Why you shouldn't believe the History Channel!

The US History Channel is currently re-airing a number of its highly alarming ‘end-of-the-world’ films, originally transmitted in 2009, under the general title The Nostradamus Effect. So far they have included:

Son of Nostradamus

‘In 1994 a secret manuscript hidden in the Vatican Library revealed a previously unknown apocalyptic prophesy credited to history's most notorious seer, Michel de Nostradamus’, states the film’s publicity. Unfortunately that wasn't his name, and the ‘secret’ manuscript allegedly discovered in 1994 -- which was not hidden and is manifestly not by him -- has been known to scholars for centuries, having existed since long before Nostradamus’s time. Moreover, it is in the Italian State Library in Rome, and not in the Vatican Library. The film seems basically to be a re-hash of the Channel’s lurid The Lost Book of Nostradamus, in the original, more respectable version of which I was invited to participate as consultant and which was then recast into a form that ignored virtually all my advice, while quoting verbatim and without acknowledgment several verse-translations from my Nostradamus: The Ilustrated Prophecies (O Books, 2003) and attributing them to somebody else entirely. It further speculates about whether the seer’s son Caesar shared his father’s ‘prophetic’ gifts – something that never seems to have occurred to Caesar himself. For information on Nostradamus, please see the Wikipedia article on him, or click on Nostradamus: the Facts in the RH column -->.

Da Vinci's Armageddon

Publicised as Leonardo’s Deluge, this is based on the spoof ‘prophecies’ that Leonardo delighted to write for his own amusement by way of describing perfectly ordinary phenomena as if they were apocalyptic forewarnings, and refers to his well-known sketches of The Deluge (i.e. Noah’s Flood) as if they were portrayals of the immediate future. Are the clues Da Vinci hid within his writings, his sketches and his masterpieces, all a secret code pointing to a great deluge that will wipe out all mankind? asks the blurb. Well, no, they're not. Evidently the Channel was successfully hoodwinked. For more details, click on Leonardo’s Deluge in the RH column -->.

[“Da Vinci's Armageddon,” The History Channel website, http://www.history.com/shows/nostradamus-effect/episodes/episode-guide (accessed Apr 24, 2012). ]

The Apocalypse Code

The less said about this film the better, save to say that it takes the perfectly innocent theological speculations and mystical analyses of Isaac Newton, who is known even today as 'the last of the alchemists' and who wrote much more voluminously about such subjects than about science -- and then makes the inevitable meal of them. The Channel's speculations seem to be based mainly on his text Observations on Daniel and The Apocalypse of St. John (1733), which, so far as I know, says nothing whatever about any apocalypse in 2012, though its mathematical calculations do come up with the date 2060. But then Bible enthusiasts without number have for centuries been trying to make sense of Daniel's mysterious figures -- which actually seem to refer to the years 167-165 BC -- in an attempt to establish the date of The End, and have usually come up with the number they first thought of...

[“The Apocalypse Code,” The History Channel website, http://www.history.com/shows/nostradamus-effect/episodes/episode-guide (accessed Apr 9, 2012).]

2012 Extinction

Alas, this is the most notorious of the Channel’s  scare-stories of the last twelve years or so. According to the film's pre-publicity, The Maya, an ancient South American culture [actually they were Central American], predicted that time would end in a violent apocalypse on December 21, 2012 [they didn’t]. They created an elaborate astronomical calendar called "The Long Count," which stops abruptly in 2012 [it doesn’t]. This date, which is also the winter equinox, coincides with an incredibly rare galactic alignment that happens once every 26,000 years [in fact it currently happens every year!]… Nostradamus himself suggests the world is headed toward a coming cataclysm, it goes on [in fact in his book The Prophecies he doesn’t mention the End of the World at all]. For details of the Maya, the proposed ‘galactic alignment’, Nostradamus etc., please click on the relevant links in the RH column -->.

[“2012 Extinction,” The History Channel website, http://www.history.com/shows/nostradamus-effect/episodes/episode-guide (accessed Apr 24, 2012).]

Secrets of the Seven Seals

The Book of Revelation, the most terrifying and controversial book of the Bible, was written by an exiled prophet almost two thousand years ago.... The Antichrist will rise. Pestilence, famine, war, and natural disasters will purge humanity before Jesus returns for the final battle between good and evil. But who is the Antichrist? Who will survive God's wrath? And when will this apocalypse happen? asks the blurb. Fortunately or unfortunately, the Book of Revelation was in fact only one of many contemporary 'apocalypses', both Christian and Jewish, and was written to offer the persecuted Christians of Anatolia of two thousand years ago encouraging 'visions' of the imminent end of the then Roman Empire, not necessarily to provide modern people with an account of future world events! It doesn't mention any Antichrist., either -- the idea of a future Antichrist figure is an entirely medieval concept (compare 'Nostradamus and the Antichrist(s)' in the RH column -->). Moreover, at Matthew 24:36 Jesus states specifically that nobody (including the History Channel, presumably!) knows when these events will happen. Which is just as well, because they didn't -- not as described, at least!

[“Secrets of the Seven Seals,” The History Channel website, http://www.history.com/shows/nostradamus-effect/episodes/episode-guide (accessed Apr 24, 2012).]

