I'm writing to you again in case my last email got lost in your inbox. We feel that it is urgent to unmask David Meade in some way right now, because his ongoing prophesies continue to hit the headlines in Google News and devastate the lives of young school children and young parents.
His next "Doomsday date" is the 21st October, and Tiffany and Dave plan a Google Hangout on the 18th to expose him, unless we hear from you first.
If you are interested in unmasking him in some way on the Washington Post at some point in the not too distant future, please respond by the 18th to say so, thanks!
For that reason I open out with the material we have found on his real identity.
DAVID MEADE'S REAL IDENTITY
In your article: The man whose biblical doomsday claim has some nervously eyeing Sept. 23 you were not able to find out much about him. It's not surprising as "David Meade" is a pen name.
As a result of skilled internet sleuthing by one of us, and a couple of lucky breaks we now know his real name, and his current address in a suburb of a city in Florida.
After we already had this information by other methods, we then found many early end of world prophesies under his real name, back to autumn 2000. We also then found him listed under his real name as one of the alumni of the University of Louisville with a BSc in accounting (so nothing to do with astronomy), complete with photograph.
We know that he worked as a public accountant and is now aged 66. We have lists of past emails and websites, details of his three marriages (he is now divorced again) and many other details.
We know he is not the same as the David Meade who wrote a book about Pinewood Derby cars.
So far we have kept all these details secret. The reason is explained in the next section.
DEATH THREATS AGAINST DAVID MEADE - NEED FOR SOME CARE IF WE "OUT" HIM
When you reported the death threats here: Mind reader David Meade keeps getting death threats meant for doomsday theorist David Meade they didn't surprise me much. As you quote mind reader David Meade as saying:
"“I think most of the vitriol came from confused people who panicked and worried,”
That matches my own experiences supporting those scared by his prophesies. Many of them are not thinking clearly as a result of their fear, and they feel he is responsible for weeks or months of awful anxiety they have been through. We know that he lives in Florida where guns are easily obtained. He has had so much publicity that some of those scared people may live in the same city as him. Is there a risk that one of them might murder him once they learn his address? That would not be a good outcome.
Perhaps we can discuss this. How much could we reveal without making it easy to find his address? Or, does it matter if we make it possible to find him? Your advice there and experience would be very helpful.
Some of us have also had death threats in the past in the other direction, from false prophets we debunked. As a basic precaution, Tiffany (who lives in the US) requests not to have her full name revealed. That's why I sign this letter with her first name only. We have no idea if David Meade would do this, but it seems wise to take precautions.
If you take this on, we will share with you all the details about his identity, how we found out who he is, and the evidence that proves without doubt that it is him..
The first summary section is the most important part. The rest expands on those points.
We are writing to you, because as far as we know, you are the only journalist for a major newspaper who has thoroughly debunked David Meade and his prophesies. Your articles are accurate too, indeed excellent. We have been working for years to support the victims of false prophesies like these. Our Facebook support groups include Doomsday Debunked, Nibiru Debunked 2017 and "Voices Of Reason To Explain X - VORTEX". The YouTube channels include Dazzathecameraman, and Nerd With Attitude.
Main points in this email:
We think that even the sensationalist press should not run fake stories like this if they know, or have reason to suspect, that they make their readers suicidal. The effect on young readers particularly sho
Although the stories were heavily promoted by a UK paper, they affect people worldwide, through Google News and similar. Around half of those who contact us are young children and young adults from the US. So it is definitely a US news story as much as it is a UK news story.
SUICIDAL AND SCARED PUBLIC POSTS FOR YOU TO SEE
Here are a few examples of posts to Doomsday Debunked (a public group) by these children and young adults. I have blacked out the names here but you will see them if you click through to the post. This is for your private use only at this stage. We would of course have to ask them if you wanted to publish any of it:
post here
post here
Post here
Response to help reassure him from a young parent who went through it all before in 2012:
Post here.
Post here
Some of the stories about David Meade's September 23 prophesy were dramatized with count down clocks showing the days, hours, minutes and seconds remaining to the "end of the world". They found these especially scary.
Post here
Many of them stayed up on the night of the 23rd and posted to the group celebrating their survival.
