Whitley Strieber's prophecy checklist in The Secret School

Much of Whitley Strieber's non-fiction book The Secret School has to do with mental time travel. He recounts a vision of Rome around 50 BC, one of the world around 10,000 BC, and one of the near future (when he himself is an old man -- i.e., around now).

In an appendix, he writes, "I have assembled a short list of prophecies and predictions for the near future. I intend it to be used as a validating tool for my work, and trust that I have been sufficiently exact for this to be possible." There is no indication at all of where these prophecies came from; they do not overlap at all with the vision of the future reported in the body of the book. This vision would, I think, make a better validating tool, since it includes some very specific events (such as Air Force One being grounded in a sandstorm in Los Angeles) and also has a very specific deadline (the death of Whitley Strieber). At any rate, here are the prophecies from the appendix, with my comments. I have added numbers to what is in the original a bulleted list but have made no other changes. It's been 23 years since the publication of The Secret School, so at least some of these "near future" prophecies should have been fulfilled by now.

1. Our present system of government, made unstable by debt, public disaffection, and the vast chasm between its secret and public sectors, will change radically in the context of economic disruptions brought on by serious environmental difficulties of various kinds.

I guess the global birdemic coup of early 2020 sort of fulfills this, though "environmental difficulties of various kinds" weren't really a factor.

2. Specifically, I see problems with a food supply disrupted by violent weather: great storms in some places, horrendous drought in others.

Uselessly vague. There are always storms, droughts, and food-supply issues somewhere in the world.

3. I see huge clouds of smoke over a great city -- Mexico City. Popocatépetl is erupting.

This is one of the most specific predictions on the list, but unfortunately turns out to be worthless. According to the Smithsonian Institute's Global Volcanism Program (click on "Eruptive History" here), every year since 1994 has seen at least one eruption of Popocatépetl. If we count only "catastrophic" eruptions (VEI of 3 or higher), the most recent was in 1996, and the last before that was in 1663. The Secret School was published in 1997.

4. In the United States, there will be a struggle for control, fierce but not very bloody. The power of the military/industrial complex will end, and with it official secrecy. What will take the place of the old system will be freedom in the form of a republic that is real.

Just how wrong is it possible to be? (To be fair, some Trump supporters still hold out hope that this is just about to happen.)

5. Despite all the chaos, science continues to move from success to success. We begin to understand our deepest selves. As we unlock the meaning of our genes, we will discover that human beings and human lives are constructed in such extraordinary detail that the presence of a level of super-conscious planning prior to and hidden within our lives, as suggested by the secret school, must be seriously considered.

Trivially, science is cumulative and thus "moves from success to success"; barring total societal collapse, it never actually moves backward. However, no spectacular scientific discoveries about "the meaning of our genes" or anything else have been made since the publication of The Secret School, and in fact science seems to have been treading water for several decades now. (The Human Genome Project was in progress when The Secret School was written, and perhaps Strieber believed the hype surrounding that.)

6. Fusion is perfected as an energy source and we will want to mine the moon for fuel, but there will be an obstacle to this that will be overcome only through profound personal and social evolution.

Fusion power is about 50 years away -- always has been, always will be. Mining the moon for helium-3 for use in fusion was first proposed by Gerald Kulcinski in 1986.

7. Antimatter will be successfully created, contained, and studied. It will offer us the ability to devise weapons of appalling destructive capacity and small size, but also the chance to use it for the greater good in mega-engineering projects that will need power on an undreamed-of scale. Given the explosive power of antimatter weapons, we will also become able to deploy a meaningful system of defense against asteroids and large comets. In understanding how to contain antimatter, we will also discover how to gain access to parallel universes and eventually to traverse the universe at speeds bordering on the instantaneous.

Antimatter was first created in 1955 and first successfully stored in 2010. Only tiny quantities (nanograms) have been created. No military or engineering applications so far.

8. A man presently working inside a classified program will reveal knowledge of how psychic power works. Many research programs now secret will become public, whereupon the work will proceed with explosive energy. Average people will gain access to their own enormous psychic abilities as they realize that we all possess them and can learn techniques to make them work. Effective methods of teaching them will come into general use.

The Stargate Project was declassified in 1995, just before The Secret School was published. Effective methods of teaching psychic powers have not come into general use.

9. Memory and prophecy will be understood to be tools of the hyperconscious level of mind, and people will begin to use them as such.

Too vague.

10. Time will also come to be a tool, and travel in time will become practical. As mind frees itself from time and thus approaches singularity of consciousness, nations as we know them -- directed by power, politics, greed, and lies -- will end. They will be replaced by the only valid form of government that has any meaning to the truly free: one that is founded in love and organized around compassion.

Time travel has not become practical. Nations are still directed by power, politics, greed -- and, above all, lies.

11. We will meet people from other worlds, the barrier between the living and the dead will collapse, and it will become possible for the individual to store and process huge amounts of knowledge.

This has apparently been going on for a long time, as Strieber knows from his own experience. No special developments in this area since the publication of The Secret School.

12. We will throw off the bondage of assumptions that we are small, weak, and frail, and discover ourselves a rare and precious creation, immensely talented and bearing upon this tiny scrap of stone called Earth a powerful responsibility to survive, to grow, and to partake of all knowledge in full consciousness. As we do this, we will also find that others on the same quest reveal themselves to us, and we will join hands with them.

Rather than discovering "a powerful responsibility to survive," the human race is more suicidal now than it has even been before.

13. As science becomes increasingly honest, open, and powerful, it will begin to detect the presence of deity in an incontrovertibly factual manner. At that point, a Niagara of joy will flood the world as the species consciously joins the companionship for which it was created.

Or consider the polar opposite: "As science becomes increasingly dishonest and collapses, atheism and nihilism will be taken for granted, and a Niagara of despair, anomie, and alienation will flood the world." Which better describes the world you see around you?

Verdict: Epic fail.