The Rapture of David Meade

Get out the hot dogs and marshmallows. On Monday, April 23rd, the planet Nibiru is going to turn our Earth into an almighty bonfire, and we might as well make the most of it. On the plus side, we’ll no longer be bothered with tax returns, the Syrian crisis, Trump, climate change, and everlasting speculation about Meghan Markle’s wedding gown. On the minus side, we’ll mostly be dead.

Or not. This particular prophet of doom keeps (a) failing, and (b) changing his story. Some days, he’s predicting the Rapture and the start of the Tribulation. Other days, it’s a collision with the imaginary Planet X, or Nibiru, accompanied by tsunamis, volcanoes, earthquakes, and the Rapture. Other days yet, it’s a Russian or North Korean EMP strike, or a full-scale nuclear attack, or an induced eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano by a North Korean hydrogen bomb. Several dates of doom have come and gone since last September, with nothing much happening in this prophet’s prophetic playground except another goal-post shift.

“David Meade” arrives at his prophecies through a synthesis of numerology, astrology, junk astronomy, fundamentalist Christianity, wide-ranging conspiracy theories, the Book of Revelation, and the hypothetical Nibiru, or Planet X. The one available picture of him is straight out of the Uncanny Valley: no apparent ears or eyebrows, a plastic sheen to the cheeks, Ken-doll hair. Who knows if it’s the real David Meade, though. The name is said to be a nom de plume, and his true identity is hidden, which means none of his claims about his professional history can be verified.

According to “David Meade” himself, he is or has been a forensic investigator, a forensic accountant, an investigative journalist, a cryptographer, a special report writer for the Pentagon and Fortune 500 companies, a boutique business owner, an expert in real estate and property valuation, a specialist in Search Engine Optimization, an anti-fraud consultant, and a writer for web page designers. Oh yes, and the author of many self-published e-books: sixteen since 2013, by my count, averaging about a hundred pages each. They’re muddled, boastful, and tone-deaf, judging by the free samples on Amazon, but the range and timing of his oeuvre is both revealing and a little hilarious. Here they are, in order of publication.

29 April 2013 – Planet X: God’s Endgame: Nibiru and the Book of Revelation – “The most important book you’ll ever read in your life,” according to Meade. Government conspiracy theories regarding the cover-up of the planet Nibiru’s existence and imminent arrival, plus the mysterious “murder” of Robert S. Harrington.

2 May 2013 – Fraud Prevention – “…a treasure trove of information, advice and exposition regarding just about every area of corporate investigations.”

22 May 2013 – Mysterious Islands – A novel which “takes its readers inside the CIA covert operations world and reads as a veritable practicing intelligence case manual.”

17 July 2013 – Research for Writers – “An important tool that can be downloaded to your desktop or laptop and used in the creative writing process.”

21 June 2014 – You Can Write a Best-Selling Info Book! [Don’t You Want to Live Your Dream?] – “DO YOU WANT TO DEVELOP A SIX-FIGURE INFO-BOOK?”

12 September 2014 – Web Design for Authors: Every Author Needs a Website! – Ironic, given how awful his website is.

26 March 2015 – The Global Crash of 2015 and What You Can Do to Protect Yourself – “This book reads like an NSA Intelligence Briefing. This book provides you with the tools you need, and the precise timing of the engineered crash to occur later this year.” Buy gold, basically.

14 December 2015 – Own a Piece of Paradise In the Florida Keys – Fulsome praise of Florida as a paradise on Earth, and as a place for long-term investment. A bit strange, coming from a man predicting the imminent demise of the planet.

31 December 2015 – Hitler’s Escape to Argentina (Film Treatment)—A “high-concept feature-film treatment” said (by David Meade) to be of unparalleled uniqueness, which will also instruct the reader exactly how to write a high-concept feature-film treatment. Meade hopes, as well, that the “right” production company will buy the script, preferably one in Canada, South America, Europe, London, the Far East, Australia, or New Zealand.

13 January 2016—Selling Your Company Now!—A complete “Due Diligence Package” for business-owners wishing to sell up, in 44 pages.

13 January 2016 –Will Planet X Signal the Rapture?—In which Meade reveals his vision that the Rapture would occur in October 2017, even as Russia, China and North Korea mounted a nuclear attack on the US coast and Britain, using a strike force of drone submarines and unmarked container ships. The attack would be timed to mark the centenary of the Russian Revolution, but the date would also be biblically based, and the coming of Planet X would set the stage.

9 February 2016—Planet X – The 2017 Arrival—More of the same. The arrival of Nibiru in the fall of 2017 will cause tsunamis, earthquakes, EMPs, solar flares, rioting, looting, and a physical pole shift, which will really muck things up. It will also destroy the parts of Florida that Meade was touting in his Own a Piece of Paradise In the Florida Keys less than two months before.

5 August 2016—The Coming Clinton Economic Collapse – How to prepare for the collapse of the American economy under President Hillary Clinton, known to be a proponent of the New World Order. (Hint: buy gold.) Oddly, the contents page shows no mention of Nibiru, biblical prophecy, or the Rapture.

28 February 2017—The Coup D’état Against President Donald J. Trump –As Trump bravely battles the Illuminati, the Freemasons, the Shadow Government, and the New World Order, all the forces of evil move secretly against him….

30 June 2017—The Prepper’s Guide to Surviving EMP Attacks, Solar Flares and Grid Failures –Everything you need to know, in 89 pages. Though one of the five reviewers complains the book talks a lot about solar flares and EMPs, and very little about how to prepare for them.

7 November 2017—The End of Days – Planet X and Beyond – A rehashed compilation of Meade’s previous Planet X and Prepper screeds, brought out not long after his September and October doomsdays did not happen. There are no reviews on Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

What to make of all this mixture of genres and messages? What kind of “investigative journalist” writes a piece promoting investment in the Florida Keys while predicting all of southern Florida is about to sink under the waves? Who would publish, on the same day, a piece about maximizing your profit selling your business, and a confident prediction of America being imminently destroyed in a nuclear holocaust? What kind of huckster makes a huge selling point of the 2017 eclipse and the Woman of Revelation 12, and then simply reinterprets them every time they don’t pan out?

How about a guy who just wants publicity so his pathetic books will sell, and finds that conspiracy theories and apocalypses are good for marketing? It would not surprise me to learn that “David Meade”—whoever he may be—does not believe a word of his own Planet X propaganda. Meantime, he is already engaging in damage control in case (as I would myself prophesy) nothing dramatic happens on the appointed day. Apparently, it was fake news: what he really meant to say was that the world as we know it will end sometime between May and December, when the seven really shitty years of the Tribulation will begin.

Well, that’s all right then. At least we can enjoy this weekend.