Science

Doomsday Conspiracy Theorist Sets New Date For Apocalypse

Rescheduling is always a bad sign.

by Peter Hess
Flickr / Luz Adriana Villa A.

Self-proclaimed Christian “researcher” David Meade predicted the apocalypse would begin on Saturday, September 23, but now he says it’s actually going to happen on October 15. Usually, doomsayers reschedule the date far enough out that people won’t remember when the previous incorrect prediction was. But Meade now says that he never actually meant to say that September 23 was the day the world would end. Rather, he meant it was simply the day when the signs of the apocalypse would occur. Go figure.

Meade’s hypothesis — that a dwarf star called Nibiru or Planet X will collide with Earth, or at least pass close enough to Earth to throw significant debris at us — runs counter to evidence gathered by a reputable space science organization you may have heard of: NASA. Here’s what they had to say on the matter in 2012, the day after the Earth was first supposed to end:

Nibiru and other stories about wayward planets are an Internet hoax. There is no factual basis for these claims. If Nibiru or Planet X were real and headed for an encounter with the Earth in 2012, astronomers would have been tracking it for at least the past decade, and it would be visible by now to the naked eye. Obviously, it does not exist. Eris is real, but it is a dwarf planet similar to Pluto that will remain in the outer solar system; the closest it can come to Earth is about 4 billion miles.

Many online conspiracy theorists claim to have taken photos of Nibiru, or Planet X.

Flickr / cardin.alberto

As Inverse previously reported, Meade and his cohorts claim that Nibiru orbits on a trajectory that intersects with Earth’s orbit every 3,600 years. They say that Nibiru will be a crucial component of the coming apocalypse, which was partially evidenced by a series of astrological phenomena involving Jupiter, Mercury, Mars, Venus, Virgo, and Leo that match up with a passage in the Book of Revelation from the Christian Bible. Meade said September 23 was significant because it came 33 days after the Great American Solar Eclipse, and Jesus Christ lived for 33 years.

After the September 23 prediction didn’t come true, Meade rescheduled. Now he says that the eclipse marked the beginning of a 40-day countdown that will end on October 15.

Biblical math aside, for anyone who’s ever had someone ghost on them, rescheduling is a classic bad sign.

We’re not eager for the apocalypse to occur, but when someone makes a prediction, they start to seem a little unreliable when they backpedal. Perhaps — almost certainly — it’s everyone’s fault for giving Meade and his cohort so much attention. But as long as he continues to make scientific claims that are totally unsupported by science, we’ll be here to call him out on them.

If you liked this article, check out this video about how the “Flat Earth” movement is making a comeback.

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