means, levitating and disappearing into the sky, so that they get to heaven without having to die first (for the Christians who believe in the rapture). Here is a wonderful meme illustrating this, made by Amanda Jones :).
For Google Translate: Must it be today, Jesus? Three years left of my presidency!
Here is what David Meade actually says - according to him it starts with a politically impossible surprise dawn attack of an alliance of N. Korea, China and Russia on the US. He says, citing a friend “God told him that as soon as the missiles appeared on the horizon, the rapture of the church would occur”
He then predicts the following events (amongst others). This text is quoted directly from him:
This is from Will Planet X Signal the Rapture? and October 2017 and the 'End of Days' both written by him, so there is no way he can say it is the responsibility of the press
(Incidentally it is against the law for a US president to stand for a third term)..
He says that there will be an eclipse of the sun by Nibiru on the 5th October. As this is full Moon then such an eclipse couldn’t be caused by the Moon so would be very remarkable.
This was an epic fail - as expected - the sun was not eclipsed.
He says that there will be a surprise nuclear attack by North Korea, China and Russia on the US at the end of October. Again this is bizarre, China and Russia have no reason to attack the US, the cold war is long over, there is no way they would be interested in being allies with North Korea with its unreliable ICBMs that keep blowing up and may go off course, China is an uncomfortable ally of North Korea with its strange religion of Chendoism, a form of Confucianism, and is as uncomfortable about its possession of nuclear weapons as anyone else, Russia ditto, and North Korea has no reason to do a pre-emptive attack on the US with one thing guaranteed that it would be a disaster for them.
He also says that a billion people will be levitated into the sky at the end of October just before the missiles arrive for this attack, including President Trump and vice president Pence. Do you think we are likely to get news bulletins showing video of Trump and Pence floating up into the sky and disappearing from Earth?
He also says there will be a series of magnitude 9.8 earthquakes - that’s larger than any earthquake ever recorded.
He says the Earth’s pole will shift by 30 degrees. That’s enough so that the pole star will be as far from the pole as the second pointer Dubhe in the dipper is right now. It also means that if you are in New York, your GPS will say that you are south of Mexico City - or shifted by a similar amount in some other direction. This will be very noticeable.
He says that the US will be split in half with a great distance between the halves, and a tsunami traveling at 600 mph will hit San Fransisco, and another one simultaneously hit the East coast, and a volcanic eruption in Yellowstone will produce huge amounts of lava flow.
All of this, he says, will happen before the end of October.
He says all this will lead to re-election of president Obama - to an illegal third term. How likely is that?
So we have lots of epic fails to look forward to in October. Hopefully this will help make him the laughing stock he should have been all along. His understanding of politics is on a par with his understanding of astronomy and of theology! Pretty much non existent.
He wrote all this himself so he can’t blame it on anyone else.
In detail, with the cites for all of that: David Meade’s daft near future predictions - reality check for those of you scared of new dates in October
I have yet to find anyone, even of those easily scared, who does not find those ideas utterly bonkers. The sensationalist press usually present only the more plausible sounding ones. I think they realize people would just burst out laughing if they put them all in their stories.
It’s no surprise if you are a Christian and have never heard of it. It is not in the Bible. It’s an invention of a Catholic Jesuit priest in 1590. The Catholic Church did not take this on however. The Pope definitely would NOT BELIEVE IN THE RAPTURE. But some evangelical churches do, mainly I think in US.
It’s also based on the interpretation of Revelations as all in the future . This is only one view of many. Catholics think it is nearly all in the past, with return of Jesus as an event in some distant future. Others think all the events in it have already happened, so there is no prophesy there at all for us, and others think it is describing the present in a vivid way - not about the past or the future. For some of the variation see: Views on Rev 12 by Catholics, Quakers, Church of England and Evangelical Churches
Did you enjoy this? Please share this meme. Let’s see if we can get everyone laughing at David Meade!
The rest of this page is about the plight of scared children, trying to understand what causes it and whether and how we could do anything about it. And about the "Prophets for Profit" such as David Meade.
