No particular reason for reviving this, except that it hasn't been available on the Internet since it was first published. Some of the links referenced in it probably don't work because (a) this first ran in 1999, and (b) the world ended in 2000.
Profits of Doom!
Standing at ground zero in our own backyard
by Scott McNutt
The end of World War II brought sudden notoriety to East Tennessee. People the world over marveled that atom bomb parts could be manufactured in an area previously unknown, except for -- well, just previously unknown. Oak Ridge’s dramatic entry onto the historical scene prodded us locals to speculate about the region’s future, in the sense that we wondered whether there would be a region left in the future.
For decades, Oak Ridge’s role as weapons supplier for the US in the nuclear chess match with the USSR had us worrying that the last sound heard in East Tennessee might be “OOPS!” Then the crumbling of the Berlin Wall did to the Cold War what a microwave does to a frozen burrito, and our overwrought psyches relaxed a bit.
But recently Chicken Little has warned again of fallout falling on the Atomic City: Van Hilleary, the area’s Representative in the U.S. House, has rehashed the familiar doomsday scenario of Oak Ridge being targeted by nuclear missiles.
In his tableau, the dread devices fall short and detonate on a patch of highway that’s been continually under construction since the Polk administration. Hilleary seems to regard this as a terrifying prospect, but for those of us who actually have to drive on that highway it makes sense, because it’s the only unused excuse for further construction delays there.
This resurgence of old fears got me pondering whether Oak Ridge might fit into any of the end-of-the-world, millennial prophecies currently circulating. After all, as high-tech as Oak Ridge is now, it is well-documented that the city’s very existence was foretold in 1900 by John Hendrix, a local visionary without so much as a crystal ball -- or indoor plumbing, for that matter -- to give him a hint what the future looked like (for information on his prophecies, visit www.ornl.gov/swords/vision.html and thesmokies.com/features/places/oak_ridge_tn/index.htm on line).
Given this fact, I wondered, if Oak Ridge's beginning had been foreseen through mystical means, what about its ending? And what about THE END? Could Oak Ridge and Armageddon be connected? And could the connection already have been revealed by some other great soothsayer, like Nostradamus, Edgar Cayce, or Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder? And, most importantly, could I make a buck off it?
Unfortunately, I couldn't find any end-of-the-world forecasts from Cayce or The Greek in the five minutes I allotted to researching them, so my investigation was pretty much limited to Nostradamus. Even worse, my search found no specific mention of Oak Ridge in his predictions.
But I persevered, and my persistence was rewarded: My research also revealed that Nostradamus wrote his auguries in quaint phrases called quatrains, within which he veiled his apocalyptic visions in cryptic references and arcane symbolism, as shown in the following example:
"Ah, Lou-ie, Lou-ie,
(Oh, no) Say me gotta go.
Ah, Lou-ie, Lou-ie,
(Oh, buddy) Me gotta go, me gotta go now. RIGHT NOW!"
Despite the author's attempts to obscure the meaning, this quatrain speaks volumes about the end of the world and the existential angst the speaker feels in the face of this impending catastrophe. (Note: A popularized version of this prophecy, composed by Richard Berry and later recorded by the singing group The Kingsmen, created an uproar and was sometimes banned from air play when released as a single in the early 1960's. No doubt the authorities feared that teenagers would discover the awful truth behind the seemingly innocuous lyrics.)
This discovery strengthened my belief that, yes, a buck could be made off of this silliness. But I was no closer to discovering how to do it. I am no singer.
Delving deeper into the matter, I learned that to further disguise his divinations, Nostradamus wrote in French, cannily leaving to others the translation of his words into a speakable language like English. So Mr. Damus's writings are more open to interpretation than, say, a Magic Eight Ball. It's simply up to us, his devoted fans and followers, to find the applicable meaning. This seemed promising, so I searched further...
...And found that a lot of us have been up to it, apparently. Making a profit off the prophet are hundreds of books (including The Mammoth Book of Nostradamus and Other Prophets, Damon Wilson (Ed); The Elixirs of Nostradamus: Nostradamus' Original Recipes for Elixirs, Scented Water, Beauty Potions and Sweetmeats,Knut Boeser (Ed); Nostradamus: The Novel of the Movie, by Knut Boeser; and Nostradamus Ate My Hamster by Robert Rankin), dozens of web sites (e.g., www.nostradamus-repository.org,), and at least one official Nostradamus Society (visit them on line at www.nostradamususa.com/).
Truly, there's a pot of gold at the end of the world: In addition to the Nostradamus product line, there are countless other prophetic works for sale, drawing on sources from way-right Christians to long-gone Mayans, providing a broad selection of doom predictions for the discriminating apocalyptic shopper.
At last I saw my opportunity: Why not take advantage of Oak Ridge’s unique selling position as the city that ushered in the Atomic Age? I mean, right here in my own backyard is the town that fixed the anxieties of the whole Cold War generation on doomsday.
I am going to dig back through old Nosey’s quatrains until I come across one unintelligible enough to apply my own spin to it, and then I’m in business, baby! Through the right interpretation of a previously obscure prognostication, I can place Oak Ridge smack in the middle of the millennial Armageddon madness.
With a “genuine” apocalyptic prophecy to lure tourists to my cuddly nuclear neighbor, I will make a fortune from fortune-telling, selling t-shirts with slogans like "Oak Ridge 2000: The End Begins Here," "Apocalypse Now, News at 11:00," "Oak Ridge: City of the Future -- If There Is One," and "My Parents Went to the End of the World at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt."
“But if you’re wrong, nobody will buy your stuff. You’ll be humiliated,” you scoff. To which I reply, “What planet do you come from?” Earthly prophets have been missing the doomsday date for at least 1,967 years, but nobody ever holds them accountable. For instance, in 1999, on the internet there were web sites (e.g., members.aol.com/OLIlori/Jubileerap.html, callisto.worldonline.nl/~hjhoekst/index.html, www.kiwi.net/~mjagee, www.win.or.jp/~eileenl/index.html) that were continually updating their doomsday predictions as the year wore on.
Were they ashamed, abashed, or in the least way fazed by being wrong over and over and over again? Heck, no! And I expect them tobe going strong well into the new millennium. They know that you can fool enough of the people enough of the time to make a supremely comfortable living.
Or consider the case of Oral Roberts, who, in 1986, prophesied his own personal doomsday, claiming that God was going to "take him up" within a couple of months. It didn't happen, of course; a bunch of Oral's flock got together and, with an offering of 4.5 million dollars (payable to Oral, of course), bribed God to call off the hit.
So Oral’s flock got thoroughly fleeced, Oral proclaimed that God's will was done, and the failed prophecy was forgotten. Most important, neither Oral nor God ever stood trial, although I think even Little Bo Peep’s sheep would recognize this as a clear-cut case of collusion and extortion.
John Hendrix may spin in his grave, but I say, if it's good enough for Oral, it's good enough for Oak Ridge. Besides, the letters "O-R-A-L" could stand for "Oak Ridge Atomic Lights-out," a sure sign I’m destined to profit from doom-saying. Don’t bother me with petty issues like accuracy. If the world hasn’t ended by the time you read this, it just means I have another year to part fools and money.
And don’t try to scare me by suggesting that making light of such cosmic events will draw the wrath of the heavens down upon me. Through my painstaking study of Nostradamus’ prophecies, I have discovered that the real THE END will begin with an Apocalypse Dow, which won’t come until the stock market tops twelve thous- OOPS!
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