How The Economist accurately predicts major world events on its cover (Part 1)

The Economist magazine is a well-known weekly newspaper. It has always been a publication that focuses on the world economy. However, not many people have noticed that this magazine is also one that makes predictions of the future. Unbelievable, isn't it? In fact, at the end of each year, the magazine appears to predict the coming year's events through its cover. Originally, many people did not consider this to be a big deal. After all, as an economic magazine, it is extremely normal to make predictions. It was not until 2019 that it suddenly changed from its previous method of publishing photos on its cover. Instead, the 2019 cover had Da Vinci's Retrivian Man as well as the full Horseman of the Apocalypse. For a while, there were many discussions about what exactly the magazine was trying to convey. The only thing left out of major discussions at the time was the armadillo because many saw it as the least important. However, just as 2019 was coming to an end, the coronavirus appeared. Coincidentally, some had suspected the possibility that the virus may have spread through armadillo-like animals called pangolins. Most importantly, after 2019, The Economist continued to publish what appeared to be predictions in 2020 and 2021. Once again, people were able to find several accurate events from those two editions. So, what else has the magazine predicted? Most importantly, what events had not happened yet? Before we continue, please remember to subscribe to our channel, Believe it or not, to receive notifications of new content. Today, let us talk about the magazine that made predictions even more alarming than the Simpsons or the Illuminati cards. About 1500 years ago, famous polymath Leonardo da Vinci drew the Vitruvian Man. The drawing represents da Vinci's concept of the ideal human body proportions. In 2019, coinciding with the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci's death, The Economist published the Vitruvian Man on its cover, creating an edition of the magazine that shocked the world. The magazine was launched in November 2018. Take note of this date because we will mention it later on again. While as we probably wouldn't use the word superb to describe the world at that time, it was still a nostalgic world compared to the one now. If we go back in time and look at the 2018 major world events, there was the US-China trade war and the Russia-United States summit. As such, at the end of the year, the use of images to represent Trump, Putin and the Chinese panda on the cover were very reasonable. But amongst these reasonable images, people found a few unreasonable notions. On the evening of December 22, 2018, around 9 o'clock, Indonesia's Anak Krakatoa erupted, triggering a 30 meters high tsunami that caused the death of 437 people. More than 14,000 people were injured and 40,000 people were left homeless. The government only realised the next day from satellite information that the tsunami happened when Anak Krakatoa collapsed onto its caldera, triggering a landslide into the ocean. Coincidentally, there was an image of a volcano on the 2019 edition's cover. The smoke next to the image indicates that the volcano is erupting and the image of the moon directly above the volcano shows that the eruption took place at night. Even the satellite identifying the cause of the tsunami was on there. Remember, the magazine was actually published in November 2018. The tsunami happened in December 2018. Long before the eruption of the volcano, it was noticed that the 2019 cover also consisted of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. The Book of Revelation, an apocalypse written by Jesus' disciple John, records his impressions after Jesus' death. It is believed what was described in the Book of Revelation will occur meaningfully at the end of time. According to the Book of Revelation, the end time would not come instantly. Instead, it will follow a process and the appearance of the four horsemen is the first step to the end of time. The white horse is said to symbolise conquest. The red horse represents war. The black horse is associated with famine and the pale horse brings death. As the four horsemen are seen as harbingers of the Last Judgment, many people wondered why the economists would have such bizarre symbolic images to welcome the arrival of the new year. It was also noticed that one of the horsemen had been changed to the Statue of Liberty and he appears to be wearing a mask. Although many thought it was strange at the time, most did not take the matter to heart. It was not until after the outbreak of the pandemic at the end of 2019 that people understood why the Statue of Liberty was wearing a mask. Furthermore, people also realised that the four horsemen were travelling from east to the west, also coinciding extremely well with the direction of the spread of the coronavirus. Also on the cover is the pangolin, which is a suspected carrier of the coronavirus. Worried about all the coincidences, many people began to pay attention to the economists. Not surprisingly, on November 5th, 2019, the 2020 edition once again published amazing prophecies. As usual, the economists published their forecasts for the following year 2020. This time, the cover was an eye chart. At the forefront, we can see the words the world in 2020. On the chart, we can also see that only two words coloured are 2020 and vision. It is worth noting that 2020 was distinguished by two colours. At the time, one netizen had interpreted this to read that green symbolises hope, while red symbolises dedication. Does this mean that 2020 will be a mixed year of good and bad? Additionally, the magazine was published in November 2019 and at the time, the pandemic outbreak had not started. But the magazine had already been hinting that the following year was destined to be an extraordinary one. To be able to forecast the arrival of disasters is whether you can see. The magazine used the eye chart to represent vision. By placing such a word in the eye chart, it is already suggesting that the future can be seen through the chart. Of course, by the end of 2020, the world realised that the chart captured many major events. Now, let us interpret the chart through the order of the words. After 2020, we see the word Trump with the word exit right underneath. By the end of the year, during the US presidential election, Trump had lost to his opponent, Joe Biden, and left the US presidency. After exit, we also see AI. Famous entrepreneur Elon Musk has repeatedly mentioned that he is worried about a backlash from artificial intelligence could affect the future of mankind. The solution is to combine the human brain with artificial intelligence to avoid AI being overly dominant. Most importantly, Musk successfully implanted a chip into the brain of a pig in August 2020. Perhaps the day when the human brain and the computer are combined will not be far off. At the time, we all knew that the Olympics was going to be held in Tokyo in 2020, so it makes sense to see Tokyo on the chart. However, we then see strange words like Mars and climate. There have always been rumours that if one day, Earth is no longer suitable for human habitation, then perhaps Mars might be the most ideal choice. Hence, there was speculation that the word Mars is a prediction that Earth will soon be uninhabitable. Some people have also speculated the reason for this would be climate change and recession. I don't know if you can recall more than half were caused by climate change, including the Australian bushfires, the California wildfires, and the Siberian fire. The scale of these fires were all unprecedented. Strangely enough, whilst the fires were happening on the other side of the globe, there were rare occurrences of severe rainstorms. Some Asia countries, including China, Japan, and India, had all been considerably impacted. Among them, China was the most severely affected. According to data, in 2020, 70% of China had heavy rainfall in its provinces and cities, affecting the lives of more than 63 million people and bringing significant economic losses. What was surprising is that this had long appeared on the cover of the magazine before these natural disasters happened. It had even used C to represent China's leader, Xi Jinping. Let us once again take a look at the words on the eye chart. Can you believe the coincidence that Mars and climate are followed by Xi and recession? Yes, that's not all. The recession is followed by the name of India's Prime Minister, Modi. According to the latest Indian financial report, because of the impact of the pandemic in 2020, India's economy had recorded its worst performance since independence. This seems to validate the word recession again. After Modi comes Expo. This makes sense because originally the World Expo was meant to be held in 2020, postponed due to the pandemic. After Expo, we see SDGS. This stands for the 17 Sustainable Development Goals that were set up in 2015 by the United Nations General Assembly. At the time, several world powers came together to agree on the 17 interlinked global goals, including no poverty, zero hunger, decent work and economic growth and life on land. If you read all the goals carefully, you will see that sustainability is something stressed upon a lot. However, with limited resources and unlimited population growth, how can we achieve sustainable development? Hence, some people think that the premise of sustainable development is to reduce population growth. Let's go back to the eye chart. Right after SDGS, we can see in significantly smaller text, the word vision in a different colour. Once again, it is to serve as a reminder that there is important information contained here. Sure enough, we see the word rat. We all know that 2020 is the year of the rat. At first, many did not think it was strange until after the outbreak of the pandemic that people had a second interpretation of the word rat. Some people also thought that rat could have represented a plague. In history, there have been many occurrences of plague pandemics. The first pandemic outbreak of a plague was between the 6th and 8th centuries. At the time, it had a death toll of 15 to 100 million people. The second plague pandemic in 1347 killed 30 to 60% of Europe's population at the time. There seems to be an indescribable coincidence when comparing it with today's situation of coronavirus ravaging the world. With the covers of The Economist in 2019 and 2020 predicting futures one after another, it has forced people to pause and think. Is the magazine really having the ability to make an incisive analysis of the future? Or is our future manipulated by an invisible hand? Regardless of the reason, it is worth looking into simply based on its accuracy. In our next episode, we will continue to reveal the analysis of the 2021 edition of The Economist. Perhaps the future can be changed? Please remember to subscribe to our channel believe it or not.