Nostradamus' Chilling Predictions For 2025 Have Us Spooked

So what is it this year, Michel de Nostredame, aka, Nostradamus? More fire, blood, and steel? Plagues, zombies, plague zombies, zombie plagues, etc.? Looking to Nostadamus' last couple rounds of prophecies: Maybe King Charles III will abdicate the throne (like he didn't in 2024), or a new pope will be crowned (like he wasn't in 2024). Maybe there'll be a nuclear war, like what didn't happen in 2023, or disaster will hit Mars — like it didn't in 2023. There's always the standard fallback prophecies that'll never miss the mark: war, death, really bad weather, and societal ruination of the general type. If Nostradamus wanted to bat a thousand, he should have just refreshed these apocalyptic go-tos year after year. Then again, he kind of did.

Some of the greatest poets of all time, such as Walt Whitman and William Blake, are described as "visionaries" for the images they are able to convey and imprint on the reader's memory. But few poets are said to predict the future in the visions they share. Except for Nostradamus, whose predictions remain of great curiosity to modern people nearly five centuries after the poet and oracle's death in 1566.

It's once again time to choose your favorite Nostradamus apocalyptic bugbear and/or deathly portent. The usual suspects include fire, floods, blood, famine, some beasts and plagues, and of course: the Antichrist. Or is it antichrist with a small "a"? We'll get to that. But the truth is, history's most often-cited 16th-century French prognosticator didn't really say much about the entity or persona we've come to define as "the antichrist." Maybe all the pleasant-smelling, herb-infused water that Nostradamus gazed into to write his poetry — i.e., see his visions — put a limit even on his capacity for doomsaying.

Every year, loads of articles make the rounds declaring Nostradamus' latest visions of doom and gloom. 16th-century French doctor and mystic Michel de Nostredame has become the globe's most infamous funny-hat-wearing prognosticator. Diehards proclaim the truth of his every word, rational skeptics roll their eyes and go about their business, and some folks in between grab popcorn to revel in imagining the always-coming-but-never-come ends of days. After all, much like our tragedy-obsessed modern news cycle, Nostradamus wouldn't have gotten much attention if he prophesied about daises and rainbows.