NEW DATES
Of course immediately after Sept 23, new dates came along. Scott Clarke did a video on the 24th claiming it was a "more perfect alignment" which got some of our members panicking again:
Post here
OUR EXPERIENCES RESPONDING TO THE POSTS
It was utterly heartbreaking. I took off the week before Sept 23 to cope with the flood of questions. For at least a week I spent most of my waking hours on my computer answering PM's and posts from them or writing debunking posts on my doomsday debunked blog. As you see from the public posts to the group which I shard above, some ofr these PMs I received were suicidal.
After a night's sleep, I'd wake up to many missed PM's and Facebook posts from scared children. They would talk about how they couldn't eat, had difficulty sleeping, had panic attacks, sometimes they were vomiting through fear, occasionally literally crying as they typed the PM. They talked about how they were happy until they saw David Meade's prophesy and wished they could go back to that earlier happiness somehow. A couple were in hospital with intravenous drips on the evening of the 22nd because of the physical effects of these stories on them.
Many of these children are very young. Age 14 is common. The youngest member of the Doomsday Debunked group to disclose their age is a young boy aged 13, and there is one scared girl age 12 whose parent says she also reads the group posts. It let up a bit after the 23rd, but not by much. As you said in your article The man who had people worried about a Sept. 23 apocalypse is peddling a new doomsday date. This story is still continuing to run with new dates, with David Meade making predictions all the way up to December 20 now.
There are two confirmed suicides from previous doomsday scares that we know of (a 16 year old girl in the UK in 2012 and another girl aged 16 in India in 2008).
Facebook doesn't permit users younger than 13. David Morrison (a senior NASA scientist who fronted NASA's "Ask an Astrobiologist), was contacted by numerous kids age 11 - 13 who were scared and suicidal in the 2012 scare. You can hear him talk about this in the last part of David Morrison's presentation on the scale of the problem to the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.
So from his experiences, there may well be many 11 and 12 year olds who we just haven't heard from.
MANY CHILDREN FROM THE US AFFECTED - AND FROM OTHER COUNTRIES WORLD WIDE
As I said in the intro, this affects the US as much as the UK. To get an idea of the international scale of the problem, I did a poll of our members. I asked them to add their vote if they have been scared by David Meade's prophesies, and to say which country they are in. This is the result:
Out of the 51 votes so far, 26 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 to post to the group and read the group posts.+3
6.
Of course the poll is nowhere near complete, even of the ones who contacted us. Our group currently has 390 members. Some of those are debunkers, so they aren't all people who got scared of doomsday stories, or David Meade particularly. But we got a large surge of members from his stories. I think the number in the group scared by his stories is likely to be over 100.
We can only have reached a fraction of those scared by them. It would not surprise me if there are thousands of children affected worldwide.
A COMMON PROBLEM - STILL SCARED ONCE THEY KNOW IT IS BS
Many of them tell us that they have been scared like this for weeks or months before they find us, with nobody to turn to. With this background perhaps it's not so surprising that many of them are having a lot of issues with continuing fear, anxiety, panic attacks etc even once they know it is BS.
Here is a video by a young lady who asked members of the group for help on this common problem (the respirator is nothing to do with anxiety; it's just because she has a rare condition which means she can't breath without mechanical assistance)
From our previous experiences, these repercussions can sometimes continue to months or longer after they have seen through the stories on an intellectual level.
EMAIL TO DAVID MEADE ABOUT THE EFFECTS OF HIS PROPHESIES - AND HIS RESPONSE
I sent a heart felt email to David Meade. You can read it here: Email to David Meade “Effects of your prophesies on young children who become sick and suicidal”
This is his reply, scroll down the page a bit: David Meade’s response - ‘Your letter indicates you have not read my book at all’
As you will see, his response doesn't mention the words child or suicide or sick. There is not a moment of empathy anywhere.
Incidentally, it is true that we haven't bought his book. We don't want to contribute anything to his profits or sales ranking. But a friend has let me read her copy. So I now know what it is like. I am in the middle of doing a full review but so far it looks as though half of those 108 pages consist of material copied from blogs by other authors from the internet. This includes a gruesome dream during which the dreamer describes how first his wife is decapitated and then himself. That part consists of a copy / paste of this blog post about a dream by Ken Peters. In my view his decision to include this dream should have lead to the book being labeled as containing graphic violence and not suitable for very young children.
