Prediction: When all guns are confiscated in 1989 and eight hundred thousand citizens are arrested, the time has come for the Organization to begin its plan to overthrow the United States government and eliminate all nonwhites from the Earth.
Predictor: William Luther Pierce, writing under the pseudonym Andrew McDonald in The Turner Diaries
Reality: Conservatives of today have a lot of the same paranoia that Pierce exhibited back in the 1980s when he wrote this steaming pile of crap, though they detest being called racist. If anything positive can be said about Pierce, at least he wasn't a whiny little hypocrite. He completely understood he was a racist.
In an earlier post about this book, the race war begins in the late 1990s. This date is from the original publication in the early 1980s. The later book adds eight years to the rest of the dates, so I assume in the later version the gun confiscation happens in 1997.
This is the first time I will be using the label "Thanks to Paul Brians". Professor Brians has compiled an extensive list of fiction that deals with nuclear war. I am using this as a source for this blog and have found a lot of references to predictions with dates I would not have found otherwise. There is enough source material now that Sundays will now become Nuclear War Day, predictions from books about nuclear wars that should have taken place by now and thankfully haven't. There will also be several exact date predictions I'll be using that will pop up throughout the year.
Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!
The final six predictions from The British Royal Society of Medicine about the advances to be expected before the year 2000.
Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!
the gum confiscation happens in 1997.
ReplyDeleteThey'll take my Juicy Fruit when they pry it from my rotted, decaying teeth!
I imagine that conservative, John Birch fueled paranoiac fantasies may be a rich mine for failed predictions. But my limited experience is that they are very good at couching their predictions in enough vague statements and conditionals that there's always a way to wiggle out.
Damn spellcheck. Spell the wrong word correctly and it doesn't say peep.
DeleteNeedless to say, this has been fixed.
Sundays will now become Nuclear War Day
ReplyDeleteI have a simulation game called Nuclear War that, unlike a lot of other tabletop games of the era, is relatively quick to play.
Everyone is a nuclear power, and the goal (of course) is to be the only one left. Of course, even when their population is wiped out, every power gets to launch all their weapons in an automated response. So often, the game ends with everyone wiped out.
Realistic. It was a bleakly hilarious hoot during the 80s, when Raygun held the button.
Sure, I played Nuclear War plenty back in the day. I still have a copy.
DeleteMy three favorite things about it.
1. The randomizer is a spinner! It has a sweet and childlike feeling to it, combined with megadeaths.
2. The line you have to say as your population is depleted. "Anybody have change for five million people?"
3. The population cards read "25,000,000 PEOPLE" or "5,000,000 PEOPLE". The word 'people' starts to look odd and loses meaning, especially capitalized. We would pronounce it "PAY OH PLAY", as if it was translated from some European language with sensible pronunciation rules.
I especially liked the little tiny sliver on the spinner that said "Chain Reaction! Entire world is obliterated and everyone loses". Made for an abrupt ending.
DeleteNowadays, the cards would say "25M DOODZ"
Delete