For thousands of years,
mankind has been speculating about the end of the world. [ clamoring ] No matter the source, whether
it's ancient religious texts or modern scientific theory, there's one thing
the experts all agree on: it's not just a possibility,
it's a fact. The end is coming. As early as 2800 B.C., the Assyrian people
began predicting doomsday. The Vikings called it Ragnarok, and in the Bible's
Book of Revelation, it's Armageddon. But even if you strip away
the fire and brimstone, there's still no escape. Observers and experimenters, from Sir Isaac Newton
to Stephen Hawking, have proven that life
as we know it is doomed. But when will it happen? How will it happen? And is there anything we can do
to delay the inevitable? Tonight, we search
for answers in two ancient, once-thriving civilizations
that mysteriously vanished. And for the first time ever, we reveal the final
doomsday prophecy of the famed Nostradamus, which may tell us
the exact month and year that we could face
the end of the world. The search begins now. When asked about
the end of the world, Albert Einstein famously said, "Wait and see." He didn't know how, but he knew
it was bound to happen. Since then, scientists
have predicted that everything from artificial intelligence to nuclear war
would be our undoing. Hollywood has
dreamed up viruses, unstoppable alien invasions, and dozens of versions
of the zombie apocalypse. But if you're looking
for a doomsday prophecy that may actually come true, there is one man who
literally wrote the book on the subject:
Michel de Nostredame, also known as Nostradamus. In 1555, the French astrologer
published a collection of 942 four-line poems simply named
"The Prophecies". It's been in circulation
ever since, becoming the second
best-selling book of all time, after The Bible. So why did his writings
become so famous? Because many believe they have
the power to predict the future, and even the end of the world. Despite his long association
with doomsday, Nostradamus's poems
actually make no mention of the world coming to an end. He wrote about it only once,
in a secret prophecy that was meant
for an audience of one: his favorite son, Cesar. In this little-known letter, Nostradamus
doesn't write in verse, but instead uses plain language,
as any father would, to warn his son
of what he thought would be the end of the world. He called it
the "universal conflagration," and it's clear from his words
that he was truly afraid. Nostradamus writes:
"You must see now, my son, "that I find by my calculations, that the sword of death
is approaching us." He describes a multi-stage
catastrophe of epic proportions, including economic upheaval, and a broken treaty that leads
to a massive battle between forces he mysteriously
names "the East" and "the West." Nostradamus
closes with precisely how he thought the world would end. "It will come in the shape
of pestilence, war more horrible than has
been known in three lifetimes, and famine." The prophecy doesn't specify
when this might happen. But perhaps there is a way to
better understand his warning, because believe it or not,
for some societies, the end of the world
has happened before. Over 4,000 miles
southeast of Hawaii, and a five-hour flight
from Santiago, Chile, lies a remote paradise
called Rapa Nui, commonly referred to
as Easter Island. But despite its idyllic
climate and isolation, Rapa Nui was the site
of one of history's most mysterious armageddons. Astroarchaeologist
Edmundo Edwards has been living and working
on Easter Island for over 50 years, and is still trying
to piece together what happened 1,000 years ago. - When you come here and see
all these incredible monuments, and you see all these
villages around the island, you would imagine that
they lived an idyllic life. But as we start
to uncover the past, we learn that it was
not that way. - Their civilization began with
a stunning feat of navigation. A mission with just 50 people
on two outrigger canoes set out from
the Gambier Islands, 1,600 miles away, landing on Easter Island
around 1000 A.D. The Polynesians found themselves
in a private, lush utopia. In addition to ample
sources of food, Easter Island had
plenty of fresh water from a massive crater lake. The island's millions
of large palm trees could provide material
for houses and fishing boats. - Once they arrived
to this beautiful place, this fantastic beach,
they decided to settle here, and this is where
everything started. This is the first place
to be settled, and from here they spread
through the whole island. - By the time two generations
had passed, the Easter Islanders
were thriving, and they had grown to
