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The Future According to Gordon-Michael Scallion Do the startling predictions of this 'Latter-Day Nostradamus' make sense? Some actually do -- but many others don't.  By Michael Lindemann Start Date: 1/25/99 The name Gordon-Michael Scallion is synonymous with radical predictions of "earth changes." He is arguably the leading prophet of catastrophe in the western world today, and is regularly compared with Edgar Cayce and the venerable Nostradamus. Scallion's bi-monthly newsletter, Earth Changes Report, chronicles his "intuitive insights into Earth's past, present and future." Though much of Scallion's language and data sound scientific, he readily admits his predictions come from dreams and visions, and his message is essentially spiritual in nature. He speaks of a coming "Great Tribulation," out of which will come a new world, a new human person and a new society. Though many would argue that Scallion is a well-spoken nut, he has a rapt following and maintains wide media appeal. On January 19, 1999, he was the only guest on the popular ABC-TV daytime talkshow Roseanne. Introducing her guest, host Roseanne Barr said that Scallion would "scare the hell" out of her audience. On the set, Scallion was dapper, charming, witty, and not at all shy in making very specific and quite radical predictions about the immediate future. He wasn't always a prophet. In 1979, he says, he was living a self-indulgent materialistic life on a boat in Florida. He was an engineer by training, comfortable in his linear, left-brain, unspiritual thinking. He was in the midst of a consulting presentation to a client one day when, he says, his voice simply disappeared. He was unable to make any sound at all. The client, who had recently seen a relative suffer a stroke, was deeply distressed. Scallion was rushed to the hospital, where physicians said they could find nothing wrong but decided to put him under observation. That night, Scallion says, he had his first vision. It came without warning and was so bizarre he thought at first that it was induced by drugs in his IVs. The room filled with "starbursts," then with images of many events, "like 150 cable TV stations all at once." Most of the images were of great calamity. One headline stood out in his mind -- dated 1985, it said a huge earthquake would kill thousands in Mexico. As more images kept flooding in, a woman's voice said, "Watch and observe. These are the changes the world will go through." From that day forth, Scallion knew he was a different person. The visions kept coming, uninvited. But he didn't like it and didn't know how to deal with it. He told no one and tried to maintain an image of normalcy. Then, in 1985, a huge earthquake killed thousands in Mexico City, and Scallion decided he could not ignore his "gift" any longer. His prediction of the Mexico quake is an unsupported claim, because Scallion told no one until after the fact. But in the years that followed, he began publishing his predictions, and some of them came true with astonishing accuracy. He correctly predicted, in writing, the approximate timing and location of Florida's devastating Hurricane Andrew in 1992; the tremendous Mississippi River floods in the summer of 1993; the Northridge, California earthquake of 1994 and the Kobe, Japan earthquake of 1995. On the basis of these and other "hits," Scallion's reputation as a seer of extraordinary power was solidified. Though Scallion's predictions range across a very broad spectrum of events, he is perhaps best known for his "Future Map of the World," which shows huge sections of present-day land lying under water. It appears that sea levels must rise dozens or even hundreds of feet to redraw world coastlines so radically. Scallion says that will happen, and very soon. In the United States, he says, most of California will be under water, along with all of Utah and Nevada, most of Oregon and much of Washington state, Arizona and Colorado. South Florida will be gone as well, along with parts of the Carolinas. The whole continent will be divided in half by a hugely enlarged Mississippi River that floods up to join with the expanded Great Lakes to the north. Elsewhere in the world, Scallion says, nearly all of England, Holland and Belgium will be under water, along with much of France and northern Europe generally. Japan will be reduced to a "tiny island." Huge tracts of Amazonia will be inundated. Other coastal parts of the world will face similar calamity. In Scallion's view, this colossal devastation will be brought about by a combination of earthquakes of unprecedented intensity, as huge tectonic forces drive submerged land masses upward in many parts of the globe. Scallion's Future Map shows major new land masses in the Atlantic Ocean off the U.S. east coast, and in the South Pacific. New Zealand will greatly increase in size, he says. Large amounts of new land will rise to join the Pacific coast of Chile, and more land will emerge between Tierra del Fuego and Antarctica. All this new land will force sea levels to rise, causing the massive flooding of existing land masses, some of which will also subside as others thrust upward. Scallion displayed his latest version of the Future Map on Roseanne's TV show, explaining that he was quite certain these changes would take place by the year 