For centuries, Nostradamus has haunted the human imagination, his cryptic four-line verses hovering between prophecy and projection. In our own age of war in Europe, nuclear anxiety and collapsing climates, his lines about a “seven months great war” and cities scarred by devastation feel uncomfortably close, even if they were penned in murky, ambiguous French nearly 500 years ago. The supposed links to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to Russia and Ukraine, are less about proof than about our desperate need to find patterns in chaos.