a population of 10,000 strong. They were so advanced
that they accomplished one of history's most incredible
feats of construction. They built over 900
massive Moai statues, made to commemorate
their ancestors, transporting them to hundreds
of altars across the island. These statues
can weigh over 160 tons and stand as high as 50 feet. Archaeologists are still
unsure how the islanders were able to craft
these gigantic masterpieces, let alone move them upwards
of 10 miles over rugged terrain. - Here we are in the quarries
of Rano Raraku. This is the place
where they carved most of the statues
of the island, where the carvers used to live, and where people would come
and commission statues. - Chiefs from
all around the island hired the stonecarvers
of Rano Raraku. Thousands of artisans
worked here, sculpting larger
and larger Moai as their society
continued to thrive. 200 more years passed, and the Rapa Nui civilization boomed to a population
of 26,000. Their isolation ensured complete
safety from outside forces. But despite their large numbers
and seclusion, Easter Island society was
about to completely collapse. - So we have all these quarries,
we have all this development, all these people working, all these chiefs building
altars all around the island. And suddenly
everything just stops. The reasons why it stops,
we don't know exactly. It is a mystery. But something occurred
here on the island that made everybody stop. - If we can find clues
to uncover why the civilization ended
here on Easter Island, it could bring us one step
closer to understanding how our own world might
one day meet its end. - These statues were abandoned,
the quarries were abandoned. In some cases,
they had a vast, huge statue that was practically finished. That must've been
years and years of work. Why did this happen? - It happened
because their world began crumbling around them, starting with their
precious water supply. - There are years in which
we have terrible droughts. The lakes went dry. A water reservoir that had been
there for probably 2,000 years, now dry. - Without fresh water, the island's plants
began to wither. Through deforestation
and drought, the palm trees that once
numbered in the millions went completely extinct. To avoid starvation, the people began eating
Polynesian rats. Eventually, even
that food source ran out. Just as Nostradamus
had supposedly predicted, the clock was ticking on
the Easter Island civilization. But things would soon
get a whole lot worse. Facing the end of their world, the Rapa Nui were about to do
the unthinkable. - The end of the world
has been contemplated and feared by mankind since
the very beginning. Famed astrologer Nostradamus
predicts it will come in the form of famine,
drought, pestilence, and a great war
between East and West. But could it really
happen to us? Well, for the secluded
paradise of Easter Island, it already has. After 500 years of development, the island's 26,000 residents
had managed to carve over 900 massive Moai statues. But then around the year 1500, the islanders began
to run out of water and food. They tried to sustain themselves
on a diet of Polynesian rats. And when those ran out, they turned to an even
more unthinkable diet. - I excavated one
of the altars here in 1960, and there was a skeleton inside. But it had its head, its arms,
its legs were missing. I mean, there was a cannibal
feast that was there. You could see it. - The islanders eventually
resorted to setting up human meat markets, where bodies were divided up
for consumption. - Here we have this petroglyph, and in the petroglyph
you have all these little dots. That supposedly was
a tally of the people that were killed
and brought here. And then the warriors
would collect in the afternoon and take home and cook them
and eat them. - There are hundreds of dots
in this petroglyph, maybe even thousands, each representing a horrifying
act of cannibalism. And if starvation wasn't enough,
something even worse happened. On this secluded island, which had been completely safe
from outside attackers, a brutal war broke out. The tribes from the east side
of Rapa Nui went to war with the west over the limited resources
still available on the island. When Europeans arrived
in the 1700s, the island was deforested and less than
2,000 people remained. A once-successful civilization
had been completely snuffed out. The story of the Rapa Nui
has clear parallels to the predictions
of Nostradamus. He wrote to his son of forces
from the east bringing war, famine, drought,
disease, and pestilence. All of these same factors
contributed to the end of
the Rapa Nui civilization. Could Nostradamus actually
