With a total eclipse set to stripe its way across America on Monday, sensational conspiracy theories are popping up on social media.
THE SUN
CONSPIRACY theories about the solar eclipse have swept the United States ahead of the rare phenomenon next week.
The flurry of bogus worries online come as the total solar eclipse will be visible across parts of North America on April 8.
[…] This year’s eclipse will begin over the South Pacific Ocean at 11:07 am PST and cross North America, passing over Mexico, the US, and Canada.
Fifteen states are in the path of totality, along with major cities like San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and Montreal.
One wild theory that has surfaced on social media claimed that the eclipse will cover the entire earth and last up to five days.
While this is clearly not true, other conspiracy theorists have pointed to verses in the Bible when discussing bogus claims about the eclipse.
On TikTok, it was claimed that the solar eclipse will pass through seven or eight US cities named Nineveh, which is the name of a city in Iraq that was described as “evil” in the Bible.
The Book of Jonah described how God demanded he “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it because its wickedness has come up before me.”
The bizarre claims have been repeated in videos online with people insisting that the eclipse passing over eight cities named Nineveh was a message representing a new beginning or “born again” event.
The idea went viral on social media and one person on X (formerly Twitter) posted scriptures from the Book of Luke to back up their claim.
“Oh, did you know there was a total eclipse the very day Jonah preached a warning to Nineveh? Nineveh repented. Will America?” they wrote.
Some have attributed the eclipse to helping the city of Nineveh to receive Jonah’s message, like the blog The Tribe of Christians.
However, only two cities named Nineveh are in the path of totality.
Other cities with the name will only get a glimpse of the total eclipse.
Snopes was among the sites that debunked the claims.
Its researchers also noted that a lot of the people making the claims online were Christians who are viewing the eclipse as a bad omen.
