[music playing] What if I told you that I
knew when the world would end? Yeah, I'd think I was crazy,
too, but I have a source. Throughout time, man has
sought answers to his future. And it turns out that one
of the best prognosticators happens to be, of all
people, the Hopi Indians. These great Native
American prophets literally emerged from the Grand
Canyon hundreds of years ago. The Spanish discovered
them in 1540, but they're thought to have
called Arizona home for 700 years. They have nine sacred
prophecies, which foretell many of the advances of modern man-- including the arrival
of the railroad, cars, and even the internet-- hundreds of years before anyone
had heard of these things. The Hopis also have an
end-of-days prophecy that seems like it's starting to happen. The frightening thing
is the prediction is almost identical to the
apocalyptic predictions of the Mayans. It is the one thing almost
every religion agrees on-- that the world will end. So when one group with
such a good track record says they know how
the end times come, I want to know what
they're predicting. [engine revving] I'm Brad Meltzer. I've spent my life
collecting stories. The best include signs, symbols,
and codes, secret meanings that are hidden in plain sight. Some have become the
basis for my novels, but I've only scratched the
surface of what's out there. And now, history has
given me the resources to investigate the rest. This is "Decoded." [theme music] Buddy, Mac, and Scott
are on mules now, and they're headed to the
Hopi reservation in Arizona. And you know what a mule is? It is a cross between
a horse and a donkey. You see what I just did there? I decoded that for you. [music playing] BUDDY LEVY: The decoders are
saddled up and ready to decode. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: I wouldn't
want this to be my main method of transportation, though. BUDDY LEVY: No, but
these are strong animals. SCOTT ROLLE: I don't
know, I wouldn't mind it. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: Let's go.
Yes. BUDDY LEVY: Here she comes.
CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: Come on. Don't let them kick our ass. Come on. Good girl. SCOTT ROLLE: Easy. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: So this
is where the Hopi live. They're kind of the experts
on the end of the world. SCOTT ROLLE: They seem to have
such accurate information. They make a prediction, and
it turns out to be correct. BUDDY LEVY: There are
numerous religions who have all prophesized
cataclysmic events at a certain point. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY:
And the same-- I mean, their prophecies
are so similar that it's kind of hard to ignore. BUDDY LEVY: This
author, Gary David, has been studying Hopi culture
and prophecies for a long time. And we have a chance to talk
to him about what they believe and about what's
going to happen. [music playing] BRAD MELTZER: The name
Hopi, literally translated, means "peaceful people." And since the very beginning
of Hopi civilization, certain tribal elders, who were
considered to be in the know, they'd share their prophecies,
their visions of the future, and what awaited them and the
rest of the tribe members. These Hopi prophecies have been
handed down from generation to generation for
hundreds of years, always through word of mouth. And the most chilling
of these prophecies-- it deals with the end of
the world as we know it. GARY A. DAVID: The Hopi believe
that this world is going to kind of grind to an end. And we're seeing
that all the time-- that floods, famines,
things we are seeing today, the Hopi have predicted. The mid-20th century is when
they started to come to light, the world started to learn
about the Hopi prophecies. The Hopi have had prophecies
for thousands of years depicting the end of the Fourth World. The Hopi believe that they
have been destroyed three times before. The first time was through fire. Could be an asteroid
strike, or it could be some kind of volcanism. The Second World was
destroyed by ice. It was some sort of ice age. And the Third World was
destroyed by a great flood. Now, many cultures, of
course, have flood myths. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: Yeah.
BUDDY LEVY: Great. GARY A. DAVID: And these
prophecies are old. They're thousands of years old. And they've been passed down
through the oral tradition. GARY A. DAVID: Exactly. Do we know that they were
recorded ever previously and that this isn't all
apocryphal in some way? The Hopi did not
have a writing system, so it was passed down
word to mouth, generation to generation. BRAD MELTZER: The Hopi believe
we're about to go through what they call a great purification,
and their prophecies tell them nine signs. Many of those signs,
when translated, they seem to have
already come to pass. And included among them are the
coming of the white-skinned man who will take the
land for their own. They absolutely got that right. They also predicted that the
land will be crossed by snakes of iron, which is strikingly
similar to the railroad tracks that connected
America in the 1800s. Their best one, though, is
when the elders also predicted the coming of spinning wheels
filled with voices, which can either be covered
wagons or, of course, cars. The Hopis then foretold
the land will be crossed by a giant spider's web. Kind of sounds like
the World Wide Web. These guys are good, right? So when you look at
that track record, it makes you pay a bit more
attention to what they're saying about the end of days. The seventh sign
is very important. They said that the
sea will turn black, and all the living creatures
in the sea will die. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: Oh, wow. And we're heading that
way with all of the oil spills, aren't we? Well, it happened in the
summer of 2010, the Gulf oil spill. But the Hopi believe
that, at the very end, a dwelling place in the
heavens will crash to Earth. And a blue star will appear to
signal that the purification has begun. Oh, man. Is that, like, an
asteroid or a space station? GARY A. DAVID: It could
be a comet going by or an asteroid strike. SCOTT ROLLE: Gary, did the
Hopi tell us when exactly this is going to happen?