have foretold their fate? According to his believers,
it wouldn't be the first time. For instance,
in one poem, he writes: Incredibly, the great fire
of London took place in 1666, just as predicted. Another poem says, "A man named de Gaulle
is a three-time leader." "Italy and the waters
of Venice will tremble." "He will be renowned
above all monarchs." Somehow, despite hundreds
of years between them, Nostradamus predicted
the success of French Prime Minister
Charles de Gaulle, a three-time leader
who fought against Italy during World War II. And perhaps most eerily,
this poem. Nostradamus was slightly
wrong on the name, but the "Hister" of this poem perfectly matches the story
of Adolph Hitler. Is it possible that Nostradamus
had the psychic ability to see the future? Actually, he took a much more
scientific approach. Nostradamus combined three
methods to make his predictions. He studied ancient
religious prophecies, historic events, and the movements
of the stars and planets. In other words, he looked
to the past to see the future. And it worked because history
is known to repeat itself. Does that mean
the end of our world will come in a similar way? Are we doomed to the same fate
as the Rapa Nui? According to Nostradamus,
history proves that we are. Because the same prophecies
that destroyed the Rapa Nui also marked the end... of one of the greatest
civilizations the world has ever known. - When contemplating
the end of the world, religion and science
both agree on one thing: it's inevitable. Soon, we'll explore
the final doomsday prophecy of the famed Nostradamus, which could reveal precisely
when our world might end. But if you still don't believe
in the end of the world, you should know it's happened
at least twice before, to other societies. Once to the private utopia
of Easter Island, and once to a much more
sizable population. These are images
of the Mayan empire, one of the most advanced
civilizations on Earth, which spanned over
125,000 square miles across Central America. They had expert knowledge
of mathematics, engineering, and astronomy. They constructed a complex
network of large cities, each with populations
of up to 100,000 people. In many ways, their development
was just as impressive as ancient Greece
or the Roman Empire. And then suddenly,
around 900 A.D., their world ended. The Maya abandoned
their great cities and the empire collapsed. To this day, no one knows
exactly why it happened. Anthropologist Fito Alvarado from the National Autonomous
University of Honduras is convinced that the answers
to the Mayan Armageddon lie in the ancient city
of Copán. - So until
the fifth century A.D., Copán used to be
a farming village, very modest and simple
lifestyle. And it's upon the arrival
of the individual called K'inich Yax K'uk' Mo' that Copán starts to transform
into a massive kingdom. - King Yax K'uk' Mo'
arrived in Copán in 426 A.D. Thanks to his military,
political, and agricultural skills, Copán's population exploded. And as Copán flourished, so did the rest
of the Maya civilization. The Maya were the most
advanced people in the pre-Hispanic Americas. They grasped the mathematical
concept of zero, which experts consider
to be the first step toward advanced calculations. With those abilities, they created
the most accurate calendar that existed at the time, more accurate than
anywhere else on Earth. Once they could predict
the seasons, the Maya were able
to develop an incredibly
productive agriculture, capable of sustaining
several million inhabitants. The city of Copán enjoyed
12 generations of prosperity. The question is, how could
such a robust civilization so quickly and mysteriously
come to an end? It all started with the arrival
of Copán's 13th king, Ub'aah K'awiil, also known
as 18 Rabbit. And as we're about to see,
his kingdom's downfall not only echoes
Nostradamus's predictions, but it might also have
serious implications for what could
one day happen to us. One of the world's
leading experts on Copán's downfall
is Dr. Jorge Ramos. He has been leading
the excavations here for over 10 years. - We are walking through
the last major monument commissioned
by 18 Rabbit, the 13th ruler of Copán. - In the year 737, 18 Rabbit commissioned
a massive ball court to be built
in the center of Copán, the second-largest
in the empire, tantamount to
the Roman Colosseum. But just 113 days after
the ball court was completed, a devastating tragedy
struck Copán, an account of which
can be found nearby, hiding in plain sight. This may look
like just a staircase, but in fact, it's much more. - The most important thing
here is that the text is not much for the people,
it's for the gods. - Since Mayan written texts,