We also have his many writings on Planet X News. Actually the sensationalist press often leave out some of his silliest predictions. I did a list of most of what he said will happen in October here, compiled from his own original text: David Meade’s bonkers near future predictions - reality check for those of you scared of new dates in October
He has also published a letter he says comes from a reader saying that actually all the events for October will happen in November instead, but it is hidden away here. This may be part of his exit strategy for continuing predictions through to November.
His message in the book for how to survive the apocalypse in his section "Prepare Spiritually" (page 99) has just two points. That first:
"Good works cannot save you"
Second, that the only way to survive the apocalypse and ascend to heaven is to pray to God saying you believe in Jesus and that you ask for forgiveness of your sins. He has a short prayer he recommends you make constantly to God.
As far as I can see on a first reading, that is the spiritual message of his book in its entirety.
DAVID MEADE'S PROMOTION OF HIS BOOK
He promotes his book very heavily. He ends his articles saying things like.
“There is almost no time left. ... You need to buy my book yesterday. You need to be ready for all of these events. ... It covers everything. Everything”
from his article October 2017 and the 'End of Days'
He has a disclaimer on his own personal blog - right at the end, after making sure you read the scary stuff first and know about his book.
Disclaimer:
Ideas in their essential form as concepts are only wrong or dangerous to those who have a vested interest in not wanting people to be free to entertain ideas.
If it causes you harm, emotional distress, anger, frustration, fear, or any other emotional or mental states to watch and listen to online videos about theories of potential cataclysms, then don’t watch or listen to it and evacuate this thread immediately to your safe space.
at the bottom of this page
PROMOTION OF DAVID MEADE BY THE "DAILY EXPRESS"
We have found out that he is the author of two previous books on Amazon. predicting dire events in 2013 and 2015. They had so little impact that google turns up only six, and eleven pages respectively that mention the author + title. They were of course withdrawn from sale after the prophesies failed. (More details towards the end of this post).
I first became aware of him in January 2017 as a prophesy for September or October or November 2017 . It didn't stand out as different from any of numerous other such "prophesies" that we get every year. In my view, the main reason that this one became notable is that the "Daily Express" promoted it heavily all summer.
I don't know if you have noticed, but for some reason the Daily Express features very high in Google search results. For instance here is a search for "Planet X". This is using the google adwords search tool so it is not customized to my own search history, and indeed it shows results as they would be shown to a searcher in the US (I'm in the UK)
"Planet X" is a respectable astronomical term. Here is the NASA planet X overview.
But it's been hijacked by these people who claim it is identical to the mythical impossible Nibiru. The Daily Express is right top of the search results for news on "Planet X" today, and has five other entries on the page. No sign of the likes of Sky and Telescope. More sensationalist news, most of it.
This is not unusual, indeed it is typical for searches like this. So it is very easy for a young child to end up on the Daily Express reading one of David Meade's prophesies. And to them, young and naive, it is all just "news".
The Daily Express did such a focused campaign on David Meade's book. I've never seen such a focused campaign. Leading up to Sept 23 they were averaging two to three new stories a day, all promoting this one prophesy, author and book.The other sensationalist papers like the Sun, our top selling sensationalist paper in the UK, ran a few stories, but with nothing like the intensity of the Daily Express. They must be earning a fair bit from ad revenue on these stories.
Most of the children who contact us say they read about it through Google News, Apple News and other similar news aggregates in other countries.
This how the Daily Express were to boost it to such extraordinary levels. To the point where its sales on Amazon briefly out performed all other books on Astronomy. It managed to beat nearly all other hard copy paperback books too.
SEPTEMBER 24 RANKINGS ON AMAZON - #1 IN ASTRONOMY (KINDLE) AND #5 PAPERBACK
The Wayback Machine captured the amazon pages on Sept 24 in the early morning. Probably his highest rankings ever about then I’d guess
For kindle:
#1 and #3 in Astronomy, #2 in Eschatology.
#5 in Astronomy, #8 in Eschatology, #13 in Astrophysics and Space Science.