Or do we-- GARY A. DAVID: I've heard it
said that the Hopi are masters of space, and the Maya
are masters of time. The Maya have a specific date-- December 21, 2012. BUDDY LEVY: I've read
that the Maya and the Hopi may have, in fact,
communicated and traded. There was a lot of trade going
on between the Maya territory down in Mesoamerica and the
Hopi up here in Arizona. BUDDY LEVY: And this is 1,300
miles away that these people are traveling on foot. SCOTT ROLLE: Right. BUDDY LEVY: Amazing. There was a exchange
of ideas, which-- and I think the ideas about
prophecy were exchanged between the Maya and the Hopi. SCOTT ROLLE: Wow. BRAD MELTZER: The Hopis do
have a sacred place where their prophecies are recorded. Thousands of years ago, Hopi
elders carve their predictions in picture form into the
face of this enormous rock. It's called Prophecy Rock. The place is so sacred
that outsiders are not even allowed to travel to it. But the Hopis are willing to
share the wisdom that the rock holds, though only if they
themselves tell the story. Right now, Bertram Tsavadawa
is filling in Buddy, Mac, and Scott and showing them
actual pictures of the rock. BERTRAM TSAVADAWA: When
people have made reference to this particular
imagery as Prophecy Rock, in our Hopi culture, we
don't have any specific word in our language that
pertains to prophecy. It would pertain
to understanding or traditional knowledge. So the square or rectangle
represents of that emergence place, sipapu, within the
floor of the Grand Canyon, or kindly made reference to
as that the ancestors were to disperse in the
four directions to touch the four
corners of the land. BRAD MELTZER: The
interpretation of Prophecy Rock has been debated, but everyone
seems to agree on a few things. The large human
figure on the left is their God or Great Spirit. The four stick figures on top
represent the three worlds that have come and gone and the
fourth world which we're now in. The stick figure on the bottom
represents the fallen Hopi people who've strayed
from the correct path and, like the white man,
embraced the material world. The two circles on the
left represent the two what they called great
Earth-shakings that have passed. And some think these
are the two world wars, but others think they're
cataclysmic earthquakes. The circle on the
right is supposed to be the great
Earth-shaking yet to come. And some believe that
third Earth-shaking could be a mega 10.0 earthquake, the
likes of which the world has never seen. BERTRAM TSAVADAWA: And so
with that, the circle here, would be representation
of, you know, that balance or cycle
of life to death. BUDDY LEVY: Right. BERTRAM TSAVADAWA: The weather
patterns for the four seasons. The rotation of
the Earth, as well. Maybe, in some point in time,
there was a shift in the axis. So there is certain
natural catastrophes that are showing up pertaining
to volcanic eruptions, the liquid fire that
the ancestors mentioned, the tsunamis and all the
earthquakes and tremors. There was another foretelling
of a sign mentioning that water would either rise or
fill up the land area. They mentioned that, one
day, we will wake up, and we'll see water. It's a sign from
Mother Nature, you know, that there's
something out of balance. BRAD MELTZER: The idea
that massive earthquakes and devastating
floods will destroy the world is common in many
cultures and religions. It's mentioned in the ancient
prophesies of the Mayans, and even the Bible
predicts the coming of these apocalyptic events. Buddy, Mac, and Scott are
now headed to Los Angeles to find out more about what a
10.0 megaquake would be like. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: Wow. SCOTT ROLLE: God,
look at that view. The amazing thing, to
me, is that this is all going to be gone if all
this stuff we've heard about ends up happening
and coming true. God, you can
really see it, too, with the mountains over here and
us on the high side over here. Look at where the
water is, the ocean. You can see why this is the
tsunami evacuation area. BUDDY LEVY: One giant
drainage area, really. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: It is.
It is. BUDDY LEVY: Bertram's
talking about three shakings of the Earth. That could be world wars. It also could be earthquakes. And what more
prominent place than LA to come look at earthquakes? SCOTT ROLLE: I mean, this
is just the tip of it. If what Bertram was
talking about comes true, I mean, this is going
to all be under water right up to Arizona. Yeah, he said that we
will wake up and see water. Wow. BUDDY LEVY: God. The Hopis foretell
a great rising tide of Mother Nature seeking revenge
on those who have attacked her. The Hopi people have long
predicted the end of days. Passing them down from
generation to generation, these prophecies have
foretold a series of signs-- including tornadoes, tsunamis,
and, more than anything else, earthquakes-- that will
mark the coming apocalypse. The Hopis aren't alone in their
beliefs about mankind's future. The Mayans and
many other cultures also have dire predictions
about the end of days. So Buddy, Mac, and
Scott are, right now, in Los Angeles looking
into the similarities between these
various prophecies. BUDDY LEVY: OK, so we have
ancient earthquake prophecies here. As Bertram said, the Hopi
prophecies mention earthquakes, and some interpretations
of the Mayan calendar predict massive earthquakes will
annihilate humanity, as well. Oh, my. SCOTT ROLLE: Christianity
echoes a similar sentiment. In the Bible's Book
of Revelation 8.5-- "Then the angel filled the
incense burner with fire from the altar and threw
it down upon the Earth, and thunder crashed,
lightning flashed, and there was a
terrible earthquake." BUDDY LEVY: God, I hope
the 8.5 Revelation isn't the size on the Richter
scale of the thing. SCOTT ROLLE: We're in
trouble if that's the case. And according to Islamic
Qu'ran, there are various signs indicating the end of times
or Day of Resurrection. Earth will experience
such a big earthquake that it will cause
mountains to crush down. The Earth's inner
body will break out, and the Earth will be stretched. Crops, animals, and water
will be annihilated. SCOTT ROLLE: Do you see
the similarities here? BUDDY LEVY: Two things scare
me more than anything else in the world, and that's
earthquakes and lightning. I don't know, I've been
in many lightning storms. But the earthquake was one of
the scariest things I've ever been in, and we were 100
miles from the epicenter. Well, according to
Revelations, you get both. You get both earthquakes
and lightning, so you don't have to choose.
