The world is about to end: An apocalyptic TV broadcast in California

According to the ancient Mayan calendar, the world was supposed to end in 2012. Half a decade later, the world is still very much alive, but the end still feels round the corner. There are many signs – Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un’s one-upmanship as megalomaniac leaders is a serious one. A slightly more smaller sign was observed in California’s Orange County on Thursday, September 21.

As per a report in The Orange County Register, local residents witnessed something curious. Television programming was suddenly interrupted for about a minute with an ominous message predicting the end of the world. It was Cox and Spectrum cable users who saw this message. An emergency alert flashed across TV screens followed by a voice. According to The Register, a man’s voice boomed in the broadcast, “Realise this, extremely violent times will come.”

A video of the broadcast uploaded to YouTube includes a terrified, breathless voice saying: “The space program made contact with... They are not what they claim to be. They have infiltrated a lot of, uh, a lot of aspects of military establishment, particularly Area 51. The disasters that are coming — the military — I’m sorry the government knows about them...”

A Gizmodo report on this incident says the audio in the broadcast comes from a call that Art Bell, the host of the conspiracy theory-themed radio show Coast to Coast AM, received in 1997 from a man claiming to be a former Area 51 employee.

According to Stacy Laflamme of Lake Forest, who saw the emergency broadcast: “It almost sounded like Hitler talking. It sounded like a radio broadcast coming through the television.”

While it is unclear whether the messages were broadcast intentionally or if it was an accident, or if it was just a prank by hackers who got into the broadcast system, a Cox spokesperson said that the company does not know how many customers were affected and is still trying to determine where the signal originated from. A Spectrum spokesperson said, “We have confirmed that we were fed an incorrect audio file.”

Of course, conspiracy theorists had a field day. According to Mail Online, several conspiracy theorists and doom-mongers have cited an apocalyptic theory known as “Revelation 12 Sign” predicting that the “Rapture” – a prediction from the Book of Revelation in The Bible, which prophesised that “worthy Christians” would be lifted into heaven by Jesus, and those remaining will be left to face the end of the world – that was supposed to have been fulfilled on September 23. Of course, with us writing this article — and you reading the report — that certainly did not happen.

End of the world or not, it certainly breaks the monotony quite nicely.

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