2012 or sooner. What he did not say is that he has moved the timing of these changes repeatedly as predicted precursor events fail to occur. In an earlier version of his Future Map, published in August 1992, Scallion declared that "Early Tribulation" would occur by 1993, when California would begin to fracture; "Mid-Tribulation" would happen in 1994-95, when great floods would permanently fracture the central United States; and the entire sequence of predicted devastations would be accomplished by the year 2002, including the prominent re-emergence of Atlantis. Along with these geological changes, Scallion wrote (in 1992) that the U.S government would completely collapse by 1996 and be replaced by a loose confederation of "thirteen colonies." The rest of the world would be similarly devastated and reconfigured by 2002 at the latest. It is safe to say, in the view of GSReport, that none of these predictions has taken place or is likely to take place within the next few years. But Scallion, sounding rational and even somewhat apologetic for being the bearer of bad tidings, repeats all these predictions again and again, changing only the date of arrival. He did so on the ABC-TV Network on January 19. On Roseanne's show, Scallion also made some other predictions that will be easy to check. He said that Pope John Paul II will die before the end of 1999, and that the Papacy would then become a different kind of institution. He said that, although global weather-related calamities were bad in 1998, they would be much worse in 1999. If 1998 were a "5" on a scale of 1 to 10, Scallion predicts that 1999 will be an "8". Scallion sees Y2K as being very serious in the Third World, where it will adversely affect two out of three people. But he thinks the effects of Y2K will be relatively mild in the United States, with only sporadic and short-lived breakdowns in most places. On the economic front, Scallion sees a "major correction" in the U.S. stock market by late 1999, rivaling that of the 1929 crash. But he sees a fairly quick and strong economic recovery after that. More worrying, Scallion said that World War III would break out in Turkey and surrounding regions, with first signs occurring by late 1999 and the main war taking place over the next few years, engulfing especially Italy, Yugoslavia, and the Middle East. Nuclear and biological weapons will be used, he said. The United States will become involved, but fighting will not reach North America and the effects upon the U.S. will be minor. Much of Europe will be deeply affected, however. Farther out on the bizarre scale, Scallion says that major shifts in global magnetic fields and solar activity will precipitate a change in the DNA of humans. One result, he says, will be that AIDS simply disappears. Another result will be that people of all races take on a slightly bluish cast to their normal skin tone. These physical changes will also be accompanied by major changes in consciousness. The net result will be that, after the "Tribulation," humankind will be fundamentally improved and human society will enter a golden era of peace and prosperity. What are the odds that Scallion's predictions will come true? We have already noted that his timetable for the Tribulation has slipped by at least a dozen years. Let us now briefly consider whether any of his large catastrophic predictions have any basis in evidence. A major economic correction in 1999 is well within the range of possibility, given continuing instability in Asia and Russia, history-making turmoil in world oil markets and grave new economic crises in South America. World War III in the next ten years, in the view of Global Situation Report, is very unlikely. But if it were to occur, Scallion's scenario involving Turkey, Yugoslavia and the Middle East is somewhat plausible. Also plausible is containment of the conflict to the Eurasian land mass, as long as long-range missiles are not employed by any belligerent. It would be likely that Russia, China, France, England and the United States would attempt to play moderating roles rather than taking sides. The United Nations would likely intervene with a very large multi-national force in an effort to suppress the conflict. If nuclear arms are used, whose would they be? Possibly a few small weapons smuggled out of a former Soviet state into the hands of Islamic radicals; possibly weapons possessed by the Israelis. In any case, detonation of even one small nuclear weapon would arouse instantaneous global condemnation. It is likely that such use would be very limited. Use of biological agents is somewhat less predictable. Rogue laboratories in many countries could conceivably produce such agents. Once released, containment is hugely problematical, and effects can spread for months or years. There is no question that terrorists of the future will attempt to acquire biological agents; and if World War III were to occur, biological weapons might well be used. What about Scallion's earth changes, as depicted in his Future Map of the World? His scenario for rising sea levels, involving the tectonically driven uplift of major new land masses in various parts of the world, is wildly improbable. Contrary to rumors circulated on the internet in recent years, the U.S. Geological Survey says that yearly global earthquake activity has not varied greatly in