SCOTT ROLLE: Crash. That's the good news. I guess mine was of
the shaking variety, and the sound was just
[mimics earthquake shaking].. And then there were the
plates and the glasses were falling off the
shelves and cracking. And you know, I was
just terrified-- just terrified. Scientists have recently
confirmed a notable increase in seismic activity
all over the world. And this is scary
because one of the Hopi signs of the coming apocalypse
is a major earthquake unlike any seen
in human history. This does not sound good,
especially if you live on a fault line in California. And guess what? The Gold Rush state isn't alone. Take a look at this. It's a map of the United States. The colored areas are spots
where earthquakes are possible, according to the US
Geological Survey. That's the majority
of the country. It looks like an earthquake
can happen almost anywhere at any time. And Buddy, Mac, and Scott are
about to find out just how powerful a megaquake would be. [beeping] [music playing] This is what we
call the Big Shaker. It's the world's biggest
mobile earthquake simulator. We're going to put you in there
so that you guys can experience for yourselves what it might
be like if that happens. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: So
how big an earthquake will we experience in there? We'll give you a 7.8
today, because that's what the scientists
and the experts say that we can expect
on the San Andreas Fault. The strongest earthquake
ever measured in modern history struck Chile on May 22, 1960. Its magnitude was a
record-breaking 9.5. It created tsunami
waves 82 feet high, which battered
the Chilean coast, and 6,000 people were killed. So think what that
would feel like. BRIAN LOWE: To give you an
example, in Haiti, in January 2010, that was a 7.0. We're going to do
bigger in this. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: Oh, wow.
SCOTT ROLLE: Oh, man. And I was in a 6.9 in Idaho. Luckily, there's nobody
living out there. But I'm a little
concerned about a 7.8. Can we give it a try? We can. Come on in.
SCOTT ROLLE: You guys ready? BRIAN LOWE: I'll wait out here.
BUDDY LEVY: Yeah. SCOTT ROLLE: Any
last-minute advice? BRIAN LOWE: Recommend you brace
yourselves while you're there. I noticed that Brian's
not coming in here with us. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY:
Yeah, I did notice that. I did, actually. Crank it up, Brian. BRIAN LOWE: All
right, Tom, hit it. [books clattering] [trailer squeaking] SCOTT ROLLE: This
isn't even funny. Did you see that? BUDDY LEVY: Wait a second,
why am I grabbing her? Seriously. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: Why
are you grabbing my arm? Hold on.
There, right? This is-- Oh, my God. So not cool. Oh, my god. BUDDY LEVY: I need
to get out of here. BRAD MELTZER: OK, first of all,
there's absolutely no reason to put them in that
earthquake machine, right? OK, yeah, it makes them feel
like what an earthquake's really like. But the truth is, it's
just good television. And second, that was hysterical. Did you see what Buddy
grabbed on to for support? He grabbed on to McKinley. There's nothing like a 200-pound
man clutching a 100-pound woman for safety. Good stuff. Hope you're proud, Buddy. But I will say, it's
also a little scary. Remember, that wasn't as
strong as a megaquake would be. Think about it. That was a 7.8 quake,
but at 10.0 quake would be over 100
times more powerful. That would mean that
Buddy, Mac, and Scott would have been airborne in seconds. Imagine what something
that powerful could do to our infrastructure,
to our buildings. It would make the San
Francisco earthquake look like when they're shaking
the camera in Shatner's "Star Trek." Imagine glass shattering all
around you in addition to that. Well, you got through it. What did you think? SCOTT ROLLE: I feel
like the Earth-- it's like I've got to
hold on to something. There's simulation, and
then there's that, OK? I guess that's a simulation,
but it felt real. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: When they
say earthquakes are violent, that is literally what it
felt like-- somebody was doing something violent to me,
like it was, like, personal. BUDDY LEVY: I'm amazed at the
speed with which it comes on and the terror that you're
overtaken by the minute it's shaking. BRIAN LOWE: Well, you
would kind of expecting it, so you had kind of a
notion that it was coming. But normally speaking,
you don't have a clue. You get that initial jolt.
CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: Right. And then you get the
side-to-side swaying action. There's nothing you can
do except take cover. BUDDY LEVY: Well,
that's the thing. I mean, if you know it's going
to happen and it's that scary, imagine just being in your room. Right, watching TV. And all of a sudden, bam. What's coming across my mind
is what would be going on in LA right now if that had
just happened citywide. Well, lots of bad things. And of course, the other
thing we haven't talked about is you get fires afterwards. Because if the gas lines break,
like I mentioned earlier, bam. SCOTT ROLLE: Aftershocks. BRIAN LOWE: You get aftershocks,
and that could go on for weeks. The Hopis have predicted
massive Earth-shakings, and I hope they're wrong. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: Even with
building codes, you guys, we are not ready for that. And I can tell you, there's old
buildings that they try and get ready, and there's no way. BUDDY LEVY: You know, after the
Haitian earthquake in January of 2010, there was heaps of
internet chatter about how Nostradamus had predicted this. Predicted the
earthquake in Haiti? Well, had predicted
major, major earthquakes. So it's worth looking
into Nostradamus. And here we go. Any time you talk about
prophecy, predictions, destruction, somebody's always
bringing up Nostradamus. But stay with me here. When you start combining
Nostradamus, the Hopis, and the Mayans, you start
to see that despite being from all different
parts of the world, these guys had some amazingly
similar ideas about the end of days. Hey, I'm a scientist. I'm very logical. I'm an engineer. I don't-- I don't get into
the Nostradamus stuff and Book of Revelations. But after that, after
experiencing that and thinking about what could happen, I'll
look at anything that gives me any clue about what's coming. What we're decoding is the
ability to foretell the future. So, as we know, the best known
predictor of future events was probably Nostradamus. The famed seer made more
than 1,000 predictions, half of which have
already come true. I really want Buddy, Mac, and
Scott to see what he predicted that came to pass
and how it relates to the other
end-of-days prophecies. [music playing] VICTOR BAINES: Nostradamus
has a good track record of past prophecies becoming
reality and being fulfilled. Based on his
previous predictions, we see that there
is a great case that his future predictions
will be accurate. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: So just so
I can examine his track record, what has he predicted
that has come true? VICTOR BAINES: He's predicted
a lot of things that have come true, like the French
Revolution, the rise of three Antichrists-- Napoleon, Hitler, and a third
one who hadn't arrived yet. He predicted the
great fire in London. He went into great detail
about events of World War II. He even predicted the Holocaust. BUDDY LEVY: Let me ask you-- are these predictions
written verbatim? Or are these interpretive
leaps we're making? His quatrains-- what he
calls his predictions-- are four-line stanzas. And within those four
lines, he very cleverly states his predictions
in a symbolic manner. BUDDY LEVY: Yeah. What kinds of things did
Nostradamus predict regarding the end of the world? Well, one of the things
that Nostradamus wrote about was, "At the 48th
degree of latitude"-- which is kind of the breadbasket
region of the world, all the way around the world. He says that fish in the
sea, rivers, and lakes will become boiled. Now, that means that the
Earth is going to heat up. If global warming is real,
something like that's going to occur. So there's going to be
bad news in the future. And he might not
mean literally boiled, but he might mean that it's
too hot for them to exist. VICTOR BAINES: Well, it
might mean literally boil. It might be a
figurative expression, or maybe nuclear
war or something like that might play into it. BUDDY LEVY: It would take a
few more degrees before we're poaching salmon in
the ocean, you know. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: Well,
we'd be gone by then, so-- BUDDY LEVY: Right. SCOTT ROLLE: What about
the disasters, though, that he's been talking about?
I mean, do they seem to be more? Are we having more earthquakes? In 2004, in Indonesia, there's
a tsunami wave 100 feet high resulting from the huge
earthquake that was predicted in quatrain number 3-3, and
it killed 150,000 people. You know what the most
accurate prediction of all time is? It's in "Rocky III," when
they ask his prediction for the fight, and
Mr. T says, pain. He's number one. Nostradamus is number two. But with some spin, it does seem
that Nostradamus predicted some of the events that came to pass. But what I really
want to know is, what are the similarities to the
Hopi end-of-days predictions? VICTOR BAINES: A lot of
people have speculated that Nostradamus thinks the
world's going to end in 2012 and that he wrote that
in his predictions. But the fact is, he actually
did not say the world's going to end in 2012.
