Nostradamus: did his prophecies come true for 2022?

For our time, the 16th-century French astrologer Nostradamus predicted a European war with many refugees, attacks on a city, and the fall of the European Union. People who studied and interpreted his writings have claimed that these predictions applied to 2022.

Nostradamus lived from 1503 to 1566 and wrote approximately 6,338 prophecies. He even claimed to know how and when the world would come to an end! Of course, his writings were rarely specific, which makes them open to a lot of different interpretations. Critics even say that people can read into his words whatever they want to read.

The following interpretations of his prophecies for 2022 were circulated at the beginning of the year - before anything was known about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Read on to see what Nostradamus appears to have predicted correctly for 2022 - according to his interpreters.

People interpreting his prophecies wrote in late December 2021 that Nostradamus had made statements about a possible siege of Paris in 2022. This would indicate a war in Europe.

Nostradamus also predicted that wars and armed conflicts in the world would be an amplifier of hunger, which would increase migration.

Some of his interpreters claimed that Nostradamus predicted the arrival of many more refugees by 2022. They say he calculated that seven times as many migrants would reach Europe's borders as in the previous year.

One could say that this happened with the millions of Ukrainian refugees after the start of the war on February 24, 2022.

One of the points in his prophecies would also be Nostradamus' prediction of the fall of the European Union. For 2022, that did not happen.

According to some prophecy interpreters, Nostradamus predicted the death of a dictator. They think he was referring to North Korea's Kim-Jong Un. This prophecy has obviously not come true so far.

Or perhaps we should not take 'demise' too literally and simply point to Vladimir Putin's losses in Ukraine. Will he remain president of Russia for much longer?

Another prediction was that a major earthquake would hit Japan in 2022. This did indeed happen, on March 16, 2022. Off the coast of Fukushima, Japan, an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.4 took place.

Nostradamus correctly predicted certain historical events in the past. Or, at least, it would seem that way by some interpretations of his words.

He allegedly foresaw the Great Fire of London, Adolf Hitler's rise to power, the horrors of World War II, the French Revolution, and even the creation of the atomic bomb.

Nostradamus is the most famous but not the only seer who has many followers. Vangelia Gushterov, better known as Baba Vanga or 'the Nostradamus of the Balkans,' was a Bulgarian healer who lived from 1911 to 1996. She shared visions of the future as far ahead as the year 5079.

Baba Vanga's fame was mainly confined to Eastern Europe, but over time, her predictions of important historical events have gone around the world. Among her best-known (alleged) predictions are the 11 September 2001 attacks on the Twin Towers in New York; the Chernobyl nuclear accident; the death of Princess Diana; the 2004 tsunami in Asia; and the UK's exit from the European Union.

For 2021, Baba Vanga predicted significant seismic and volcanic activity, as well as floods and storms. According to international media, the seer was 85% accurate in her predictions.

For the year 2022, the situation, according to Baba, was not very encouraging. Among the prophetess's forecasted events was a new pandemic, this time discovered by scientists in Siberia. While we could say there have been new outbreaks, for example monkey pox, Siberian scientists don't seem to have had much to do with them.

Her visions also included a serious water crisis, with drinking water shortages in several cities around the world.

The prophet also predicted that river pollution would increase and that a tsunami would devastate Asia and Australia.

She said people would spend more time glued to the screens of mobile devices and computers, confusing reality and the virtual world. Would she be referring to Meta by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerman, or simply by our addiction to social media?

In the days following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, texts from Baba Vanga circulated that had allegedly predicted this aggression. According to several international news media outlets, the seer allegedly said that "Russia would rule the world" and that "no one can stop Russia."

Among the list of more exotic premonitions, Baba Vanga even foresaw an alien invasion. According to her, an asteroid sent by aliens will attack planet Earth in 2027.

Of course, we are unable to ask Baba Vanga and Nostradamus whether their ambiguous texts were actually pointing toward these concrete events. The prophecies will always remain a point of interpretation and discussion.

Read also: Liu Bowen, the 'Chinese Nostradamus,' predicted the beginning and end of Covid-19