This page may be out of date. Submit any pending changes before refreshing this page.
Hide this message.
Quora uses cookies to improve your experience. Read more
Robert Walker

Nostrodamus was a sixteenth century apothecary and seer. He didn’t make any predictions for 2017. His only dated prediction is this one apparently

"L'an mil neuf cent nonante neuf sept mois,
Du ciel viendra un grand Roi deffrayeur:
Ressusciter le grand Roi d'Angolmois,
Avant après Mars regner par bonheur
."

Translation:
"The year 1999, seventh months,
from the sky will come the great King of Terror,
bringing back to life the great King of the Angolmois.
Before and after, Mars reigns by good fortune."

There apparently Angolmois is a region in the south of France but has been interpreted as an approximate anagram of Mongolois - the Mongols.

This is one guess at what it meant from before 1999

"The gist therefore seems to be that in July 1999 a possibly appeasing Pope will in some way stir up a leader with Mongol (or possibly Lombard) connections (some French observers prefer to take the word 'Angolmois' literally, and refer it to the former François I, who was duke of Angoulême), with the result that a previously raging war will accidentally flare up again."

Obviously that didn't happen, or indeed anything much else. That is unless with hindsight you apply numerology and claim that he was actually predicting something else. This page claims it is a prediction of 9/11. So anyway that is the only prophecy he made with a date attached. But enthusiasts try interpreting his vague words to mean other things, use numerology, anagrams and so on to extract meaning from them.

For instance, one of the most recent:

These most recent predictions are particularly absurd, published in the Sun (UK Red top tabloid - noted for the way they publish sensationalist stories often with no fact checking and often out and out hoaxes): 'Nostradumus doomsday comet' set to bombard Earth with meteors TONIGHT

Remember that Nostradamus was a sixteeenth century Frenchman.

Portrait of Michel de Nostredame (Nostradamus) by his son César de Nostredame

The predictions come from Axel Noudelman who calls himself a “Digital marketing executive” - he has managed to market these predictions anyway: Top 10 Nostradamus Predictions for 2017

Here are three that seem particularly absurd:

3. Commercial Space Travel

Commercial space travel is the real deal, but beyond orbital flights things will become exponentially more difficult. The moon, asteroids and mining missions are unlikely targets within the next two years.

The first person to hypothesize that meteorites came from space was Ernst Chladni in the late eighteenth century. Before then, the consensus of everyone, including scientists, was that the rocks known as meteorites came from volcanoes or were stones lifted up in strong winds. So he can't have predicted anything about asteroids as he didn't know that such things were possible

4. Wars over Global Warming

Nostradamus believed the possibilities of ‘Hot Wars’ could be escalated in 2017 due to global warming and diminishing resources. As far as the warfare itself goes, the greatest threat in the future will be terrorists and bio-attacks.

He wouldn’t have known anything about global warming or bio-attacks

6. Cloud Computing Will Disappear

Nostradamus also predicted that the term ‘cloud’ will disappear from the phrase ‘cloud computing’ by 2017 because most of the computers will simply be assumed to be done in the cloud.

He knew nothing about computers and calculators except for humans calculating by hand. The first mechanical calculator that we might recognize as such is Pascal's calculator from the seventeenth century, a century after Nostradamus.

Pascal's calculator

The idea of programming didn’t develop until the nineteenth century with Ada Lovelace

Ada Lovelace who worked out programs for Babbages mechanical calculator and so is often regarded as the world’s first programmer

So I think you can see that the idea that Nostradamus predicted anything about computing or cloud computing is rather absurd.

For more about this, see Debunked: Nostrodamus predicted the end of the world on [insert date here] by Robert Walker on Debunking Doomsday

About the Author

Robert Walker

Robert Walker

Writer of articles on Mars and Space issues - Software Developer of Tune Smithy, Bounce Metronome etc.
Studied at Wolfson College, Oxford
Lives in Isle of Mull
4.8m answer views110.3k this month
Top Writer2017, 2016, and 2015
Published WriterHuffPost, Slate, and 4 more