- That's excellent news. SCOTT ROLLE: Very good news. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: So
how long do we have? SCOTT ROLLE: I'm
planning my party now. OK, he said that the
world's going to end in 3797 due to burning stones from the
heavens bombarding the Earth. BUDDY LEVY: So burning
stones from the atmosphere could include an
asteroid or a comet? VICTOR BAINES: Oh, yeah,
asteroids and comets, for sure. BRAD MELTZER: Now
you see what I mean? Doesn't Nostradamus' prediction
of flaming balls of fire sound similar to the
Hopi's blue star prophecy? Remember, this is an ancient
Pueblo prediction coinciding with a Frenchman from
Renaissance Europe. The scary part is
NASA just discovered a very similar blue star. So Buddy, Mac, and
Scott are headed to meet with an astronomer to
find out exactly where the star is headed. [music playing] DR. MATT MALKAN: I think
you're referring to HEO 437. It's an amazing object-- maybe one in a million,
maybe one in a billion. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY:
Why is it blue? Is it because the speed? It's blue not
because of the speed, but just because it's a
relatively young, massive star. So it burns hot. Hot objects look bluish. So that's not so unusual. What's unusual is that it
should have died by now. It was thrown out of the Milky
Way 100 million years ago, and those stars
don't live that long. So how is it now,
60,000 light years out of the Milky Way, still alive? This is an anomaly that you
guys are scratching your heads over.
- The best hypothesis is now-- that's consistent
with the data-- is that a pair of stars
had a close encounter with a giant black hole in
the center of our Milky Way, which resulted in
them being thrown out at a very high velocity. And it's been traveling out from
the Milky Way for 100 million years. And in this process, it looks
like the two stars merged into one star. So it's living longer
than it would normally. So maybe these
blue stars do exist. What makes me uncomfortable
is when the science starts agreeing with these
Hopi prophecies. But guess what? It's not a matter of
if something like this hits the Earth. It's a matter of when. Remember Mr. T's
prediction in "Rocky III"-- pain. Man has always searched
for answers to the biggest questions of life-- why are
we here, what's our purpose, and how will it all end? The Hopi people of
Arizona are no exception. They've long predicted
the end of days. A part of this prediction is the
existence of a blue star, which will crash into the Earth
with cataclysmic results. The scary part is NASA just
discovered a very similar star. DR. MATT MALKAN: A pair of
stars had a close encounter with a giant black hole in
the center of our Milky Way, which resulted in
them being thrown out at a very high velocity. And it's been traveling out from
the Milky Way for 100 million years. And in this process, it looks
like the two stars merged into one star, so it's living
longer than it would normally. But that does not mean that
it poses any threat to Earth. The main reason is
that it's so far away, and it's also moving further
away at a very high speed. It's probably got
escape velocity and is not going to
come back to our galaxy. But it is possible
that it could come back? If it ever were
to come back, it would take hundreds
of millions of years. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: So
blue stars aren't what we need to worry about.
What do we need to worry about? The thing that really
worries me the most is a lot closer to home. We're in a very
messy solar system, and the outer halo has billions
or trillions of comets. We're not that far
from the asteroid belt. And there are millions of
asteroids, some of which cross the Earth's orbit. That's a here-and-now threat. So how big a comet should we
worry about or asteroid should we worry about?
The size of a Buick? The size of a house? The asteroids that are
a Buick size, most likely going to be destroyed passing
through the Earth's atmosphere. What most people don't realize
is that a microscopic speck of dust going at 10
or 20 miles a second has an enormous
amount of energy. Sure. DR. MATT MALKAN:
Can make a flash that you can see for miles.
- Sure. Something that's a pebble will
make a fireball at that speed. And then something that
is 100 meters across can take out a whole state. BUDDY LEVY: What would happen
if one of these asteroids hit the ocean? That's actually worse
than hitting the land, and it's more probable. There's so much ocean. The problem with that is as
soon as the energy is deposited, in a second, you vaporize
cubic miles of ocean. Next thing that
happens, a second later, is all of the other ocean
pours into that huge hole and starts sloshing
back and forth on a scale of an entire ocean. And what happens to the
people at the coast? They see a wall of water
thousands of feet high coming at them and then rolling
back and coming at them again and rolling back.
- Thousands of feet? SCOTT ROLLE: Thousands of feet? DR. MATT MALKAN: Yes,
thousands of feet high. SCOTT ROLLE: Oh, my gosh. And that's because it's a
large hole that was produced by the initial impact. It's a tsunami to dwarf any
kind of tsunami that has ever been seen in human history. For example, of it happened in
the Atlantic, all of Florida would be underwater. So remember, the
Hopis didn't just predict that a star
from the heavens would crash to the Earth. They also predicted
massive floods. Once again, science and the Hopi
prophecies lining up closely. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: There's
a Hopi prophecy that-- the Hopi people in
Arizona that say they're going to wake up and
see water, like they'll have beachfront property. SCOTT ROLLE: And they're way
up there, high elevation. BUDDY LEVY: I
actually got chills about that, when you just said
that, because I was thinking of what Bertram told us. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: They
know something we don't? I guess that they have an
appreciation that things are a little more dangerous and
transitory here than we take it for granted. The Hopi prophecy also
describes a blue star. Do comets ever look
like blue stars? DR. MATT MALKAN: Yeah, they do. SCOTT ROLLE: Really? DR. MATT MALKAN: The comet,
when it gets close to the sun, it's an icy rock. It's the first time,
probably, that it's seen any heat or any sunlight
in millions of years. And it's fairly
fragile when it's exposed to all that radiation. And so it starts evaporating. And then it's got this large,
million-mile cloud of gas, and then it glows
in the sunlight. It might look blue. SCOTT ROLLE: So when somebody
tells us that the world may end because it got hit
by a blue star, there is some scientific
evidence that that is possible? DR. MATT MALKAN: Yes. If you mean by a star a
light in the sky, yeah, I would think a
comet would qualify. What are the odds of a comet
or an asteroid hitting us? It's just a question of when. Oh.