Other films in the series include:

Fatima's Lost Prophecy 

In 1917, three young shepherd children from the small town of Fatima, Portugal, claim to be instruments of divine prophecy... Three haunting visions of death and destruction are revealed, but the children are forbidden to give details... The final Fatima prophecy revealed an angel with a flaming sword setting the world on fire. Is this the entirety of the third secret, or is the Vatican hiding something far more sinister? So runs the film's publicity -- perfectly reasonable up to the last bit, but then the Channel resorts to its usual armoury of innuendo and alarmist, suggestive questions, apparently designed to stir up paranoia regarding the supposedly imminent End of the World. Similarly, the videoclip's introduction runs: For thousands of years, prophets around the world have predicted the end of Days. More than one suggests the Apocalypse is fast approaching… The final part of the prophecy may have foretold the ultimate cataclysm... Equally, however, it may not, even if it was correct in the first place (which itself is by no means a foregone conclusion)!

  

The Third Antichrist

This film is devoted to the undoubted, if lamentable fact that Nostradamus is commonly supposed by writers who are apparently ignorant of 16^th-century French to have predicted three Antichrists -- unlike the Bible, which, it claims, only predicts one (in fact, the letters of John state that many of them are already around, while the idea of a future Antichrist is an entirely mediaeval concept). Fortunately, though, he didn’t. Still less did he identify Napoleon and Hitler as two of them, as most of them are only too keen to suggest. For more details, please click on Nostradamus and the Antichrist(s) in the RH column --> and follow the relevant links.

Doomsday Hieroglyphs

This film purports to base many of its ‘2012’ predictions on the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. As the author of the best-known book on the prophetic aspect of the subject (The Great Pyramid Decoded of 1977), I can only say that if they were basing their film on it, they got many of their facts wrong, not least because it doesn’t mention 2012 at all -- even though, on my reading at least, it does predict a 70-year period of crisis for the world from 2004-7, which I actually described in my next book on the subject (The Great Pyramid: Your Personal Guide of 1987) as 'The Big Crunch'!. Moreover, the Great Pyramid contains no hieroglyphs, apart from one or two rough, painted pharaonoic dedications in the topmost chamber and a further set that were somewhat grandiloquently carved at its entrance by a German expedition in the 19th century. And what was the role of the ancient, secret society of Freemasons in creating these predictions and carrying Egyptian knowledge into the new world of America? asks the blurb. Well, the Freemasons weren't founded until the Middle Ages at the earliest! For further information, please click on the relevant title in the RH column -->
[“Doomsday Hieroglyphs,” The History Channel website, http://www.history.com/shows/nostradamus-effect/episodes/episode-guide (accessed Apr 9, 2012).]

Armageddon Battle Plan 

In 1947, ancient scrolls were discovered in desert caves near the Dead Sea, says the blurb. One of the texts, now called the War Scroll, spells out in chilling detail a future apocalyptic war that will end the world. Are modern events fulfilling the prophecy of The War Scroll?… Experts point to an amazing coincidence of events that occurred then and that are happening now. Could ancient horrors herald a warning of terror today that could lead to our annihilation? Well no, the Qumran War Scroll, created during the Roman occupation of Palestine, is about a 40-year military campaign that a future Jewish Messiah (anointed king) was supposed to conduct to bring the whole world under the control of Yahweh (the Jewish national god) in Jerusalem. It describes the various phases of his campaign, and even describes the design of his shield. There is no ‘amazing’ resemblance between this and current events, and no real expert on the subject suggests that there is. 

[“Armageddon Battle Plan,” The History Channel website, http://www.history.com/shows/nostradamus-effect/episodes/episode-guide (accessed Apr 9, 2012).]

Thankfully, then, you can happily ignore all the disturbing suggestions made in these films -- which, despite the History Channel's claims of impartiality, manifestly give far more weight to the doom-mongers than to the reputable scholars, not least by constantly wheeling out in their favour such suggestive, meaningless 'weasel-phrases' as 'some say', 'many believe', 'experts suggest', 'it is thought' and so on, together with words such as 'may', 'could' and 'perhaps', and ominous suggestive questions along the lines of 'Does this indicate that...?' and 'Could this be a warning that...?' (if you are foolish enough to watch the films, try counting these phrases -- you'll be amazed!). After all, the unspecified 'some' or 'many' are always bound by definition vastly to outnumber the few objectors who are actually allowed to speak -- or who are even mentioned at all -- and almost anything may or could happen, however unlikely it is!

For further details, please click on '2012: It's Not the End of the World' in the RH column. -->

HOW YOU CAN HELP
Please feel free to count the number of these 'weasel-phrases' in any given History Channel film or online video clip from the series and enter the result under 'Comments' below. If possible, state its length in whole minutes and divide this figure into your result to give its HAQ, or 'Hot Air Quotient' (ideal value = 0). This may be of help to potential future victims.

Example (to avoid formatting problems, copy, paste into box, then edit-in your own data?): 
Film or video: Videoclip 'Antichrist Prophecies'
Number of 'weasel-phrases': 6
Length in whole minutes: 3
Therefore HAQ = 6/3 = 2