For eons, seers worldwide have been weighing in on the 21st century. Environmental disaster, world war, the works — let's be honest: Most of them could say whatever they wanted, knowing they'd be long gone when the time came to see what would come true. (Then again, when asked a few years back what the new millennium would bring, the Dalai Lama said, "Nothing special.")
If the apocalypse that didn't happen this year hasn't shaken your faith in forecasts, then fasten your seatbelt. The predictions for 2001 are stacked up and ready to pop.
Enthralling Renaissance royals with his prophetic poems, Nostradamus has advised us to prepare right about now for a dazzling new spiritual leader. He or she had better get here fast, because the Chaldean astronomer Berosus predicted nearly 3,000 years ago that a planetary realignment in July 2001 will spark a global fire destined to kill every last thing on Earth.
The tens of thousands worldwide who belong to Southern California's Unarius Society can hardly wait for 2001. This is the year, they believe, when "space brothers" will arrive from 33 planets to enlighten humankind.
The Unarians have built a desert landing pad for the spaceships and they also say Atlantis will resurface to welcome the aliens, so keep an eye on the Bermuda Triangle.
Edgar Cayce, America's "sleeping prophet," warned before his death in 1945 that Earth's axis would shift, spurring meteorological mayhem so that, next year, "where there has been a frigid climate ... there will be a more tropical one."
Keeping his options open, Moral Majority leader Jerry Falwell solemnly predicted in 1999 that "Jesus could return within ten years." That was "could," not "will," nor even "probably will." By this logic, John Belushi or Shakespeare could also return and, if they do, the theaters will be packed.
TV psychic Nancy Bradley hopes the rich and famous will heed her auguries this year. She predicts that Tony Curtis will run into trouble with prescription drugs, that Lisa Marie Presley will seek professional help for anorexia, and that yet another tragedy awaits Caroline Kennedy.
In 2001, "it will be found that Michael Jackson's former wife was paid to be a bearer of children," Bradley declares online. "Their marriage was never consummated."
Consulting the Tarot vis-à-vis 2001, San Francisco card reader Elizabeth Darling is "surprised at how positive the results look."
Believing that we evolve in cycles of 24,000, 25,000 and 26,000 years respectively, cultures as disparate as Tibetan Buddhists, the Hopi and the Maya all agree that we are plunging toward the end of a cycle and thus are in a time of major transition. In which case, go right ahead and redecorate the living room.
Heads up, Asia. Nancy Bradley predicts: "China, Japan. ... All bad news."
She has tipoffs for all 50 states as well, and if she's right, there'll be an explosion in Wyoming. South Carolina, if it knows what's good for it, will "beware of tree fungus."
Don't say you haven't been warned.

Nostradamus Said What?
The 16th-century Frenchman wrote cryptic quatrains foretelling big events way into the future. Scholars have spent centuries interpreting and reinterpreting the seer's words, and many say he did, in fact, accurately predict some of the last few centuries' greatest calamities.
These include the French Revolution, which happened some 200 years after his death, and the rise of Hitler, whom Nostradamus called "Hyster" and whose "seductive tongue" and alliance with Japan he described. Some say he predicted the Challenger disaster, and many were on the edges of their seats awaiting July 1999, a time of which Nostradamus wrote: "From the sky will come a great King of terror."
The king of terror might be a bit behind schedule. As for predictions yet to unfold, Nostradamus warned 21st-century dwellers of crippling famine, religious fanaticism and war. Beware of puppet dictators, he cautioned us, and brace yourselves for an Antichrist who will devastate the Vatican. Contemporary readers interpret others of his quatrains to mean that a badly aimed nuclear bomb, launched from somewhere in the Middle East, will accidentally devastate the Mediterranean, at which point "the Destroyer" will wipe out Italy. Then comes bombing and bacteriological assaults on New York City, the modern interpreters say, followed by a nuclear winter that will kill nearly everyone.
But not everyone. At last the Antichrist will be vanquished, and a peaceful new golden age will last a thousand years.
Tennis, anyone?

Anneli Rufus (2001)