DR. MATT MALKAN: Because-- CHRISTINE MCKINLEY:
Wait, did you say-- DR. MATT MALKAN: I'm sorry. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: --it's
just a question of when? DR. MATT MALKAN: They're
continually changing their orbits a little bit. And as I said, some of
the asteroids we know are crossing Earth's
orbit right now. So it's just a question
of the next time that it happens to be crossing
when the Earth happens to be there, bang, we get hit. Fortunately, that's
fairly rare, but it's-- Yes. DR. MATT MALKAN: But it's
happened over and over again in history.
You can see the evidence. There's hundreds of meteor
impact craters, which were formed in this way. And then, of course, the
older ones that were formed, we only have indirect evidence. Maybe there was a mass
extinction-- for example, of the dinosaurs. So if a blue star or a comet
hits us, what can we expect? Will it be the end of the world? DR. MATT MALKAN:
Depends on the size. The one that took out the
dinosaurs and thousands of other species
must have seemed just about the end of the world. It would be the end of humanity. BRAD MELTZER: The
Hopis predicted it, and now a scientist is saying
not only is it possible, but it's inevitable that a huge
asteroid will hit the Earth. Still, that might not be for
thousands or even millions of years in the future. But some say it might be sooner. And there are others who believe
that the true apocalypse might come from our own doing. [explosion booming] [music playing] There are many predictions
of how the world will end. The Mayans have what they called
a long-count calendar, which simply ends on
December 21, 2012. The Hopi people of
Arizona prophecy is a little bit different. They see nine signs that
will befall mankind, which will signal the arrival
of the end of days. Some of these signs may
have already appeared, including both world wars
and even the invention of the internet. There are many who believe the
recent series of oil spills are another of the nine signs. So Buddy, Mac, and
Scott are headed to meet with journalist
Maryann Tobin, who is one of those who believes
this oil spill prophecy. [music playing] Well, there are always
going to be people who believe that it's a coincidence. But these oil spills were
written about very vividly 2,000 years ago. In the Book of
Revelation, it says, "There was a giant,
mountain-like fire that fell into the sea, and a third
of the ships were destroyed, and a third of the living
creatures in the sea died, and the sea
became like blood." Anyone who flew over
the Gulf of Mexico during the height of the
crisis could, indeed, say that a third of the
waters looked like blood. It describes an oil spill as
if someone 2,000 years ago had seen a picture of
what the Gulf of Mexico looked like when the Deepwater
Horizon started pouring oil into the Gulf of Mexico-- rivers of blood, the third
of the ships being destroyed. The Louisiana fishing fleet
was crippled by the Deepwater Horizon spill. They haven't recovered
economically at all. Any one of these
oil spills could become a monumental catastrophe
that would change the world overnight. How? MARYANN TOBIN: Good
example is the BP well. That well was under
so much pressure, it was almost mathematically
impossible to stop it. That's why they had
to put cap after cap, and they had to drill. And they had problems--
threats of another blowout with the relief well. Had the relief well failed,
the Macondo well could have literally caved in
on the seafloor, causing a tsunami that would
have wiped out Texas, Florida, Louisiana--
SCOTT ROLLE: Is that true? MARYANN TOBIN: --Alabama.
Absolutely. SCOTT ROLLE: A tsunami of oil? MARYANN TOBIN: I have some
pictures up here of oil spills that have occurred
in the last 30 years. The Deepwater Horizon,
which is the most recent-- Gulf of Mexico, April 20, 2010-- 180 million gallons
of oil were spilled. Yeah, this is how you
kill fish, all right. MARYANN TOBIN: The Bellver
oil spill in South Africa, August 1983-- 79 million gallons
of oil spilled. We're talking about
a cumulative effect. This is scary. MARYANN TOBIN: The Arabian
Gulf oil spill in Kuwait, January 1991-- 520 million gallons
of oil spilled. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: Wow. BUDDY LEVY: We've heard
that the Hopi are predicting black waters. Nostradamus has predicted
fish coming in large waves and forming strange,
oily, horrible waters. We are playing
with nature in ways that humans are not really
supposed to play with nature. BRAD MELTZER: The idea that oil
spills are a sign the oceans are boiling over, honestly,
I think it's a stretch, but I'll play along. The Gulf oil spill was awful. It was devastating. It was in my home state,
and according to Maryann, it could have been a lot worse. The poisoning of the
oceans is certainly part of the Hopi prophecy. But I know some people have a
hard time taking this on faith. SCOTT ROLLE: Guys,
it's time to call Brad, let him know what we found.
