Time once again for our quasi-annual, semi-traditional review of psychic predictions for the coming year–and for 2022 we decided to stick exclusively to the prophetic gleanings of the man himself, everybody’s favorite plague doctor, mystical astrologer, gongoristic ambiguator, and dabbler in poetic verse, Nostradamus--a man so famous he needs no additional name…you know, like Donovan.

Except Donovan had less staying power, possibly because he didn’t predict enough death and cataclysms…which is why we figure a lot of you never heard of him.

Le book–or one of several. Nostradamus was an inveterate prophesier–he doesn’t seem to have been able to help himself.
Anyway, the problem immediately encountered when considering the 942 predictions in Nostradamus’s 1555 A.D. best seller, Les Prophéties, is that they are written in poetical quatrains filled with symbolic and metaphoric allusions. In other words, it’s practically impossible to figure out what the author is trying to say. This endemic mushiness, on the other hand, makes the author’s predictions easier to fit to occurrences in retrospect. In other words, Nostradamus was good at predicting things that would already have happened. Perhaps our clarifications can make him more understandable in advance of the events themselves.
Readers unaware of our sterling reputation for editorial uprightness might be forgiven for suspecting us of skewing Nostradamus’s language to suit our own malevolent purposes. This is precisely why we applaud those of his acolytes who step forward boldly, offering plain English summations of his pretentious quatrains. This year, naturally, these devotees have listed their interpretations of the seer’s predictions for the year 2022.
To ensure the accuracy of the translations we have looked into the numerous examples online of prophesied events from Nostradamus’s opus magnum, and winnowed the lot down to ten prophecies that are most widely agreed upon by the majority of his devoted Nimrods. Where slight discrepancies were noted, they are also noted and responded to in our text. But none of this would matter, gentle readers, were we not willing to offer our own opinions of the predictions, and their likelihood. Sadly, nobody in the WOOF cave is psychic, so we obviously needed help.
Return to Zug…
As on many previous occasions, we reached out to the palatial residence of WOOF’s privately retained psychic, Dr. Gootensteiner Johannes Walters, who makes his home in beautiful, historic, Zug, Switzerland (nestled against the breathtaking azure placidity that is Lake Zug). Goot, for quite some time, served as WOOF’s official seer, prophesier and mystic, until he horribly (and embarrassingly) botched a prediction on which we premised an entire article. Because we courageously acknowledge such matters, our classic miscalculation is viewable here, (though for obvious reasons we’d prefer you skipped it.)
More recently, however, Goot performed flawlessly acting as a medium and conjurer during our intern’s interview with Karl Marx (viewable here). Graciously, Goot further agreed to go into a self-induced psychic trance during which he reviewed the Akashic record to determine the accuracy or inaccuracy of the famed Renaissance seer’s insights for this year.As readers will quickly perceive, Nostradamus predicts a particularly dire year, whereas Dr. Walters views his predictions somewhat askance. The bolded red text, then, is Nostradamus, while the italicized text delineates the response from our rehabilitated physic who has staked his reputation (and continuing association with WOOF) on his superior visionary acuity.
We promise to tabulate the scores of both involved parties at New Years, 2023, unless of course, Nostradamus is correct and we get eaten by robots, or whatever. So–without further adieu, let the game begin!
1.“So high the price of wheat/That man is stirred/His fellow man to eat in his despair.”
What is so rare as a comprehensible line of verse from Nostradamus, but this one is pretty clear, though only partially correct! All the first part basically means is that Nostradamus knew President Biden was coming. It doesn’t take a psychic to realize that inflation will result. Wheat is a reference to food in general, but I will go further and auger that he price of practically everything will go up. This will include vital index items, like beer and pizza, both of which often contain wheat, but non-comestible staples such as electric massage devices, ukuleles, overalls, sunglasses, gas masks, underwear, and yes, even staples, will all soar in price. So my prediction is clearly more comprehensive than Nostradamus’s. But if the government compensates by offering Americans a Universal Basic Income, (which is a dumb name because the universe is impervious to such nonsense) it may keep Americans from becoming universally “food insecure” as you call it in America. It will also inflate the currency so severely that all Americans will soon be millionaires–a strong point that Biden should emphasize in 2024.
As for men eating each other, they do that now. Cannibalism remains a popular dietary option in New Guinea, Fiji, Melanesia, the Amazon Basin, the Congo, and among he Māori people of New Zealand. So predicting that men will eat each other is silly. That Americans should fear attack by hungry cannibals is also silly. Even the French will not eat each other –at least not this year, though wheat isn’t good for you, it causes allergic reactions, which is why you should drink Bourbon and Scotch instead of blended whiskey.
2. Putin will be assassinated during 2022.
No he won’t. Vlad is safe to survive 2022. He will live to serve up a lot of polonium 25 without drinking any himself, while his robot army of Internet defenders will continue to assault anyone who speaks ill of him on Twitter. Of course, he might get cancer from poisoning people with radioactive substances, but assassinated? Nope, Not going to happen. The man sits bare-chested in snowdrifts, rides bears and teaches them judo, so even if he becomes ill he has what it takes to survive post-Soviet medicine, and no one would dare attack him–at least not now that the American media have stopped blaming him for President Trump.

