PLOT
Many are overly familiar with the eerily prescient foretellings of 16th Century French prophet Michel de Nostradame, (1503-66). But few may realize that an early 21st century equivalent of Nostradamus began making prophecies comparable to those of the Middle Ages' most prominent seer - with the aid of a computer -in the late 1980s. Dr. Bueno de Mesquita's prophecies (unlike Nostradame's) were concrete enough that they actually enabled observers to predict events before those events occurred, including the second Intifada and the crackdown at Tianamen Square by the Chinese government. Then, de Mesquita emerged with a host of much darker and more foreboding prophecies including famine, World War III, and the arrival of the Antichrist.