Hey, Brad. BRAND MELTZER (ON PHONE): How
goes the end of the world? Well, the end of
the world is coming-- I mean, according to the
Hopis, the Christian Bible, the Qu'ran, and Nostradamus. And what's a little
disturbing is they're saying things
that sound similar. BRAND MELTZER (ON
PHONE): Yeah, this is one of those moments
where you don't want everyone agreeing. What I think we
should do, though-- you know, you spent a lot of
time looking at what people have said in the past. I want to look at what
they're saying now. Yes. BRAND MELTZER (ON
PHONE): And I've uncovered what they're calling
a current Nostradamus, who's living and working right
here in the United States. He's actually been
hired by the CIA to predict the outcome
of major global events. And according to them, he's
got a 90% accuracy rating. I want to meet this guy. BRAND MELTZER (ON PHONE):
I don't blame you. I will tell you this-- he will not talk to us. He's a recluse genius. But there's a reporter who's
written articles about him, and she can walk you
through all the details. SCOTT ROLLE: That
would be great. Definitely. BUDDY LEVY: And Brad,
I've also been doing some independent
research on these things called Web Bots,
which apparently are computer programs
that can predict the future with some accuracy. BRAND MELTZER (ON PHONE):
I love the Web Bot. In fact, I actually
know one guy works with the Web Bot inventor. So, Buddy, if you want, let me
put you in touch with this guy. His name is Mel Fabregas. BUDDY LEVY: Thanks, Brad. BRAND MELTZER (ON PHONE):
OK, speak to you soon. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: We've heard
about a modern-day Nostradamus, who uses math and science to
make predictions that are so accurate that the CIA uses him. Who is this guy? Well, his name is
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita. He is a professor of political
science at New York University. He uses a branch of
math called game theory. The idea is that people are
actually pretty predictable, that they do what they want, and
they try to get what they want. So how does he-- how
does he actually do this? How do you use math and science
to predict human behavior? What he does is that he
identifies all the players, and he figures out how
much influence they have, how much they care,
and what they want, and how stubborn they are. How stubborn they are? JULIE REHMEYER: How
stubborn they are. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: I love it. And you can assign a number
to how stubborn someone is? JULIE REHMEYER: He
assigns a number, so it's like a
scale from 0 to 100. So what Mesquita has done is
he's built this model that will predict the outcome
of, really, any kind of negotiation. With a computer, he can keep
track of all of the players and look at the way everybody's
influencing everybody else. What are some
of the predictions that he's made that
have actually come true? JULIE REHMEYER: He predicted
that Andropov would succeed Brezhnev when Andropov was
on nobody's radar screen. He predicted, two
years ahead of time, that Daniel Ortega
and the Sandinistas would be voted out of office. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: Now I can
see why the CIA is using him, because who's going
to rule a country is extremely important to us. JULIE REHMEYER: He predicted
that the Chinese government would crack down four months
before Tiananmen Square. In addition, 12 years before
China reclaimed Hong Kong, he predicted not just
that it would happen, but the exact manner
that it would happen. SCOTT ROLLE: And he does
this strictly through math? That's right,
strictly through math. BUDDY LEVY: We're hearing about
this thing called a Web Bot. And apparently, it can
actually predict the future. I wondered what you could
tell me about this thing. It's an internet
prophetic computer program. And it's the brainchild
of Clif High. In 1997, what he wanted to do
was to predict stock trends. There were a lot of
computer programs that would do just
that, but he didn't want to measure the movements. He wanted to predict
the movements. The Web Bot creators,
Clif High and George Ure, are very secretive about
how Web Bot actually works. But we do know that it's based
on a series of complex computer algorithms and internet-based
programs that monitor the web's news articles, blogs, and other
forms of internet chatter. Each word is assigned a
numeric value that corresponds to certain qualifiers like time,
impact, immediacy, intensity. They use a technique that's
called asymmetric language trend analysis that generates
a list of predictions. This list is then
analyzed for patterns. It's kind of like tapping
into the hive mind, the collective consciousness of
everyone who uses the internet. [digitized beeping] How does it do it? The Web Bots are spiders,
wanderers, or agents. It goes out there around the
world in multiple languages, and it looks for
conversations that people are having worldwide. So after it does that
100 to 200 million times, it brings words back. And it's reduced to the essence,
almost like the least common denominator in fractions. So the Web Bot
operator, Clif High, has to sit down and
look at those words, and then it gives a meaning. That's how you define
the meaning of the words. What kinds of things can
the Web Bot predict, or has it predicted? Well, September 11,
2001, was a prediction that came up in June of 2001. And all of a sudden, the Web
Bot took on a life of its own. And it started spitting
words like buildings, planes, catastrophe of
global proportions. And then less than
a few weeks later, we can refer to September
the 11th as a prediction that the Web Bot had made. In 2004, the words that
came up from the Web Bot were rising waters,
Pacific, earthquake, 300,000 people dead. And then the Sumatran tsunami-- Oh, my god. --killed 273,000 people, plus
thousands of others who were unaccounted for. I don't know. And that's the thing about