books, and scrolls have all been destroyed
over time, the 2,000 glyphs
on this staircase form one of the most
complete histories of the empire
that still exist today. Hidden within these
stone carvings is a crucial clue
to the Mayan downfall. - And while kings
may come and go, the brutal death of
18 Rabbit may have been the tipping point for an entire civilization
to collapse. Within months,
the powerful Maya would be starving,
suffering, and dying by precisely the same methods
Nostradamus predicted. For their empire,
the end of the world was coming, faster than they ever
could have imagined. - The ancient Mayan
city-state of Copán was once the centerpiece
of a massive and thriving civilization. - But following the reign
of their king, known as 18 Rabbit,
it all came crashing down. Only one inscription at Copán
mentions the king's death, but it doesn't describe
how it happened, or why. Fortunately, a nearby site
may have the answers. - For me studying Copán,
it was very revealing, because it helped me
to understand the elements of the collapse of the Maya
as a society. And all of these clues
are leading to Quirigua. - Just across the border
in present-day Guatemala lies the Mayan town of Quirigua, a small settlement
which had a population of only 2,000 people
at its height. Quirigua was a tributary
city of Copán. In other words,
all of its political decisions were governed by its much larger
neighbor to the southeast. - This is Cauac Sky,
king of Quirigua. He was enthroned by
the Copán king 18 Rabbit in the year 726 A.D. All of these monuments
that we are seeing are basically bragging about
this great achievement in the life of the king. - And those monuments reveal
the true tale of what happened to Copán's
king, 18 Rabbit. - This is the clearest
hieroglyphic inscription that refers to the death
of 18 Rabbit. This is "chuk." That literally means
"beheading." - Cauac Sky,
the king of Quirigua, kidnapped his former mentor, held him captive for three days, and then had him
brutally decapitated. From here,
readers of Nostradamus will hear a very familiar tale. The murder of 18 Rabbit
led to a large-scale war between the eastern
and western Maya kingdoms. That war, combined
with a massive drought, turned their once-thriving
agriculture to ruins. And just like what happened
in Easter Island, famine, pestilence,
and disease soon followed. - In Copán, we have been
able to recover a large sample of human remains in which bioarchaeologists
can trace signatures of disease. And of course you can
find signatures of malnutrition in the bones. So we can tell that these
people were lacking of food. They were lacking of
not only proteins but the main elements in the
diet that they used to have. - In the end,
no corner of the empire was spared from the devastation. - This phenomenon
was caused by overpopulation that brought different crises
in the environment, with lacking of resources. That brought disease and also
wars between the Maya centers. - Within just two generations, the sprawling, classic Maya
civilization was gone. The findings at Copán
and Quirigua tell a brutal tale of an ancient Armageddon, but could they also
have something to say about our own time? - The Maya had the most accurate
and advanced calendar. They were capable to refer
to events far back in the past, but also to make predictions
of the future. - One of the most famous future
predictions of the Maya is hidden at the top
of this monument. It could easily be missed
by the untrained eye. But in fact,
it sets up a crucial theory about the end of the world. - This hieroglyphic inscription
refers to the completion of a 400-year cycle
in the Mayan calendar. It's a completion
of the 13th katun. - Amongst thousands of Mayan
texts that have been discovered, these five small
hieroglyphics are unique. Nowhere else in the entire
empire does this passage appear. And yet, it could be the single
most important message the Maya left in the aftermath
of their destruction. We've now seen two thriving
civilizations that collapsed in the same way
Nostradamus predicted For both the Maya
and the Rapa Nui, the end of the world
came suddenly, due to war from the east,
drought, famine, and disease. At this point,
the question may not be if this will happen again,
but when. The Mayan calendar at Quirigua
may provide some clues. The Maya broke down
their long-count calendar into five measurements of time. They used dots to represent one,
and lines to represent five. A shell image represents zero. So according to the Maya,
their society started at a date of 13 baktuns,
zero katuns, zero tuns, zero uinals,
and zero kins. That date, at the exact
