BLIND fortune teller Baba Vanga is said to have predicted war in Ukraine – but what did she have to say about 2023?
Vanga – known as the ‘Nostradamus of the Balkans’ – is said to have had an extraordinary ability to predict the future.
She died 26 years ago at the age of 84, but every year believers look to her predictions as we approach the new year.
Many of the claims attributed to her are difficult to verify, as she never actually wrote anything down.
Born in 1911, Mysticus grew up on a farm in what is now Macedonia and claimed she was blinded after being sucked in by a tornado.
Vanga began ‘predicting’ the future as a local mystic – and soon after, her legend began to grow.
Hundreds lined up to visit her at her home, especially those desperate for news during World War II.
She was even placed on the Bulgarian government payroll in 1966 because of her “paranormal abilities”.
Vanga was even visited by KGB spies from the Soviet Union.
But her story took on a life of its own after her death in 1996, mainly thanks to the internet.
Her funeral attracted hundreds of mourners and her last home in Petrich – close to the border with Greece – is now a memorial museum.
But what prophecies did Vanga make?
Pilgrims simply listened to her seemingly wise words, while little or nothing was actually written down.
But that doesn’t stop the prophecies from circulating again and again; many of them are vague and open to interpretation.
It is believed that Baba did make some predictions, many of which are attributed to her, but in fact they simply came from the ether of the internet created by trolls.
Vanga’s followers stand behind the “prophecies”.
And they often claim without evidence that she correctly predicted the September 11 attacks, the rise of ISIS, and even Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
So with a very generous grain of salt in mind, here are some of the prophecies claimed to be attributed to her for 2023.
NUCLEAR PLANT DISASTER
The first prediction may be chillingly realistic, as it is widely claimed that a nuclear power plant disaster is looming in 2023.
Vanga is often credited with predicting the Chernobyl catastrophe.
But this prophecy could be more worrying because there is genuine fear of disaster in Ukraine.
There are fears that the war could lead to an accident at one of the country’s nuclear power plants.
Ukraine is home to Europe’s largest factory, Zaporizhia, which has been the focus of intense fighting between the two sides.
One wrong move at the facility could cause a disaster that could spread across Europe.
BIO WEAPONS
Vanga is also said to have prophesied that a “great country” will conduct bioweapons research on humans.
It is claimed that hundreds of thousands of people could die as a result of these twisted experiments.
The United Nations Biological Weapons Convention effectively bans such experiments.
And it also prohibits the stockpiling of viruses and dangerous bacteria.
However, there are fears that some countries, such as China, are running a shadowy bioweapons division.
THE EARTH’S ORBIT MUST CHANGE
One of Baba Vanga’s most widely attributed prophecies in 2023 is that the Earth’s orbit will somehow ‘change’.
It’s unclear what this means, but if it were to happen it could have devastating consequences.
Our planet remains in a fine balance in the cosmic dance, with even the smallest shift potentially changing the climate enormously.
Even a little closer to our sun would bathe the world in radiation and cause temperatures to rise dramatically.
Glaciers would melt, sea levels would rise and global chaos would ensue.
And while going further away could plunge the world into an ice age and increase the number of hours of darkness, causing chaos for nature.
SOLAR TSUNAMI
Another vague prediction often given to Vanga is a solar storm on a scale never seen before.
Solar storms are bursts of energy from the sun that send electrical charges, magnetic fields and radiation to Earth.
They can be as powerful as billions of nuclear bombs.
But space weather is often simply seen as a beautiful phenomenon in the sky, like the Northern Lights.
However, the most powerful solar storms and flares are predicted to damage the technology, potentially leading to massive power outages and communications disruptions.
Some particularly ominous warnings have described such events sending humanity back to the “Dark Ages.”
END OF BIRTH
Vanga’s latest claim was that by 2023, births could be banned and all humans would be grown in a laboratory.
Leaders will decide what kind of people are born and they will be able to customize their traits and appearance.
Everyone will end up as a character from the classic PC game The Sims.
And it fuels the fears some have about slowing birth rates.
The average birth rate between 1950 and 1955 was 36.9 per 1,000 inhabitants, while now it is only 18.5.
And some forecasts predict that it could fall to a level of 14.6 by 2050.
Vanga’s so-called predictions extend far into the future – making claims that Europe will remain largely uninhabited by 2025, that humanity will discover a new energy source and walk on Venus in 2028, and that sea levels will rise by 2033.
Further into the future, it is claimed that in 2288 time travel will emerge, in 3797 all humans will have left Earth, in 4599 humanity will achieve immortality, and in 5078 humanity will leave the known universe.