prophets and prophecies-- no one really knows. But what I do want
to know is this-- what does this
digital prophet have to say about the end of days? And does it match up with
the Hopis and the Mayans? [music playing] Ancient Hopi prophecies
tell of nine signs of the coming apocalypse
that will arrive to foretell the end of days. These signs are remarkably
similar to predictions made by the Mayans and Nostradamus. And now Buddy is talking
with Mel Fabregas, an expert on the Web Bot-- a computer program that some
say predicted the 9/11 disaster and the 2004 tsunami
in the South Pacific. What I want to know is
what the Web Bot has to say about the end of days. MEL FABREGAS: A lot of groups
are talking about 2012, the Hopi prophecies. The Mayans say that their
calendar ends December 21, 2012. Remote viewers cannot
see beyond that point. The Web Bot has a data gap. December 21 through May 2013,
it's a graph that goes up and it goes down,
almost as a precipice, and we can't see what's
happening during that time. What do you mean by data gap? Well, the Web Bot cannot
find any information out there. It's almost as if it's blank,
and it cannot find anything between those dates, whether
it could be a polar shift. It could be a solar flare
that could take us back pre-electronic times. We don't know. When we think about
these prophecies and how they might connect
to the end of the world, do you think it might
mean just a change in the way the world is now? Well, the
prophecies mainly say that it's going to be the
beginning of a new age. Some people talk
about catastrophe. The Web Bot specifically
say that it's going to be a catastrophe. It's going to be a cataclysm. Nostradamus talks about
the end of the world not happening until 3797,
which I'm pulling for. If we survive 2012,
are we in the clear? MEL FABREGAS: Well, according
to the Web Bot, life as we know it won't be the same. BRAD MELTZER: Maybe this
is the result of a comet or asteroid hitting the Earth
or massive earthquake tsunami. Or maybe it's something
else altogether, something that not even the
Hopi prophecies could foretell. Maybe the future will prove
that the Hopis had it right, or maybe it was the Mayans
or the Book of Revelations. But for our sake, let's
hope they all have it wrong. [music playing] BUDDY LEVY: Ah, man. SCOTT ROLLE: So, you guys
think the world's going to end? CHRISTINE MCKINLEY:
Eventually, yeah. Eventually. Even as a skeptic,
I look and I think, you know, how could
Nostradamus have known this? How could the Hopis
have known anything? We don't know what the
nature of prescient is. We don't know how people know
the future, but maybe they do. Maybe there's something-- we
used to think that we got sick because we'd angered the
gods, or there was a storm because, you know, a
certain god was mad at us. Maybe there is a way that
people can tell the future. I just don't know the
mechanics of it yet. Obviously, we can't
avoid certain things. We can't avoid
volcanic eruptions. We can't avoid meteor
showers or comets coming in. But we can avoid what the
Native Americans have long said we shouldn't do, which
is foul our own nest. Yeah. But are you both
scared, though? I mean, it looks
like something's going to happen at some point. And it might end up being a blue
star or a comet or an asteroid. As the astronomer told
us, it's gonna happen. It's not if.
It's when. But I'm not any
more scared of it than I am scared
of my own death. We're all going to die,
and you can't linger on it. Like if you lay in bed and you
contemplate your own death, you can do it for
about 30 seconds, I've found, before you wonder
what's for dinner the next day. You just have to get
back to the mundane. You can't live there forever. I think as pessimistic
as we might have been at the beginning of this journey
and almost depressed in hearing all of this gloom and doom
stuff, I think all three of us came away with almost a better
attitude than we went in with. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: Well,
it does feel like, you know, someone just told you, you
have a terminal disease. Because we do. As human beings, we
have a terminal disease. SCOTT ROLLE: The ultimate
terminal disease, you're right. We will be extinguished. The problem is, I'm never
going to look at a meteor shower the same way.
- Yeah, no. I know. I mean, it's a full
hardhats and, you know, protective goggles.
- It's not romantic. SCOTT ROLLE: You're heading
to the bomb shelter, Buddy? It's bottled water time. Yeah, exactly. I refuse to look at it
as an end of the world. You don't think
we drop off a cliff? No. I think it's a story that's
going to continue on, and there's going to
be a kind of renewal. I think someday, probably
not in our lifetime, one of these comets or asteroids
is going to actually end up hitting the Earth,
and that's what's going to be the end of mankind. I'm not sure there's anything
we're ultimately going to be able to do about it. I'm with you. I believe that we have a
certain momentum in our society that we need certain
things to survive. And if they get knocked
out-- you know, power grid, water supply-- we're toast. So we can agree that I'll be
the optimist of the group, OK? Yeah, you're the
optimist of the group. BRAD MELTZER: As we've seen,
a lot of these ancient Hopi prophecies are coming true. But some of them are kind
of open to interpretation. It's hard, right, thinking about
the actual end of the world? For me, the closest I ever
felt to the end of the world was when my mom died. But as anyone who's lost
someone close to them knows, the pain does recede,
and hope does return. Even at our lowest moments,
we can always find that hope. And in the end, it's
not our technology that's going to save us. It's our ability to persevere. And that amazing
perseverance, that faith, is why the human race
will always endure. [music playing]