I wonder how many of you have heard of David Meade? For scientists it is absurd nonsense.
But these stories have been heavily promoted by a trash paper in the UK called the Daily Express which for some reason features very high in google news. Often three or more results in the first page and often top position or close to it. Yet they don't even have science reporters. Sensationalist journalists who often make things up to titillate their readers.
As an example of the genre, a similar paper, the Sun ran a story about a celebrity allegedly placing someone else's pet hamster between two slices of bread and eating it live - totally false and the author of the story agrees that he made it up to boost sales. Which it did.
The infamous Freddy Starr ate my hamster fake story in the Sun.
However google search results are full of this stuff. For instance for the asteroid 2012 TC4 here are the search results for flyby on 11th (or 12th depending on your time zone)
- the Daily Express is second in Google News. The Telegraph is first, which is more a regular paper but often sensationalist on things like this. Sky and Telescope do appear, but as result 7
Here is is the second and third part of that first page;.no other astronomy sites on the first page of results. Three separate articles about it by the Daily Express on the first page, one claiming it is evidence of the hoax mythical planet Nibiru and others by the Daily Star etc. Probably most of these results are sensationalist reporting.
This is what a young child of 14 will see if they search for this. No wonder they are confused and scared. And then they find the likes of David Meade's "prophesies" right at the top of google search results.
The articles are powerful stuff for young children still at school and young adults without a science education with children. He made a prophesy for Sept 23 based on alleged hidden astrology in the Bible (there is no mention of any constellation by name or any planet by name and most remarks about astrologers are derogatory). Anyway you wouldn't believe how scared they were.
I have been answering PM's from them nearly all my waking hours since the week before Sept 23. They couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, vomiting from anxiety sometimes, panic attacks, many felt suicidal.
Many seeing doctors or therapists, receiving therapy or on medication for their anxiety. Some severely affected by the physical side effects, unable to eat, sometimes end up for a while in hospital on intravenous drips.
Since only a small fraction must have found us I think some may well have committed suicide. We are talking about children here as young as 14 frequently, and one 13. David Morrison in 2012 said he had children aged 11 and 12 too who suffered in the same way. 13 is the minimum age for Facebook so they won't find us.
This is from 2012. Transcript of the last part of David Morrison's presentation on the scale of the problem to the Astronomical Society of the Pacific."My real reason for being here and to have a discussion with you, especially those of you who are teachers, is, how do we deal with this, especially from children. I have had numerous kids who at least self identify as being 11 or 12 or 13 years old who say they are contemplating or planning suicide before September 21st. I have a friend who is a teacher in Stockton California, who says that two of her students say they plan to kill their children themselves before September. I have had several reports of suicides that have already taken place from people who are depressed and worried. It's anecdotal, I don't know, but I know that almost every teacher I have ever talked to says that this is a real fear among their students. And even if only a tiny fraction of those who are thinking about suicide should actually do it, then we have a serious societal problem, and we ought to think about what is the best way to do it.Usually with pseudo science we just ignore it. I don't think we can ignore this one."
David Morrison is a senior NASA astrophysicist and astrobiologist, (now retired), who fronted NASA's "Ask an Astrobiologist" column responding to questions from the public
It is utterly heartbreaking. What can we do about this issue?
Anyway David Meade is now prophesying dire events for various dates in October that are getting them extremely scared again. I am sharing this in the hope some of them may find it and see how bonkers his ideas are.
I tried appealing to David Meade directly. Here was my heartfelt emotional plea:
Email to David Meade: ‘Effects of your prophesies on young children who become sick and suicidal’
The words "children", "sick" and "suicidal" were all in the message title. He can't have missed them with even the most cursory reading. Yet none of those words appear in his reply. His response is here:
David Meade’s response - ‘Your letter indicates you have not read my book at all’ - Buy my book!
It's all about the money for him it's abundantly clear.
(Graffitied version of his photo done for the amusement of the Doomsday Debunked group to help them lighten up a bit).
