Gordon-Michael Scallion’s Future Map of the World

An apocalyptic version of Earth’s future.

This curious and controversial map presents Gordon-Michael Scallion’s vision of the world following a series of catastrophic geophysical changes purportedly expected to occur during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Published in 1996, the image reflects the author’s popular “Future Maps” theories, which combined elements of New Age spirituality, psychic prophecy, and speculative earth sciences. Scallion predicted dramatic shifts in sea levels, tectonic activity, and climate that would fundamentally reshape the continents by the early 2000s, inundating much of the world’s coastline while giving rise to new inland seas, islands, and mountain ranges.

North America receives particular attention, with California fragmented into an archipelago, the Mississippi Valley transformed into a vast inland waterway, and large portions of the Eastern Seaboard reclaimed by the Atlantic Ocean. Similar cataclysmic changes are shown throughout Europe, Asia, Australia, and South America. Accompanying text along the bottom of the sheet identifies regions expected to survive the coming upheavals and offers guidance for those fortunate enough to avoid the apocalypse. Also of interest is an exploration of the lost civilizations of Atlantis and Lemuria!

Scallion rose to prominence during the late 1980s and 1990s as part of the burgeoning New Age movement, publishing numerous predictions concerning earthquakes, pole shifts, extraterrestrial contact, and global spiritual awakening. His cartographic vision drew heavily upon the prophetic writings of Edgar Cayce while adapting contemporary anxieties surrounding climate change, environmental disaster, and the approaching millennium. He produced several maps, starting with the Future Map of the United States in 1993. Needless to say, the world failed to cooperate with Scallion’s timetable, and his predicted cataclysms have yet to materialize.