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Episode 164 - The World Didn't End on September 23, 2017

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Recap: The world did not end, again, on September 23, 2017. However, the story behind this latest doomsday prognostication may surprise you -- it did me as I investigated it.

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Episode Summary

Claim: The man behind the latest doomsday is David Meade. Surprisingly, it's difficult to fully understand exactly what his story is, so in this brief episode I'll explain the story as I've pieced it together.

January 2017

First off, I went to that bastion of sensible, level-headed commentary, Coast to Coast AM and listened to his interview from January 19, 2017. I didn't remember him being on, but as the interview unfolded, I did, and I remembered why I was disgusted by it but also did not do an episode on it. The disgust had to do with politics, so close to the inauguration of the current office-holder of US President, so I won't get into that.

But his Planet X claims were just rehashed material from other people. Honestly, there was nothing new. He brought in elements of Zecharia Sitchen (see episodes 23 and 95), pole shifts (see episode 21), that it's approaching from the south so isn't visible yet (see episode 43), furthered the claims of Marshall Masters (see episodes 109 and 146), and also some Nostradamus and Ed Dames "killshots" and Catholic Church conspiracy for good measure.

And so, I didn't address it at the time. Also, in that interview, he stated that people have a 50/50 chance of surviving, and that it's a close pass that'll do stuff that other purveyors of Planet X nonsense have generally claimed. He also just set a time period of September to October of 2017. Seriously, pretty run-of-the-mill, and I ignored his religious statements because they were immaterial to the Planet X claims.

September 23, 2017 Approach-eth

As the September 23, 2017, date approached, I had completely forgotten about his interview and I had no idea what people were talking about. But, I kept seeing more and more of it from Facebook and news sources and even young-Earth creationist websites.

The creationists were generally reacting the same as astronomers: This is nonsense. The main one I was reading, Danny Faulkner's writings for Answers in Genesis, did what most creationists were doing, that is saying that while this is nonsense, their deity did make the heavens to convey various signs and so we should always be watchful but also careful in interpreting those potential signs. Okay. sure.

But in the more mainstream sites, something that really surprised me was all the doom and gloom; what especially surprised me - in hindsight - were statements that David Mead claimed that Planet X was going to crash into Earth.

What Did He Claim??

But what did he really claim? I read around the internet for about an hour trying to reconcile these two very different things. It's not uncommon for pseudoscientists to change their story -- again, see Marshall Masters in episode 146. I thought that was what what happening.

But I read several articles that David wrote on the Planet X News website and I couldn't find anything that he wrote claiming Planet X was going to hit Earth. He said it would decimate the planet, that debris from it would hit causing destruction (following Marshall Masters' claims that it's a "mini constellation" of objects with a big debris cloud), and that this would happen some time in September or October.

I then read several news articles, and while some claimed he said September 23 it would hit, there were none that actually put that in quotes. The only quotes they did have were of David claiming that September 23, 2017 would have a giant celestial sign over Israel that would be the last warning and sign that the apocalypse had begun, and things would get bad in October.

And as of the time of this writing on September 24, 2017, that seems to still be what he's claiming. To quote from the big, bold, underlined text at the top of his latest Planet X News posting:

"My most recent astronomical cryptography of the imminent judgments approaching begins in the week of October 21, 2017. The End of Days, in my opinion (and remember we see “through a glass darkly”), will begin in the latter part of October of 2017. Not the end of the world, but the end of days as prophesied in the Bible. The world is not going to end but, as I’ve stated before to reporters, “The world as you know it will end.” It will change. Normalcy bias will cease."

As far as I can tell, this is pretty much what he's been saying all along, but let me know if you can find evidence I'm wrong.

Wrap-Up: Media Hype

So at this point, based on my listening to him for two hours, reading some of what he's written, and searching for REAL quotes as opposed to media supposition, I think this is a case where David is right in his latest article that he never said what people are claiming he claimed, and that he really did just say that September 23, 2017, was going to be a sign of what was to come.

I'm surprised. I honestly did not expect to come to that conclusion when I started to write this episode. So this is not a Harold Camping situation where Camping really did say the end of the world would happen, but then when it didn't he kicked the can down the road. Instead, it seems to be a case where another random Planet X person with a particular Biblical leaning made yet another Planet X claim that was blown way out of proportion by lots of different outlets, and now that the day has come and gone, THEIR statements that Meade is backing off of Sept. 23 as doomsday is actually wrong, he's being consistent about what he said all along.

This isn't the wrap-up I thought it would be, I even had a zinger prepared to end on, but in this case, I'll just leave it at that. And at the very least, I think that we can agree that regardless of whether David stated it or it was implicated upon him, September 23, 2017, fizzled and went the way of every other doomsday prediction to-date.

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