completion of 13 baktuns, restarted their calendar
and began a new cycle. The clock was now ticking
on a new era: the era of humans on Earth. And at the end
of 13 more baktuns, the cycle will start again. In other words,
the Maya didn't just pinpoint the beginning of the world. They may have also provided
the tools to calculate precisely when it will
come to an end. - Tonight,
armed with Nostradamus's final doomsday prophecy, the search is on
for the precise moment our world might come to an end. Fortunately,
a recently unearthed Mayan calendar may provide
some additional clues. The calendar at Quirigua
reveals that the Maya believed
time was cyclical, and that it would reset
every 13 baktuns, a period that in our calendar
is exactly 1,872,000 days long. When does the new era begin? Well, actually, it already has, on a date you may have heard of:
December 21, 2012. Doomsday predictors worldwide
thought 2012 might have marked
the end of days. But the ancient Maya
felt differently. They didn't imagine the end
of an era to mean Armageddon. They thought that there was
an era before this cycle, and there would be another
afterwards. - Maya always see
the completion of a time cycle with a very positive note. And it's the beginning
of a new era, a new start. That would have been
a big celebration. - And of course,
the world didn't end in 2012. But according to Nostradamus, the new era still
might be significant. We've seen Nostradamus's
predictions of how the world will end, in his secret letter
to his son. But that letter also provides
more crucial information: his roadmap of the events
leading up to doomsday. He specifically states
that a new era will begin just before
the end of the world. Following this, he writes... [ gunfire, explosions ] - Could the Mayan new era,
so recently begun, have also started a ticking
clock towards Armageddon? [ shouting ] If so, we should look
for Nostradamus's next sign: burning stones
falling from the sky. This is the Chelyabinsk event, a meteor that violently
exploded over Russia less than two months
after the Mayan cycle reset in December 2012. The timing of this fiery meteor
is uncanny. And according to scientists at Pasadena, California's
Planetary Society, another, much bigger, threat
could be on its way. In 1980, Carl Sagan,
Louis Friedman, and Bruce Murray founded
the Planetary Society to empower the public to advance
space science and exploration. Their efforts continue today under the leadership
of CEO Bill Nye. One of the group's
key initiatives is planetary defense, led by chief scientist
Dr. Bruce Betts. - So asteroid defense, sometimes
called planetary defense, is protecting the Earth from
impact from asteroids or comets. And if we don't do something, they will hit
the Earth again, 100 percent probability. Anyone who's watched
a meteor shower knows that many asteroids simply burn up in the atmosphere
with no effect. But they actually
get close enough to cause damage
with surprising frequency. About once every five years, an asteroid with
as much kinetic energy as an atomic bomb
reaches our planet. It's a trend that shows
no signs of stopping. - There are thought to be about
a million near-Earth asteroids capable of causing
significant damage if they impacted the Earth. And we've only found
about 20,000 of those. - Any near-Earth object
less than 100 meters long is incredibly difficult
for scientists to detect. But even objects of that size
can be devastating. - In 2013 there was
an impact of a roughly 18-to-20-meter diameter
asteroid that we did not see coming
over Chelyabinsk, Russia. - The explosion from this
relatively small meteor injured 1,500 people, and the shockwaves
from the impact damaged 7,200 buildings
in six cities. Impacts like these suggest
that our planetary defenses may need
significant improvement. - Here we've got
the asteroid belt. So this is all known asteroids, with yellow being
the asteroid belt, not dangerous to Earth, and blue, dangerous to Earth. So it's critical to find
more of the asteroids that are potential
threats to Earth. We can't know if we're in danger
if we haven't found them and figured out
what their orbits are. - The Planetary Society
is working alongside NASA and several universities to increase our knowledge
of dangerous asteroids and save the planet
from devastation. One of their most promising
projects is called OSIRIS-REx. As part of this project,
a probe has been landed on the near-Earth asteroid
Bennu. The team hopes to learn
more about Bennu's orbit and composition, to better
determine how to intercept and destroy any asteroid
that could become a threat. - By the end of the OSIRIS-REx
main mission, it will make
