Slashdot Mirror
Doomsday Clock To Advance
Dik Zak writes "Many news sites are reporting that the magazine Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists intends to move the hands of the Doomsday Clock on Wednesday 17 January. The clock was started at seven minutes to midnight during the Cold War and has been moved forward or back at intervals, depending on the state of the world and the prospects for nuclear war. Midnight represents destruction by nuclear war. It is not revealed in which direction the hands of the clock will be moved, but it should be safe to assume that they will move closer to midnight: the magazine cites 'worsening nuclear [and] climate threats.' The clock stood at two minutes to midnight when both the United States and the Soviet Union tested nuclear weapons in 1953. The farthest away from midnight it ever got was 17 minutes, in 1991 when both superpowers signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. It currently stands at seven minutes to midnight."
So, is that Eastern Standard Time?
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
Is there some equation by which this is determined or is this another abstact measure of FUD that we could just as easily set to "Red" as 7 till midnight?
You need more psychedelic art in your life. rhesusmonkey.deviantart.com
So you have 12 hours to work with, and you start off at 17 minutes to midnight? Seems like a case of hyperbole to me - in that scale, the world is ALWAYS about to blow up in a nuclear war, so it quickly loses its impact.
It's like holding the stupid "threat level" at yellow or orange for a long amount of time, eventually people accept it and begin to ignore it.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Jack Bauer will disarm the russian ICBM 10^-23 second before it detonates, so we haven't got anything to worry about!
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
I'm sick of waiting for the return of my deity.
1 voice in a sea of voices
Every head of state since 1945 has at one time or another said that we need to get rid of these things and it still hasn't happened.
We need to revive the nuclear disarmament movement. Seriously.
Kinda seems like /.'s becoming a slow motion Threat Down lately doesn't it? A bit of mindless fear mongering here, a touch of wry comedy there, end result: same either way.
You need more psychedelic art in your life. rhesusmonkey.deviantart.com
Some superpower or another needs to preemptively attack and destroy this doomsday clock before it hurts someone.
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
Suddenly I realize where the song title comes from.
Wouldn't this be a good reason to get rid of daylight savings time?
Sig cannot be found.
new pressure from climate change for expanded civilian nuclear power that could increase proliferation risks.
These guys are not claiming doomsday from climate change.
And despite the increase of proliferation and individual threats, the global doomsday we legitimately feared in the 80's is long gone.
I think proliferation in the Middle East will bring some long needed maturity to those ridiculous tribal governments or be self-limiting. Bad for some cities, but not global conflict. India-Pakistan nukes may have even calmed that situation. Mutual destruction pacts might actually work.
That means those of us on Eastern Standard Time have already experienced Doomsday. (Psst, Central folk, his name is..., nah, let them experience it, too.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I was listening to an interesting radio show out here in San Diego yesterday (The Dangerous Dick and Scibba show) and they were talking about the 20K troop increase as a way to get ready to go into Iran (a nuclear power). People were guessing that Bush/Cheney/and company want to try and neutralize the Iranian threat before leaving office. Me thinks this might be related...
I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand. -Confucius
I want to know what the doomsday clock is set to in Metric.
Now is a good time to read and print...
6 48
The good news about nuclear destruction
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=51
What to do if a nuclear disaster is imminent!
http://www.ki4u.com/guide.htm
More pseudo-science.
Clocks don't run backwards. That's the whole point, fundamental to everything time means to us - it marches forward, until one day death takes us.
I suggest you read Slashdot
A nuke or two going off in the US would be terrible. But let's be glad we don't face annihilation today like we did during the cold war. Think about it, at the time there was a real risk of humanity being set back a thousand years, or according to some theories even disappearing. Terrorism is nothing next to that. They have nothing like the numbers of weapons or delivery systems to do what we or the Russians could do. India and Pakistan doesn't have them, and N. Korea doesn't have them. People just aren't comfortable without a certain amount of upset, and they enlarge or shrink whatever troubles they face to fill that void.
From the summary...
It is not revealed in which direction the hands of the clock will be moved...
From TFA...
The minute hand of the Doomsday Clock will be moved closer to midnight on January 17 (emphasis added).
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
The good news is they aren't advancing it to 12:00, the bad news is they are advancing it to 12:15.
Mechanical political blog? How quaint.
Table-ized A.I.
Human interactions, goals and thought patterns are not measured by equations or instruments. Yes, this makes it hard to say what's going to happen when feeble bags of mostly water are involved. Doesn't mean though that you can't or shouldn't try, or that some people aren't very, very good at it. If you're upset that the clock reads 7 minutes instead of 8 or 6, you're missing the point.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
That clock is seriously fucking gay. It takes it's orders from scientists for heavens sake. Not like my wrist watch which makes his own mind up about how close we are to nuclear armageddon.
Chillmost, why aren't at your desk?
Sorry boss, world's ending.
--Residential Interior Design
Not too pleasant for a while, compared to how things are now, but far from "blown up".
Discuss amongst yourselves.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Wait, Nancy Pelosi is speaker of the House of the U.S. Congress.
Democrats are in control.
Rosie O'Donnell is getting major support in the media for her war against Donald Trump.
Steve Jobs got an illegal dump of stock options and the media and geeks have given him a free walk because other corporate scum said he didn't know. If Steve Jobs was running Enron and the same thing happened, what would geeks have said?
Microsoft MVP's, techies, and users of Vista are saying it sucks.
Bezo's is finally flying the Delta Clipper.
How can it possibly be getting closer to Doomsday?
Does this mean Duke Nukem Forever is closer to release?
Does this mean George Lucas is getting ready to release his Double Secret Special Editions?
Is Battlestar Galactica getting ready to be canceled?
Is William Shatner releasing his covers of Green Day?
Are the Seahawks actually going to take us all the way, and not leave us on the front porch on prom night with just half a copped feel?
Wow, closer to doomsday. You got to love George Bush and the Republican Do-Gooders. Maybe their whole drive is to hasten the Second Coming and start of the "Kingdom of Heaven"? (Can I choose a different Universe?)
Go ahead, classify this post.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
To kill... the unborn in the woooooomb!
Scientists with long-standing political agenda to make political statement with clock metaphor. Big whoop.
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
If North Korea drops a few nukes, it's not doom. It's a few hundred thousand people dead at most. Probably a lot less than that. Yes a tragedy but ho-hum when compared with all the plain old conventional killing that occurs every year, mainly governments killing their own citizens with small arms or starvation.
Yes a full-scale nuke war between the USSR and the USA would have involved probably over ten thousand warheads and would have ended the modern age, but the threats now are not doom. It's important to keep things in perspective, even nuclear bombs.
Advance implies that it will get closer to midnight. The summary itself says that they don't know which way it will move yet.
You mad
It's kind of instructive to think what we would have to do - start with the hard to reach - we need to kill all the life around the "smokers" at the bottom of the ocean, at the same time as carpet bombing the earth with nukes - but you've really got to cook every square mile of the entire planet. That means raising the temperature above boiling point (there's life at temperatures everywhere up to there) for long enough to kill every spore, bacterium. The important thing to bear in mind is that to kill life you have to kill every single bacterium, because one bacterium can mutate. In short it's not going to happen, it's probably technically infeasible, and no one wants to do it (not even George Bush)
I like to think this sums up two things - one the horrible grandiosity of environmental pressure groups - starting with their assumption that humans are powerful enough to do something that is virtually impossible, then assuming that they are more important than the people that can do this, that they are only people who understand the big picture. The other is that they know fuck all about any actual science (i.e. physics, chemistry, microbiology), and they don't seem to care to learn more.
Real climate scientists I salute - they do something virtually impossible. Environmental politicians (for that is what Greenpeace, and this crowd are) are just republicans who found a different issue first. Look at Al Gore - when he's not trying to ban music with obscene lyrics (PMRC) he's saving the environment with glossy hollywood films. Bless.
I believe the common use of the term refers to the ability to end all life, everywhere (with the exception of cockroaches and certain bacteria).
This is by far one of the dumbest ideas in the history of mankind. It'll just cause panic for no reason!
This is one of those things where when it shows danger nothing will happen and if something bad happens it will be when clock suggests saftey. This is the nature of time, pride and destiny. The best and worst things happen when you dont expect them.
"...it seems like at any point in time people were certain that the end of the world was only a generation or two away."
Yes, there have always been doom-sayers who talk of the wrath of God and the day of judgement. However, for the last 50yrs or so we have had the potential to create our own apocolypse independently of any disgruntled God(s).
"I think it is about time everyone started to ignore anyone who claimed the world was about to end and listened to more rational voices."
What is "irrational" is having been taught to "duck and cover" when I was a kid in the 60's ( ie: a school desk is no match for an A bomb ). Your statement also implies Eienstien was irrational and should be ignored since he was amoungst the first to recognise we are no longer dependent on a vengefull God to wipe us all out. He was well aware that his science had assisted the less "rational" amoungst us to aquire the technology to create our own apocolypse, either deliberately or accidentally. Similarly "rational" but less famous people have spotted a few other problems since the 50's.
BTW: My money is on environmental apathy, but nukes might be used to speed things up a bit.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Does this mean George Lucas is getting ready to release his Double Secret Special Editions?
