# Dire (And Seemingly Silly) Predictions Of The Past: Did Anyone Take Them Seriously? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 11, 2015, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dire-and-seemingly-silly-predictions-of-the-past-did-anyone-take-them-seriously/714764 "2015-03-11T17:03:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![HeyHomie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heyhomie/32/207_2.png) [@HeyHomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeyHomie)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2015, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dire-and-seemingly-silly-predictions-of-the-past-did-anyone-take-them-seriously/714764/1 "2015-03-11T17:03:48Z")
This [Cracked article](http://www.cracked.com/article_22224_8-plainly-stupid-fears-that-held-back-human-progress_p2.html) tells of hilarious predictions made about mundane things that we take for granted; for example, that train travel would disintegrate your face. My concern is that these types of articles don’t always tell the whole story. Historians writing about 2015, for example, might say “Politicians warned that the HPV vaccine would make your daughter retarded,” when in fact only a small handful of ridiculous politicians (viz, [Michelle Bachmann](http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/sep/16/michele-bachmann/bachmann-hpv-vaccine-cause-mental-retardation/) and her cronies) ever said such a thing, and only a small handful of ridiculous people believed it. So in those days, were ridiculous claims like face-melting trains taken seriously? ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2015, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dire-and-seemingly-silly-predictions-of-the-past-did-anyone-take-them-seriously/714764/2 "2015-03-11T17:39:48Z")
If you had never seen a railway engine and never travelled faster than a horse can gallop. And if your education had stopped at about year eight. Do you think that if someone you thought of as educated and knowledgeable said that your face would melt at high speeds, you might just believe them? Who was it that said this anyway - I know it was thought that it would suck the breath from your body, but I never heard the face melting thing. I am saying that many people would have taken these silly predictions seriously. We live in a much more skeptical world now, but many people still believe in heaven and hell as just one trivial example. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2015, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dire-and-seemingly-silly-predictions-of-the-past-did-anyone-take-them-seriously/714764/3 "2015-03-11T18:11:15Z")
They were all taken seriously by people who wanted to believe them, exactly as a million idiotic things are believed by some people today. In fact, today we have a hundred times as many idiotic beliefs because there are a hundred times as many things to be idiotic about. There have been many threads here about strange beliefs people have. Nor do people stop have idiotic beliefs just because one proved wrong. They just transfer them. That Cracked article mentions the horrible sexual effects that polyphonic music would have. Later the waltz was condemned the same way, because it allowed people to embrace while dancing. The Charleston showed women wriggling. Horrors. So did the Twist. More horrors. Some people will condemn every new thing that comes along because it is new. This isn’t a question about beliefs. It’s a question about people. And the answer is no, they haven’t changed and they never will change in this fundamental way. ---
**Author:** ![GreasyJack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/df705f/32.png) [@GreasyJack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreasyJack)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2015, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dire-and-seemingly-silly-predictions-of-the-past-did-anyone-take-them-seriously/714764/4 "2015-03-11T18:48:56Z")
I’ve never seen a particularly authoritative source for the whole “people predicted people would die on trains” thing. If you try to follow the chain-of-cites it’s just one casual mention after another never leading to a primary or authoritative secondary source. FWIW WikiQuotes thinks the most common one (the “passengers will die of asphixia” one) is apocryphal: [Dionysius Lardner - Wikiquote](http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dionysius_Lardner) ---
**Author:** ![OldGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/3bc359/32.png) [@OldGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldGuy)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2015, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dire-and-seemingly-silly-predictions-of-the-past-did-anyone-take-them-seriously/714764/5 "2015-03-11T20:03:08Z")
There was panic in the year 999-1000 about the end of the world coming. [The Year 1000 A.D. and the Millennial Panic - The NESS](http://www.theness.com/index.php/the-year-1000-a-d-and-the-millennial-panic/) ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2015, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dire-and-seemingly-silly-predictions-of-the-past-did-anyone-take-them-seriously/714764/6 "2015-03-11T20:16:58Z")
Or was there? From your link; > [@](#): > > In short even if the great masses who supposedly panicked had been aware of the year of the Christian era they would probably not have thought it significant. > > All of this research should have laid the legend of the “panic terror” to rest, as it indeed did among medievalists and other historians. However, like contemporary urban legends, it makes too good a story for mere facts to kill so we will undoubtedly hear it again and again. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2015, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dire-and-seemingly-silly-predictions-of-the-past-did-anyone-take-them-seriously/714764/7 "2015-03-11T20:20:28Z")
> [@OldGuy](#): > > There was panic in the year 999-1000 about the end of the world coming. [The Year 1000 A.D. and the Millennial Panic - The NESS](http://www.theness.com/index.php/the-year-1000-a-d-and-the-millennial-panic/) And then there was Y2K. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2015, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dire-and-seemingly-silly-predictions-of-the-past-did-anyone-take-them-seriously/714764/8 "2015-03-11T20:21:30Z")
Not quite on topic, but here is a list of predictions of the end of the world (amongst other dire events) > **[List of dates predicted for apocalyptic events](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events)** > > Predictions of apocalyptic events that would result in the extinction of humanity, a collapse of civilization, or the destruction of the planet have been made since at least the beginning of the Common Era. Most predictions are related to Abrahamic religions, often standing for or similar to the eschatological events described in their scriptures. Christian predictions typically refer to events like the rapture, the Great Tribulation, the Last Judgment, and the Second Coming of Christ. Many re... ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2015, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dire-and-seemingly-silly-predictions-of-the-past-did-anyone-take-them-seriously/714764/9 "2015-03-11T20:31:52Z")