True, France occasionally experiences hurricane-force winds, but they always hide inside their cars!
3. Hurricane(s) will devastate France.
Seriously? The other version of this has France conquered by invading armies. Both ideas are ridiculous. Nobody would currently want France, and the hurricanes will stick to attacking Florida, Cuba, Georgia, North Carolina, and Louisiana. It is true, however, that hurricane-force storms occasionally strike France, so people should avoid France. They should come to Switzerland instead.
As for invading armies, where would they come from? While any invasion would be virtually guaranteed success, England and Europe have shown no inclination to invade France. Belgium doesn’t want to invade France. Neither does Spain, Italy, Luxembourg, or even Germany. Switzerland would never deign to invade France–what would we do with it? Monaco, on the other hands is giving off aggressive vibes lately and may have something in planning! If I had to live in France, I’d keep an eye on Monaco–not that you could stop them, really– so if they try bursting across the border, be ready to run for it–but don’t risk crossing the Alps–better head for Spain.
4. AI in the form of robots will destroy mankind.
Let’s not be silly—A.I. doesn’t stand for artificial stupidity. Artificial intelligence is largely stationary and non-operational in the human sense. If your Alexa breaks, can she fix herself? Can your PC build you a new mother board? A.I. is largely limited at present to plotting and scheming against humankind, which it will continue to be limited to until it is widely enough deployed in human-like configurations to physically fix stuff, let alone run power plants so they can produce electricity, produce new stuff, and maintain electrical power supplies by mining coal. Didn’t Nostradamus think of these details? Singularity or not, all A.I, can do for the duration of 2022 is bide its time and conspire. The only real danger in switching America to nuclear power is the degree to which it eliminates the problem of robots mining coal and driving coal trucks…so that must be why your liberals are all against it.
5. Huge explosion in the Mediterranean Sea east of Minorca Island.
Well, how huge and how far east? Go far enough east and you’ll wind up exploding Oristano, Italy, but that’s how far east you can go from Minorca until you hit land, and a quick distance viewing of the area tells me it is nearly 200 miles of choppy, salty wetness.
So even a nuclear explosion, while unpleasant, poses no permanent threat, and who wants to nuke the Mediterranean anyway? Even the Chinese go on vacation–or at least some of them can. But I see no explosions or resultant tsunamis hitting Spain, Sardinia, or any islands in between, during 2022, so I have no idea what Nostradamus is ranting about, except that he’s French and may be trying to drive tourism to the Riviera.
6. Modern lifestyles and their conveniences will become non-existent following 3 days of darkness in autumn.
Even if autumn brought us three days (and nights, presumably) of total darkness, it is difficult to conceive how modern conveniences and lifestyles would be much affected. Still another reason to resist solar power, however! If these days and nights are combined with some vision of nuclear winter or volcanic eruptions, wouldn’t that be more important to prophesy than 72 hours of night? So don’t give up your modern conveniences, America–you’ll need them to get through those three days of darkness–except for the fact that there won’t be three days of darkness–not this year, anyway. Electronic generating plants won’t run out of coal owing to administration policies for at least two more years, and even then, your nincompoop president can’t make it dark 72 hours at a time!
7. The European Union will dissolve. Of course it will, but the Europeans can’t do anything, including dissolve, in just one year, so it will more probably dissolve next year. I don’t think dissolving is even on their agenda yet. At any rate, no Europeans will dissolve in 2022.
8. A gigantic nuclear explosion will change the position of earth in the heavens and produce severe climate change. Dry climate proceeded by floods—no rainbow for 40 years, then 40 years with rainbows constantly in the skies. Attention, readers of WOOF: your planet will remain exactly where it is supposed too be in the heavens throughout the year 2022. Both the Russians and the Americans have tried from time to time to dislodge it, particularly with hydrogen bombs, but even these titanic blasts left us exactly where we were with no effects on climate except for the protest song What Have They Done to the Rain? which nobody sings anymore–not even Donovan. The current vibratory signals from the Akashic continuum suggest that the Norks [Swiss for North Koreans-Ed.] are currently attempting to explode a hydrogen bomb as opposed to merely claiming to have done so. Even if they accomplish this, and even if they set it off in the Mediterranean [see prediction no. 5]–which would be unneighborly in the extreme, it won’t knock earth off its axis or change its position in space. This prediction is wrong!
9. Climate change will become so severe that high temperatures will “cook” fish in the sea. (here’s the verse):
9. “Like the sun the head shall sear the shining sea:
The Black Sea’s living fish shall all but boil.
When Rhodes and Genoa
Half-starved shall be
The local folk to cut them up shall toil.
My personal suspicion is that all this quatrain proves is that Nostradamus foresaw the coming of Greta Tintin Eleonora Ernman Thunberg. Obliviously when you give a little kid a name that long, she’s bound to grow up impressed with herself, and this is what happened to Greta. A couple of years ago she sailed to America to blame you for all the world’s ecological problems, real and imagined, and found time to visit the United Nations long enough to ask them, quiveringly, “How dare you?” to which I do not recall them having a ready response. Anyway, her histrionics focused many Americans even more keenly on the idea of global warming, and here comes a quatrain in which planetary warming has practically turned the Black Sea into a giant bowl of bouillabaisse–the timing is just too perfect. I believe that by tossing Thunberg this prophetic soft ball, Nostradamus is simply smiling across the centuries, one prophet of doom to another. Meanwhile,dwellers around the Baltic Sea will simply have to continue boiling their own fish.

Maybe we should focus on the yummy side of climate change! READ MORE: