Psychic Baba Vanga's Scary Predictions For 2023

Going into 2023, many are wondering what is to come for our future. After all, the previous years proved themselves trying from the COVID-19 pandemic, to political dissidence, to the worldwide effects from the war between Russia and Ukraine. While some watch trends and use scientifically-gathered data in order to create predictable patterns as to what may come in the new year, others turn to revered soothsayers to help navigate the potentially treacherous waters ahead. 

One of the best-known of these wise oracles was Nostradamus, whose predictions for the coming year included predictions from inflation to life on Mars. Nostradamus has been turned to throughout the centuries for some sort of feeling of grounding in the unpredictable terrain of the future. However, the riddles penned by the 16th-century mystic may not be enough for those wanting a little more modernity to their predictions. Thus enters Baba Vanga. 

Vangelia Pandeva Dimitrova was born in 1911 in Strumica, North Macedonia (per the New York Post). Local legend states that Dimitrova's childhood was pretty typical until she was 12 years old. As the lore goes, a terrible storm (described as a tornado) threw the girl into the air and she was found several days later, close to death with her eyes sealed shut. While she was waiting to be found, Dimitrova is said to have experienced her first vision of the future. 

According to Sky History, she started attending school in 1925 where Dimitrova, later known as Baba Vanga, learned to read Braille. Though she was prolific in her predictions, she was unable to write them down. As a result, Vanga relied on those around her to accurately write the visions she relayed to them. Vanga gathered quite the following from all walks of life, including Dimitar Gushterov, whom she would marry in 1942. The couple remained together until Gushterov's death in 1962 (per Sky History).

Throughout her life, Vanga was known for her uncanny predictions about the future. She foretold events like the assassination of Indira Gandhi and 9/11. Vanga died in 1996 after being nicknamed the "Nostradamus of the Balkans" (per Sky History). But what did the late soothsayer have to say for 2023?

One of the most natural parts of the human experience is having children. Hopeful parents wonder what their child will look like, what will their talents be, what they will grow up to be, and how they would have a life well-lived. But for many, this is merely a fun guessing game played before the child is brought into their parents' world. 

If Baba Vanga's visions are to be believed, this level of excited uncertainty over an impending child may come to an end. She predicted that in 2023, parents would be able to do a little more customization to their offspring, like one would when building a new home or buying a car. She stated that governments across the world would ban natural birth in favor of laboratory-grown babies where parents could choose everything from the child's appearance to their personality traits (per Wales Online). The Daily Record expounds upon this, stating that if Vanga's prediction is correct, this would bring an end to surrogacy.

Those of us who spent the 1990s happily watching Agents Mulder and Scully chasing down the monster of the week and space aliens on the hit television show, "The X-Files," know that, at least from a fictional perspective, "The truth is out there." According to an article published by the Pew Research Center in 2021, approximately 65% of Americans believe there is extraterrestrial intelligent life. And while NASA states that there has yet to be definitive evidence that such life exists elsewhere in the universe, the understanding as to what constitutes an inhabitable environment is ever growing. 

Baba Vanga incorporated this idea of extraterrestrial life into her visions and predictions. She stated (per the Daily Record) that aliens would invade Earth, causing the Earth's orbit around the sun to shift, having far-reaching effects on the sustainability of life as we know it on this planet. Details of this alleged invasion are scant at best. But as NASA quotes Carl Sagan, "The universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, it seems like an awful waste of space."

Since the 1938 discovery that led to the advent of nuclear weapons, the world has lived with a low-key fear that one of these weapons would be dropped, destroying that portion of the known world. An early visual of the capability of nuclear weapons engraved itself into the global psyche after the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in 1945, spelling the end of World War II. The Baby Boomer generation practiced "duck and cover drills" (per History), while Gen-Xers and older millennials remained vigilant of the nuclear option through the end of the Cold War. To add fuel to this fire, images of nuclear plant explosions at Chernobyl and Fukushima remain prevalent in modern history literature. And while that same fear does not permeate popular culture quite like it used to, the ever-present, low-key fear of it is still there.

Baba Vanga's predictions challenge our loosening fears of this reality by stating that a nuclear power plant in Asia would experience an explosion in 2023. The Daily Mail states that Vanga's prediction includes toxic clouds, spreading illnesses, and that this would impact other countries. 

If you were alive in the late 1990s and early 2000s, you might remember the anthrax (a biological weapon) scare that gripped many across the world. Just a week after September 11, 2001, letters began showing up at the offices of political officials and news centers. The letters were strange in language and those that opened them fell ill. By the time the attacks ended, Smithsonian Magazine states that 22 people were injured and five were killed. 

Baba Vanga stated that, in 2023, a biological weapon attack would be launched by a developed nation (per Cornwall Live). The World Health Organization states that biological weapons could prove challenging because there would be a high death toll over a short amount of time. Another challenge is that, because many biological weapons are made using a virus, the attack could be masked as a naturally-occurring health event, such as a pandemic. According to the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, the Biological Weapons Commission of the United Nations bans the experimentation and use of biological weapons among the 183 nations in the agreement. However, with the continued war between Russia and Ukraine, the fear of Baba Vanga's prediction becoming reality remains.

No matter who you turn to in order to navigate the murky waters of 2023, no one really knows what is in store. Whether it is an alien invasion, nuclear plant explosion, or nothing at all, here's to the start of another year.