As far as the dangers of train travel are concerned, the effects of travelling at 25mph (a common top speed at that time) were comparable to the effects of standing still in a 25mph wind; something that people had a lot of experience with. So long as the carriages were capable of withstanding a 25mph wind (or, more realistically, the effects of a natural wind added to the speed of the motion) then the people inside would be fine. In due course railway engineers became somewhat overconfident concerning the effects of wind pressure - this probably contributed to the collapse of the Tay Bridge in a storm in 1879. > **[Tay Bridge disaster | Windloading](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_Bridge_disaster#Windloading)** > > Bouch had designed the bridge, assisted in his calculations by Allan Stewart.\[note 20\] After the accident Stewart had assisted William Pole\[note 21\] in calculating what the bridge should have withstood.\[note 22\] On the authority of Stewart they had assumed that the bridge was designed against a wind loading of twenty pounds per square foot (one kilopascal) 'with the usual margin of safety'.\[note 23\] Bouch said that whilst 20 psf (0.96 kPa) had been discussed, he had been "guided by the report ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2015, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dire-and-seemingly-silly-predictions-of-the-past-did-anyone-take-them-seriously/714764/10 "2015-03-11T21:14:24Z")
Here in Texas. it was a conservative Republican governor, Rick Perry, who made HPV vaccination mandatory for girls. It was also conservative Republicans who led the opposition. MOST of the opposition had little to do with the medical pluses and minuses of the vaccine, and a LOT to do with belief that this was about cronyism, and Perry handing a big payday to pharmaceutical companies. ---
**Author:** ![usedtobe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ec9cab/32.png) [@usedtobe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/usedtobe)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2015, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dire-and-seemingly-silly-predictions-of-the-past-did-anyone-take-them-seriously/714764/11 "2015-03-12T02:41:05Z")
Old Dorothy Martin had 'em going for a while: From Wiki: > [@](#): > > Overview > > Festinger and his associates read a story in their local newspaper headlined “Prophecy from planet Clarion call to city: flee that flood.” > > The prophecy came from Dorothy Martin (1900–1992), a Chicago housewife who experimented with automatic writing. (In order to protect her privacy, the study gave her the alias of “Marian Keech” and relocated her group to Michigan.) She had previously been involved with L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics movement, and she incorporated ideas from what was to become Scientology.[1] > > The group of believers, headed by Keech, had taken strong actions to indicate their degree of commitment to the belief. They had left jobs, college, and spouses, and had given away money and possessions to prepare for their departure on a flying saucer which was to rescue the group of true believers. She claimed to have received a message from a fictional planet named Clarion. These messages revealed that the world would end in a great flood before dawn on December 21, 1954. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2015, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dire-and-seemingly-silly-predictions-of-the-past-did-anyone-take-them-seriously/714764/12 "2015-03-12T14:34:01Z")
Well, back in the Seventies. there were a LOT of predictions that the world would be out of fossil fuels by 2000, if not sooner. I’ll let you decide if that was a “silly” prediction (it was definitely a wrong prediction), but people took the idea VERY seriously at the time. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2015, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dire-and-seemingly-silly-predictions-of-the-past-did-anyone-take-them-seriously/714764/13 "2015-03-12T15:13:25Z")
ETA: ref Dorothy Martin not 1970s oil predictions. Proving once again, despite our & Cecil’s best efforts, that … Stupid is eternal. ---
**Author:** ![Ignotus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ecc23a/32.png) [@Ignotus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ignotus)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2015, 11:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dire-and-seemingly-silly-predictions-of-the-past-did-anyone-take-them-seriously/714764/14 "2015-03-14T11:14:54Z")
Comet Halley, 1910. Lots of educated people in the Western world went crazy and thought the Earth would come to an end. (I believe French astronomer and popular scientist Flammarion had a lot of responsibility for this). Of course, as usual, nothing much happened. ---
**Author:** ![jezzaOZ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a9a28c/32.png) [@jezzaOZ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jezzaOZ)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2015, 12:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dire-and-seemingly-silly-predictions-of-the-past-did-anyone-take-them-seriously/714764/15 "2015-03-14T12:02:23Z")
There was always The Great Disappointment when the Millerites believed the second Advent would occur and many members gave up all their possessions in expectation. Following a serious of embarrassed about faces the movement disintegrated to later give birth to the Seventh Day Adventists and, by their wacky dietary beliefs, breakfast cereal! > **[Great Disappointment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Disappointment)** > > Christianity • Protestantism > The Great Disappointment in the Millerite movement was the reaction that followed Baptist preacher William Miller's proclamation that Jesus Christ would return to the Earth by 1844, which he called the Second Advent. His study of the Daniel 8 prophecy during the Second Great Awakening led him to conclude that Daniel's "cleansing of the sanctuary" was cleansing the world from sin when Christ would come, and he and many others prepared. When Jesus did not appear by Oct... ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2015, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dire-and-seemingly-silly-predictions-of-the-past-did-anyone-take-them-seriously/714764/16 "2015-03-14T13:05:30Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > Well, back in the Seventies. there were a LOT of predictions that the world would be out of fossil fuels by 2000, if not sooner. > > I’ll let you decide if that was a “silly” prediction (it was definitely a wrong prediction), but people took the idea VERY seriously at the time. Peak Oil in the past decade. ---
**Author:** ![cmyk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmyk/32/3353_2.png) [@cmyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmyk)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2015, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dire-and-seemingly-silly-predictions-of-the-past-did-anyone-take-them-seriously/714764/17 "2015-03-14T13:53:13Z")
> [@jezzaOZ](#): > > There was always The Great Disappointment when the Millerites believed the second Advent would occur and many members gave up all their possessions in expectation. > > Following a serious of embarrassed about faces the movement disintegrated to later give birth to the Seventh Day Adventists and, by their wacky dietary beliefs, breakfast cereal! > > [Great Disappointment - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Disappointment) I can’t tell you how much your post reads like something from a Douglas Adams book.