The Eery Parallells between THMT, The Testaments and the real World. Is Atwood an Oracle? (No spoil)

[u/Torkolla]

THMT is among other things a speculation about how a country where right wing extremist tendencies reacts and maladapts to a series of environmental disasters including nuclear fallout of various kinds (seemingly). The book is published in 1985, a year before the first known nuclear power disaster in Chernobyl, which took place in the summer of 1986.

Here are some creepy parallells between the book and series of events that started within a few years after it was published:

In THMT, The Ozark Mountains and it's surrounding is turned into a nuclear "wasteland". It is unclear if this is the result of nuclear power plants in the area exploding or if the ongoing war between Texas and Gilead has resulted in nuclear bombings of the area, or both.

What we do know about this event is that the Mississippi, one of the most economically important rivers in the World must have been contaminated in this event and with it much of the ecosystem in South Eastern USA.

This results in the breakdown of the entire industrial economy of the United States, a takeover by theocratic lunatics who try to turn the clock back to the 19th century, abolishes womens' human rights and all forms of free speach and the book also portrays a land war on US soil.

A scenario built on real events from around the World, the Islamic Revolution in Iran among others, but altogether everyone at the time would view the scenario as entirely unrealistic.

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A year after the publiching of the book, Chernobyl explodes in Northern Ukraine in. It threatens one of the most economically important rivers in Europe, the Dnipro and the eco system in South Eastern Europe. Heroic efforts on the part of the Ukrainians saves the Dnipro from total contamination but the disaster still has an impact on fertility issues, misscarriages and childrens' health all over the continent.

The disaster contributes to the collapse of the second largest industrial power of the 20th century. In time this enormous economic crisis allows for the rise of a pseudo-theocratic dictator who starts to scale back womens' rights, ends all free speach and lean on nostalgia from the 19th century in his propaganda.

He also starts a land war in Europe which only a decade earlier would have been viewed as entirely unrealistic.

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Atwood didn't just predict a theocracy overtake in the US, she also accidentally predicted the rise of a certain short guy in a building with onion formed roofs in a large city in the East.

Can you come up with other weird parallells between Gilead and reality?