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“Senior Villager”, The Herald Features Editor Isdore Guvamombe, even the autochthon of village wisdom in Guruve slaughtered all their goats and sheep in 1984 due to doomsday rumours, and woke up the more poorer after waking up alive the next morning.
In the early 90s, in Manicaland and Masvingo provinces schoolchildren were advised to tie sackcloth on their right hands to save themselves from a plague that was coming, but never came.
And today is another test for humankind, there is “prophecy” that the world ends today.
This is based on the Maya calendar, which is made up of different cycles of day counts, with one cycle being made up of 144 000 days (394 years).
According to researchers, this calendar ends today.
So various theories have been conjured up to try and predict how the world ends today, including the planet Earth being hit by a rogue planet called Nibiru, which they claim is hurtling towards Earth.
Renowned seer Michel de Nostredame, popularly known as Nostradamus’ “prophecies” have also been put into the mix.
Although Nostradamus predicted major world events, including the rise of Napoleon, both world wars, the Apollo moon landing, and even the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Centre, he did not specifically single out 2012, but researchers claim that he made allusions to it.
Actually, these predictions are done for financial gain as those who peddle prophecies come up with “antidotes” that they sell at exorbitant prices. Some talk of building bunkers (they get the building contracts), manufacture specific poison gas masks, special tools kits, among other skulduggery.
And they milk the gullible, fear stricken followers, who buy into their false prophecies as they give up everything either to survive in this state, or so that they are in a better position in the next world.
Most of these doomsday predictions have always ended up false and now we look at the top 10 doomsday predictions.
No. 10 Isaac Newton’s Scribbled
Prediction
Sir Isaac Newton is regarded as the “father of science”. If physics is the mother of all sciences, his 1687 Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica introduced the world to the laws of motion and universal gravitation.
However, he spent most of his life studying the Bible to gain insight into the end of the world. He believed the Apocalypse would come in 2060 — exactly 1 260 years after the foundation of the Holy Roman Empire, according to a recently published letter.
No. 9 The Witch Hunter’s Predictions
The Puritan preacher Cotton Mather succeeded in ratcheting up anti-witch sentiment, but failed dismally to predict doomsday, hatching up four dates where nothing happened. The first was 1697, then 1736. But for want of financial gain, he moved back the date to 1716. When nothing happened, he fingered 1717. Only death in 1728 stopped him from making another “prediction”.
No 8: Halley’s Comet
Halley’s Comet is a ball of icy dust that is visible from Earth every 76 years. When this comet was supposed to pass in 1710, some overzealous astronomers at Chicago’s Yerkes Observatory inspired fear by insisting that the comet’s tail was made of poisonous cyanogen gas, and when Earth passed through it on May 18, the toxic fumes would cause widespread death.
As “doomsday” date approached, frightened citizens stuffed towels under their doors and covered their keyholes with paper to protect themselves from the gas cloud. Others refused to go to work while the entrepreneurs made a killing out of “comet pills”.
No. 7 Ron The Prophet’s Last Great Day
Author and Minister Ronald Weinland said 2010 would be doomsday. Weinland in his second book, 2008 — God’s Final Witness, says a date in 2010 is the “last great day”, when billions will die. To him the year 2008 marked the last of God’s warnings to mankind and the final countdown to the end of man’s self-rule began on May 27, 2012, and will end on Pentecost of 2013. But 2010 did not see such a holocaust
No. 6 Michael Travesser’s Halloween Armageddon
On the night of October 31, 2007 a UK film crew recorded footage for “The End of the World Cult”, a documentary on the Lord Our Righteousness Church, led by a self-proclaimed messiah named Wayne Bent, who calls himself Michael Travesser.
Fears of a planned mass suicide that Halloween night proved to be unfounded when, shortly after midnight, Travesser was seen leading his inexplicably giddy and plainly not-dead flock out of a building. Today, Travesser is serving in a New Mexico prison as a convicted child molester and unsuccessful doomsday predictor.
No. 5 Pope Innocent’s Number of the Beast
Pope Innocent III, from 1198 to 1216, redefined the role of the Pope as something closer to demigod than human. He saw himself as Melchizedek, the biblical priest-king, and hated Islam so much that he insisted that Muslims (and Jews) wear certain clothing for easier identification.
He equated the prophet Muhammad with the alleged beast of “The Book of Revelation”, going so far as to predict the world’s end in 1284, a figure he reached by adding 666 to 618, the year he calculated Islam had been founded.
No. 4 The Great Disappointment
Baptist preacher William Miller led his flock into 1844 on the wings of a poignant dream: that the Second Coming, starring Christ himself and featuring nothing less than the realisations of the Book of Revelation, was imminent.
Miller said the Second Coming was October 22, 1844. But this did not happen, and the Millerite movement became a thing of history. It has been termed the great disappointment.
No. 3 The Sun Becomes a Red Giant, 7,6 billion years from now
Most scholars agree that 7,6 billion years from now, the sun will enter its red giant phase when it has converted all of its hydrogen into helium.
This will cause the sun to expand to a size 20 percent greater than that of Earth’s orbit and shine 3 000 times brighter. Once this stage is complete, the sun will then collapse into a white dwarf. And bang, Earth will explode, so they say.
No. 2 Y2K
As doomsday prophecies go, Y2K shook many across nations, especially the “Y2K computer glitch”. According to these gloomy predictions, at the stroke of midnight on January 1, 2000, airplanes would drop from the sky, elevators would plummet from the tops of skyscrapers, and the world economy would come to a screeching halt.
When computer codes were first written, dates were abbreviated to two digits in order to save memory; for example, “1998” would simply be written as “98.”
This system worked just fine until 2000, when the date code “00” threatened to cause inaccurate calculations. A 1998 feature story from Microsoft says: “For example, say you buy a new refrigerator in 1999 with a credit card. The bank will run into problems in 2000 when it tries to calculate the interest owed and subtracts the transaction date (99) from the current date (00). The computer is going to come up with the number -99”.
The US government and American corporations spent US$108,8 billion on Y2K computer fixes. But here we are.
No. 1 The 2012 Mayan Prophecy
The Mayan calendar has become the most moving of these doomsday prophecies, sweeping along its path asteroid impacters, planet Nibiru-believers, Nostradamus groupies, and fans of magnetic field reversals, gamma ray bursts, planetary realignments, and all other factors that cover the gamut of fear.
The 2009 movie, “2012” is a 158-minute showcase of apocalyptic eye candy, with enough death and destruction to bring up the question. However, this Maya calendar theory has been disputed because today is the end of a cycle of the calendar, and another begins. Just like that 2012 calendar ends on January 31 and the 2013 calendar begins. So if somehow people fail to print the 2013 calendar, it does not necessarily mean there is no 2013. Also, scientists say it does not exist. Nibiru is probably the minor name of a god found in ancient Mesopotamian writing, but is not a planet.
So instead of doomsday, I look forward to seeing Bishop Leonard “Kanevazhinji” Zhakata, which ironically spells the untimely end of the Zora empire. At least Alick Macheso salvaged the name, “Zorai Butter”!
Online Reporter