End of the world: Blind Bulgarian soothsayer allegedly says 2025 is start of humanity's downfall

The world is going to end, and humanity's inevitable downfall and extinction is set to start in the year 2025, according to an alleged prediction by the late Bulgarian mystic and soothsayer Baba Vanga, multiple media outlets reported. 

Baba Vanga, also known as Vangeliya Pandeva Gushterova, was a woman renowned for her alleged powers of precognition. Though her eyes were blind, she somehow was alleged to be able to peer into the future and make bold and dramatic predictions, earning her the nickname of "Nostradamus of the Balkans."

Though she died in 1996, her persona was widely popular in Eastern Europe. Though her predictions were never fully written down, and many dispute the predictions accredited to her, her name has been attached to many claims, from the death of Princess Diana and the Chernobyl disaster to 9/11 and the election of Barack Obama as US president. 

The end of the world

One alleged Baba Vanga prediction making the rounds on the Internet recently is arguably the most dramatic: The literal end of the world and all humanity. 

According to multiple outlets such as the Daily Star, WION, and LADbible, humanity's end will come in 5079. However, it will merely be the culmination of events that start in 2025. 

Here is a rough timeline based on multiple reports about this prediction.

Timeline to the end of humanity (according to predictions dubiously attributed to a dead Bulgarian mystic)

2025: The inciting incident that kicks off the ultimate end of humanity will be an unspecified conflict in Europe, which will devastate the continent's population. 

2028: Humanity needs more energy. To do this, they will manage to explore Venus to find new energy sources. This may be one of the most unbelievable parts of this timeline since Venus is essentially an inhospitable hellscape with an atmosphere so acidic that nothing could survive, and no space probe has ever managed to survive more than a couple of hours.

2033: Climate change is very dangerous, and that shouldn't be understated. However, Baba Vanga supposedly predicted that at this point, the polar ice caps would melt, and sea levels would rise drastically worldwide.

2076: Ever see the old episode of The Simpsons where Russia flips a switch and the Soviet Union suddenly out of nowhere reforms, the Berlin wall shoots back up out of the ground, and a zombie Vladimir Lenin smashes out of his crypt groaning about crushing capitalism? Well, it may not be like this exactly, but Baba Vanga's alleged prediction claims that at this point, Communism will not just be back but will take over the entire world. 

2130: Skipping ahead to the next century, humanity will, at this point, supposedly make contact with aliens. What could go wrong?

2170: Climate change is going to get worse, and at this point, a drought is supposedly going to spread across the world. 

3005: Perhaps it's due to human colonization, or perhaps it's aliens. Regardless, at this point, there will supposedly already have been some kind of civilization on Mars. And they will fight a war with Earth. 

3797: At this point, due to any number of reasons, the Earth will supposedly no longer be able to support life. Humans will allegedly leave their homeworld at this point and move on to parts unknown.

5079: This is it. The end. The grand finale. And, of course, with as vague of a prediction as this is, if this was even a real prediction at all, we know nothing about it. All we know is that the world will end. Yes, the world will supposedly already be uninhabitable by this point, so what this refers to is honestly anyone's guess. Does it go out with a bang or with a whimper? Is there a great epic battle or a rather anticlimactic incident? 

Keep in mind that this is all patently ridiculous. Yes, Baba Vanga was a real person, and yes, she has amassed quite a following and legend around her. However, since no one wrote down her predictions, no one knows if any prediction attributed to her these days is genuine—and even if it was, no one knows if the prediction would be true. 

After all, many of the predictions she supposedly made before never worked. In 2023, reports said she had predicted that Earth would be devastated by nuclear bioweapons and a solar storm. 

According to some reports, she also claimed world hunger would be resolved by 2028, and humanity would master time travel in 2304.

Who knows? But people always love some doomsday reporting.