This is entirely due to a relentless campaign by the Daily Express. They have been running article after article about this one prophesy, author and book all summer. At times two to three stories A DAY all on this one topic
And this is driving many children to the verge of suicide. Not just in the UK indeed in a poll, out of 49 members who have been scared of David Meade's prophesy, 24 are from the US, 11 from the UK, 3 from Canada, and 11 from other countries. Many of our members from non English speaking countries can't read English and use google translate
So world wide children are becoming scared and suicidal. And I think we can only have reached a tiny fraction. That poll also is only a sample of our members (over 300 members). Also we aren't reaching many of the 11 - 13 year olds that David Morrison highlights as the most vulnerable in his experience fronting "Ask an Astrobiologist". I wouldn't be surprised if the total numbers of children who are severely affected in this way by David Meade's book and the Daily Express stories, worldwide, run to the thousands to tens of thousands maybe more.
I don't think the likes of David Meade themselves are the main culprit. We've always had people like that and maybe they affect a few people, His previous books prophesying dire events in 2011 and in 2015 were so non notable that that google turns up only six, and eleven pages respectively that mention the author + title.
I think the main issues here are the sensationalist press with the Daily Express surely earning a lot from the intrusive auto play ads on every story, also Google News because of the way bizarrely it places the Daily Express above the likes of Sky and Telescope, Universe Today, Earth Sky etc. Indeed often the first page of search results have nothing from astronomical websites. Perhaps their algorithm needs tweaking as surely they don't intend to promote fake and misleading "news"? Apple News are the same apparently, Daily Express features highly. Indeed maybe a news option "Include sensationalist press" so that with a single button you can remove all that nonsense, filtered by their websites?
YouTube are another factor. Many of them end up on YouTube searching for more about Nibiru / David Meade etc and they find loads of confirming videos which they find very scary. These are the "False Prophets for Real Profit" and the highest earning may be earning up to a quarter of a million dollars a year from uploading fake Doomsday videos to YouTube.(upper end of the estimate for this channel from Social Blade).
YouTube have a policy of not running ads on four categories of video on ethical grounds. Sadly they do not include Doomsday Videos.. I think they should myself.
I've got many other posts on these issues as well as posts debunking things these children and others got scared about. See also List of the articles in my Debunking Doomsday blog to date
Also if you want to help make a difference, you can sign and share these two petitions - and do have a look at the comments to get an idea of the scale of the problem. Click “Join Conversation” to see more of them.
And if you need help - well message me of course and comment on any of these posts - and do take a look at our facebook group Doomsday Debunked.See also: List of the articles in my Debunking Doomsday blog to date
First, many scientists will read this - we also are in need for more scientists to help with debunking and answering their comments and PM's.
It's not easy for a scientist to do this. You need patience and understanding, aware that they are scared out of their minds at times, anxious, often very young, don't have a developed understanding of science or astronomy or even geometry. They have also been confused by watching and reading hours upon hours of fake "experts" telling them that we have two suns, that the Earth's poles have shifted, that there is an extra planet in our solar system about to fly past Earth and all sorts of bizarre things.
You often have to answer simple elementary questions. Yet it helps to be expert as these questions often are about pretty advanced topics too that have been garbled by the media. We have experts already in such fields as astronomy and geology helping to field the questions, but can do with many more.
If you feel you could set aside some time to help them, do join our group again, Doomsday Debunked.
Those with a strong background in theology - I don't mean trained theologian but basic understanding of the Bible and theology - not in the sense of out to preach to them of course, that's the last thing they need - but understanding the various belief systems in the Christian Church and able to debunk some of these truly absurd "interpretations" of the Bible that we get over and over.
If you are like that, you are also very useful since many of the questions are about whether they should believe a prophesy because it is based on the Bible (allegedly).
And indeed anyone can be a great help. You don't even need to have any science or theology, just basic empathy, to help reassure these scared children that no, the world is not going to end and to listen to their worries and concerns and give them a chance to talk to someone else who is maybe more mature, more experienced or whatever. For instance a lot of them continue to suffer panic attacks and extreme anxiety once they know that it is all BS and you get frequent posts "I know it is all nonsense but I am still very scared and can't help thinking about the world ending" sort of thing.