a major contribution both to asteroid science, to history of the solar system,
and to asteroid defense. - Currently, Bennu itself
isn't a threat. It has a very stable orbit, revolving around the sun
every 1.2 years. But that stability
may not last much longer. - Bennu will do a close fly-by
of Earth in 2135, and the Earth's gravity
will change the orbit of Bennu. - After this upcoming close
encounter with the Earth, scientists can only guess
where the asteroid will head. But if their projections
are correct, we might end up directly
in the line of fire for a potentially
world-ending event. - The famed Nostradamus predicts
that the end of the world will commence with a great rain
of fiery rocks from the sky. And as it turns out,
scientists might agree. The Planetary Society
is currently tracking 20,000 dangerous asteroids whose orbits could approach
our planet. One in particular,
the 500-meter-wide Bennu, may soon be on a collision
course with Earth. - Bennu is recognized as a
potentially hazardous asteroid, a category of asteroids
that are a subset of the near-Earth asteroid
population that are both big, so over 140 meters, and come particularly close
to Earth in their orbits. - For the next 100 years or so, Bennu's orbit
will remain stable. But in the year 2135, it will pass
quite close to Earth. Our gravity will change
its course, making its new path
unpredictable, and potentially deadly. - Bennu has one of the highest
probabilities of any asteroid that we know to impact Earth. It's about one in 2,700
that it would impact sometime late
in the 22nd century. - In other words,
once Bennu's course is altered, we'll be twice as likely to die
from the asteroid's impact than from a simple
traffic accident. If Bennu strikes, scientists have calculated
that it could happen between the years
2175 and 2196. - This is a comparison of the 20-meter
Chelyabinsk impactor with the more than
500-meter Bennu, which obviously would be
enormously more destructive. - An asteroid of Bennu's size
would release 80,000 times more energy than
the Hiroshima atomic bomb blast, resulting in
a major catastrophic event. - A 500-meter asteroid
like Bennu with an Earth impact would cause a level
of destruction that's really unprecedented
in human history, creating a true global disaster. - Before that happens, scientists are racing
to develop methods to protect the Earth
from asteroid Bennu and others like it
that are yet to be discovered. - If you have
a lot of lead time, you may be able to use what
they call the kinetic impactor. This is basically
you slam a spacecraft into the asteroid and push it,
change its orbit. Another option is
nuclear option, which obviously has some major
political issues about it. But you can use nuclear weapons
to either deflect or disrupt. - But while ideas
are taking shape, the technology
isn't ready yet. And with Bennu bearing down, we may have precious
little time remaining. - The more I've learned
about the issue, the more serious
I realize it is. It's got a 100 percent
probability of something really damaging
hitting the Earth. Sometimes it's hard to get
people to take it seriously because it
doesn't happen every day. It doesn't even happen
every year. But it will happen. - If asteroid Bennu ends up on
a crash course for our planet, the timing of it has
a very surprising correlation with the predictions of both
the Maya and Nostradamus. What if December 2012
marked the beginning of the new era as foretold
by Nostradamus? His calculations place
the end of the world 177 years, three months,
and 11 days afterwards. That would be April
of the year 2190, directly within
the 21-year window that asteroid Bennu
could impact the Earth. Is it possible that Nostradamus
identified the exact timeline in which our world will end? We don't know if Bennu
will collide with our planet. We also don't know
if the start of Nostradamus'
new era coincides with the Mayan new era
in 2012. What we do know is
that Nostradamus used an intensive study of the past
to predict the future, and time and time again, great civilizations
were undone by the same factors
he wrote about: war, disease, pestilence,
drought, and famine. The Rapa Nui thought they were
safe in their isolation, happily crafting
their monuments, oblivious to the many factors
that caused their demise, until it was too late. The Maya controlled
a vast territory, with technology so advanced
that they thought that they could see the future. And yet, like so many
before and since, their worlds
still came to an end. What does the future
have in store for us? Could 2190 be
our last year on Earth? As Albert Einstein said, all we can do is
"wait and see." The search... continues.
