There is no time for conspiracy — The World in 2018 by The Economist cover decoded

Mar 29, 2018
Vadym Myrgorod

Last week I have opened Youtube and saw a recommended video in which an author was trying to decode The World in 2018 cover by The Economist. A cover of the magazine contains sixty-three pictograms of the different color. Some of them depict World leaders, why others refer to geographical locations and events. From the first look, this is just a random set of pictograms, unless you have a method how to read them…

An author of the video I watched was referring to numerology and even to Kabbalah to explain what is shown on the cover. In another video, an author tried to use colors to indicate a possibility of one or another event. Almost all explanations that I saw were mostly based on the conspiracy theories, which I thought, are not popular among readers of The Economist. I thought there should be an easier way to understand what is shown on the cover so I just started to look at the picture…

Random or intended

The first question that I had was whether the pictograms colored and arranged in the random way or it was done on purpose. There are a couple of proves that tell us it was not done randomly, but on purpose:

• The way how pictograms were colored shows that some colors are used more than others. This would not be possible if it was done randomly.
• The probability of the purple pictogram to appear in the center of the cover is 1.5% if pictograms are arranged randomly. This is because the purple color is used only once and there are 63 pictograms on this cover.

All of this tells us that the cover of The World in 2018 was composed on purpose by the editors of The Economist.

How to read the cover

I thought it would be strange for the editors not to tell us how to read the pictograms and the clue should be inside the cover itself. The best way to tell readers the clue would be to show something that already happened or will happen that is well known by everyone. For example Trump-Moscow connection or future elections in Cuba.

Color also makes sense in some cases, but it is contextual and sometimes help to understand how pictograms relate to each other. Let’s start with something that already happened by the time this post is written and will continue with predictions of what will happen in 2018.

Feb 9th: Drone show during the Olympics opening ceremony

On the next image skies represent Winter Olympic Games, while quadcopter is obviously a drone.

Feb 17th: SpaceX launched a Tesla Roadster into space

On the following image, a car and rocket pictograms are located together which hints about a launch of Tesla by SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy. This event was well known in advance.

Mar 14th: Angela Merkel goes for the fourth term

On the next image, a plane and a guitar is shaped in the form or V surrounding Angela Merkel. V means victory.

Mar 17th: Xi Jinping reappointed China’s president with no term limits

As we can see in this picture a crown is on top of the Xi Jinping’s head, which hints about monarchy or no limits in terms for the Chinese leader.

Mar 28th: Kim Jong Un visits China for negotiations

On the following image, we can clearly see Kim Jong Un’s picture. Factory and bicycle represent China. Bag means trip, and headset means negotiations. Flower probably means the good outcome of such negotiations cause the color of the flower is yellow with a hue of green.

May 1st: Kerch Strait Bridge which connects Russia to Crimea will be opened

This will likely to happen in December 2018, however, Putin asked builders to do it earlier before the holiday season which starts in May. This event is depicted by the Putin’s face and a bridge. However, his face is said, not sure what it means.

June 14th: Hacking during the World Cup

The symbol of the World Cup trophy and an unlocked smartphone warns about hacking during the World Cup in Russia.

Issues in robotics and space exploration industries

As shown in the following image, an orange dead clown is surrounded by a robot and the planetary system. This is likely to mean that in both robotics and space exploration industries there will be problems.

A war in the Northern Africa and many refugees as a result

On the following picture, we can clearly see Egyptian pyramids, a camel, a tank, and an exploding bomb. This is likely to mean that we should expect a war in Northern Africa and or the Middle East.

Also, there is another picture which shows a boat with people and Africa pictograms which likely to mean many refugees will leave Africa. There are also pictograms of Italy and Paris and a red voting sign. Which is likely to mean major European countries will ban immigrants from Africa.

There is also something about mosquito bites a happy human, which probably tells about a risk of bringing infections into Europe by the refugees. All of this is very sad.

Instability on oil markets and the rise of electric cars

Next image shows an umbrella and oil station, which probably predicts the bad weather coming to the oil markets. That will probably happen because of war in Northern Africa.

As a result gas price goes up, and electric car by Elon Musk will be our new god as shown in the next picture.

Emerging of the new religion based on science

Next image show three pictograms. The first pictogram at the left is monotheistic religion symbols which represent most popular religions in the world. Red color means stop. The third pictogram at the right is a genome which represents science. Green color means go. And finally, there is a pictogram in the middle showing two books: one on top of another. This is an allegory to the old and new testaments. However, in this case, the new testament is science-religion, while the old testament is Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

The rise of socialism in America

This is hard to believe but the following image shows us that the USA will make more steps to become socialistic. We can clearly see the Statue of Liberty that represents the USA, right under it there is a pendulum which moves from right to left as the arrow shows us. There is no need to explain that left means socialism. We can also see pictograms of the red cat, a camera, and a pink child. Well, you know that both pink and red refers to socialism. Also, a cat is a symbol of communists and Industrial Workers of the World. By the way, Tom and Jerry is actually a cartoon about Nazis and communists. There are many theories about that…

However, the child pictogram is a key. As we saw during the March For Our Lives, there were many kids who sang anti-Trump songs. This is just a beginning, they will start with March For Our Lives and will end with March For Free Higher Education.

What else

There are still many other pictograms which I am not sure about, e.g. Japan is looking into the parliament, which probably depicts the end of monarchy in Japan.

There are also may be leaks of Great Britain’s files.

Brexit made by the old people. All of this made me think about Cambridge Analytica connection to Brexit.

All other pictograms are not very clear.

If you know what they mean, please write in the comments.

Conclusion

The World in 2018 will be full of events. There are some signs that warns us about the future. I was able to decode fifty six pictograms out of sixty three total mostly because many of predicted events have happened. If you know different meaning or want to extend these predictions, please, post your comment.

Vadym Myrgorod