December 31, 1997: New Year's Predictions
Callers offer a wide array of forecasts for the coming year. One listener predicts the Hong Kong chicken flu was biologically engineered by the Chinese government as a test. A man locked in his basement shower in Lake Charles, Louisiana, nervously warns about chemical testing contaminating local groundwater and causing seismic activity. Another caller predicts tainted vaccines will be distributed as a population control measure. Art shares his own prediction that 1998 will be one of the most tumultuous years in recorded history.
Between predictions, Art reports on a mysterious illness overwhelming emergency rooms across the American Southwest, from Southern California to El Paso. Callers confirm packed hospitals and confused medical authorities unable to agree on whether the outbreak is influenza or something else entirely. The broadcast captures the anxious energy of a nation entering an uncertain new year.
Key Moments
Southern California ER inundation - 'they don't know what it is': Art reports that Southern California, San Diego, and Tijuana hospitals are turning away ambulance transports because emergency rooms are overflowing with flu-like patients. He reads NBC, Sacramento Bee, and North County Times stories that contradict each other on whether it's Type A flu, RSV, or something unidentified, and concludes the major media is under-reporting it.
Times Square caller live at the Ball Drop, half a million in five-below wind chill: Art holds his East-of-the-Rockies line open for an on-the-spot Times Square report and gets a Michigan native standing 'in just by Times Square' moments after midnight. Art tells him 500,000 people were there with him in 20 mph winds and five-below wind chills.
Tulsa caller predicts Hong Kong chicken flu was bioengineered by China: Pat from Tulsa logs prediction #57: scientists will discover the Hong Kong chicken flu virus was biologically engineered by the Chinese to test whether it could be done. Art notes the apparent fatality rate is '30 or 40 percent' and hopes she's wrong.
Caller predicts tainted vaccines for population control: A South Carolina first-time caller logs the prediction that vaccines pushed for immune-deficiency diseases will be deliberately tainted to weaken immune systems for population control and the coming world government. Art riffs on his suspicion that cold-and-flu remedy advertising mysteriously precedes outbreaks.