this century. Allegations that the Pacific "Ring of Fire" is heating up and will soon produce earthquakes of magnitude 10, 12 or 15 -- as specifically predicted by Scallion -- have no apparent basis in geophysical fact. GSReport therefore predicts with great confidence that California is not going to fracture; and Atlantis and Lemuria will not emerge from the ocean depths. But Scallion is not alone in predicting massive flooding of coastal regions of the world. Both his mechanism and his timeline may be completely wrong, but his vision of redrawn coastlines has some chance of being correct within, perhaps, 100 years or less. Broadly speaking, there are three kinds of currently known events that could create global devastation on the scale predicted by Scallion. The first is full scale nuclear war. While such war would not likely change geological features of the earth very much, it would certainly devastate life of all kinds and very possibly exterminate the human species. Inasmuch as sufficient nuclear weapons remain deployed around the world to accomplish such devastation several times over, it cannot be entirely discounted as a future possibility. The second type of devastating event is a large comet or asteroid strike. In this case, depending on where the object hit, geological effects could be very large. A space object one mile wide striking the ocean would raise tidal waves miles high that would wash ashore for hundreds of miles on every continent. Cities within range of the wave would be pulverized. Hundreds of millions of people would perish immediately; several billion more might not survive the ensuing chaos. The flooding would subside fairly quickly, but the face of the land would be scraped clean of almost all life and might not recover for many centuries. If the object struck land, devastation of a somewhat different kind would ensue -- tremendous earthquakes felt around the globe, accompanied by massive tsunamis at least hundreds of feet high in some places; and firestorms spreading to many parts of the world, raising a pall of smoke and ash with effects similar to nuclear winter, lasting perhaps several years. Loss of life, across all species, would be incalculable. If remnants of humanity survived, society would be literally reduced to a stone age level in most places. Because such scenarios are deemed well within the range of possibility, NASA and other space agencies of the world are now stepping up efforts to track any space objects that might threaten earth. The third kind of devastating event is less dramatic but more likely than the other two. Global climate change could, and very well might, cause the gradual melting of the Antarctic icecap as well as the gradual expansion, by warming, of ocean water volume. In time, some experts think, sea levels could rise by several dozen to perhaps 200 feet. If this were to occur, coastlines around the globe would indeed be radically redrawn -- not precisely as depicted by Scallion, but close enough to be of grave concern. A wildcard in this scenario is the remote possibility that a large piece of the Antarctic ice sheet could break loose and slide into the sea. Such an object would be perhaps one mile thick and several hundred miles on a side. The force of its sudden descent into the open ocean would raise a tsunami thousands of feet high. While this wave would somewhat subside before hitting, say, the coastlines of northern Europe, many coastal areas of the world would be greatly devastated by such an event. Again, millions could be killed outright, whole cities wiped away, and countless millions more would be displaced and put at risk in the chaotic aftermath. This scenario most closely approximates the earth changes prediction of Gordon-Michael Scallion. In point of fact, a large amount of coastal inundation, whether sudden or gradual, is quite likely before the end of the coming century. Depending upon the somewhat unpredictable pace and degree of global climate change, coastal inundation could continue building for several hundred years to come. Finally, Scallion also sees a new kind of human being emerging from the Tribulation. Here, GSReport and this "latter-day Nostradamus" must part company. Again, Scallion is not alone in predicting a virtually magical transformation of humankind. But that is the problem -- what he foresees is a magical occurrence on a grand scale. Here at GSReport, we do not think history, geology or species evolution occurs in that fashion. Instead, we believe that human beings just like ourselves will face the challenges of whatever real tribulation may lie ahead, and will prevail to the limits of our collective wisdom and genetic endowment. If future events prove very extreme, and if humankind survives, the collective psyche of our species will be deeply marked, to be sure. New mythologies, new cultural traditions, perhaps new religions will arise as a consequence. But, barring some influence that no scientist now living can predict or fathom, we will be fundamentally the same beings, the same species, we are today. Let us hope that that proves sufficient. [Update: Roseanne Barr invited Scallion back for another show in late February, 1999, saying that he had elicited a larger post-broadcast response than any other guest she had ever hosted.]
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