YOUTUBE BACKING IT ALL UP
YouTube are also a significant factor in this. There are dozens of YouTube "Prophets for Profit" churning out new videos week on week with new dates. The highest earning channels could be netting up to a quarter of a million dollars a year in ad revenue (upper end of the estimate for this channel from Social Blade). These are keen to run any new doomsday prophesy.
So these naive readers go there - and not only is David Meade's prophesy top of the "news" but it's also everywhere on YouTube, or so it seems, once they start to look for it.
David Meade himself has a YouTube channel which runs ads on some of its videos. Its subscription information is hidden so there is no way to estimate how much he earns from it.
As you may know, YouTube already excludes ads from videos of natural disasters such as hurricanes. More generally there are four main categories of video that it excludes on ethical grounds. We think Dooomsday videos should be excluded also. It would be interesting to see how many of these channels continue once there is no way to earn ad revenue from the videos.
We hope that you may consider drawing attention to this issue as well in the future. Our petition is here: To YouTube : Halt Ads on Doomsday Videos.- see also comments by signers here
OUR MAIN HOPE - DAVID MEADE STOPPED IN HIS TRACKS
Our main hope is that somehow he can be stopped in his tracks. New children are surely being made suicidal by his stories right now.
It seems to make no difference when he makes a false prophesy, for instance he predicts in his book, clearly, that Nibiru will block out the sun on 5th October with an eclipse that will make the entire Earth dark (unlike a normal solar eclipse) as well as eclipse the full Moon. Of course that never happened, but his prophesy and "no show" just gets forgotten, and he starts new dates.
We feel that as long as this continues, promoted by the Daily Express, his new prophesies will continue to devastate the lives of very young children and possibly lead some of them to suicide. We feel there is some urgency to try to put a stop to this as soon as possible.
SECOND MAIN OBJECTIVE - DRAW ATTENTION TO THE SCALE OF THE PROBLEM AS A SOCIETAL ISSUE
We are contacted by a few scared and sometimes suicidal young children and young parents, most times that one of these stories "breaks". This happens several times a year. The ones who reach us, again are probably just the tip of the iceberg.
So another objective is that perhaps, with this as a salutary lesson, something can be done in a more general way to bring the ongoing plight of these suicidal young children, and young adults with babies to the attention of the journalists writing these stories.
These children haven't done anything. They are still at school, naive. They go to Google News or Apple news on their mobile device, click on the top result, and end up on a page on the Daily Express saying the world is about to end according to David Meade. From then on, if they are susceptible, their life is changed from a normal happy childhood to one filled with anxiety, panic attacks, suicidal thoughts etc, they may end up in hospital, getting therapy, on medication and we think it is possible that some may kill themselves.
I tried to contact the Guardian in the UK, with a much earlier draft of this letter (before we had his real identity), but got no response. That may be no surprise. The only really thorough debunking I've seen anywhere in mainstream media are the articles you did in the Washington Post.
Perhaps if you publicize the plight of these young children and young adults in the US, it might then be taken up by UK papers too? Maybe it might even lead to a call to action here and some real changes in practices for sensationalist doomsday reporting?
We are here to help in whatever way is needed, and to provide further information if you take on the story.
If you feel you can't run it, we are interested in any suggestions you have about other ways we could take it forward, or others that might be interested,
Kind regards,
Robert Walker (writing from the UK)
I am signing also: on behalf of Dave Greg (New Zealand) and Tiffany (US).
ABOUT US
I (Robert Walker) am a mathematician by training, second degree in philosophy, with a long term interest in astronomy from before Apollo. I have a blog on Science 2.0 which covers many topics with a focus on space exploration and the ethical issues involved. My parents met as missionaries and I was brought up as a Christian with a keen interest in theology, in a house filled with theological books. I am now a Buddhist.All that gives me a strong background in both science and astronomy, and where necessary, theology and philosophy too, to help with the debunking.
I am founder and one of the admins for the Doomsday Debunked group on facebook, and am also one of the admins for Nibiru Debunked 2017
Dave Greg, is an amateur astronomer from New Zealand. In his spare time he also debunks astronomy related nonsense online, especially via his YouTube channel Dazzathecamerama and his Facebook page "Voices Of Reason To Explain X - VORTEX".
Tiffany Wilson, aka Nerd With Attitude is also very active in debunking with her own YouTube channel as well as taking part in online YouTube Hangouts with Dave Greg.