I want to see the special edition where Han goes back in time and kills Greedo's parents.
Han shoots first - waaaaaay first.
we may be pretty good at wiping out most of the fish stocks, but humans could never destroy life on earth.
It's kind of instructive to think what we would have to do - start with the hard to reach - we need to kill all the life around the "smokers" at the bottom of the ocean, at the same time as carpet bombing the earth with nukes
Cobalt bombs.
No need to carpet bomb with conventional nukes.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
"And despite the increase of proliferation and individual threats, the global doomsday we legitimately feared in the 80's is long gone."
The imaginary fears we had are long gone. The legitimate fears are worse, not least because in the 80's we were fighting proxy wars on the borders of a nuclear power. Now we're fighting direct land wars on the borders of not one but several nuclear powers.
From the article: "The Doomsday Clock has become a universally recognized indicator of the world's vulnerability."
I'm just curious...says who?
How to Destroy the Earth
It is not revealed in which direction the hands of the clock will be moved
This story was on CNN early this morning and FYI the clock was advanced 2 minutes to 7 minutes to midnight. Old news. And not extremely nerdy or significant at that.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
OFFTOPIC?
That would rip a hole in that space time continuum thingy and totally destroy that doomsday clock contraption.
Hey, if you destroy the doomsday clock, does that kill every Christian?
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
"A nuke or two going off in the US would be terrible. But let's be glad we don't face annihilation today like we did during the cold war."
What makes you say that? The clock is 7 minutes to twelve. The scientists are evaluating the global risk very closely, and haven`t moved it back for a long time.
Most of the russian nukes are still in place, but now nobody really have control of them all, and even more countries got`em now. Among them is China, which according to John Titor will start off a global nuclear war in 2007 or 2008, with several countries involved.
Then you`ve got about 20 scenarious that may have triggered it, but luckily didn`t:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_III
So yes, the fear is gone: The population is more docile and ignorant than ever, more wanting to watch TV and soaps, than care about the world. Just like it was before WWII when Hiter surprise-attacked Poland, Norway, etc, before people could believe what was happening. We`re putting the power in the wrong hands, and it`s all our own fault for trusting non-spiritual people with too much money and power.
The more we do good now, the better off the world will be, and maybe the worst can be averted. But those who continue to sleep-walking in this world will surely feel how times can change within quite a short while now. It`s really for our own good too, when seen in broader perspective. So the earlier you start to wake up and contribute to the world and people around you, the more you can enjoy the show.
I only remember the 80s.
.. and I'm still young.
.. I don't have words for the stupidity. The world is relatively safe. The major disaster and major fear we have is from islamic terrorists sending a couple of planes into a building or two. A BUILDING OR TWO! THATS IT! Eighteen years ago we were afraid that New York as a whole would be anhilated in a few minutes. ALL of it. Not just a building or two on manhattan.
I remember, vividly, how my parents thought me that it was a cold war between the US and the Soviet Union.
I remember the retorics. I remember the fear. I remember how I was told that we could be destroyed by nuclear weapons.
I remember MAD.
I was born in 1979.
People born just 5 or 6 years later than me - do not remember this. They have never experienced the cold war. They can't remember it. They can't even understand the doomsday clock, the fear, the MAD uncertainty.
I was 10 years old. I helped chop the Berlin wall down. Physically.
People, just 5 years younger than me - don't understand what it was all about. They don't remember.
Now, this article is about the doomsday clock moving forward. From 17 minutes to midnight. Heh
And these guys want to move the hands forward on a clock of global doom. Right.
It was right in the 80s. It's not right anymore. Move it backwards three or four hours, and it might be right. This way - it's just ridiculous.
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
No need to carpet bomb with conventional nukes.
Cobalt nukes use cobalt instead of U235 as a tamper, subsequently they are much less powerful devices. All the conventional nukes weren't enough to cover the earth with fallout. Cobalt bombs less so. Szilárd was likewise engaging in hyperbole when he said cobalt bombs could destroy all life on earth. Even granting the impossibility of covering the surface of the earth with cobalt 60, there are plenty of forms of life which are largely unperturbed by the amount of radiation you'd see.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Meanwhile, the Who-Still-Gives-A-Flying-Fig-About-The-Doomsday-Cl ock Clock remains stuck on flashing 12:00
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Seeing as how this "clock" doesn't move according to any kind of standardized unit or reason, the clock is meaningless. Just because the clock may show that we are close to midnight (nuclear war) means nothing. The clock moves forward or backward in relation to the descisions of a panel of people. The times shown on the clock are representational of the personal feeling of a small panel of people, and are entirely NOT truly, or even remotely, reflecive of the actual situation, but reflective of a percieved situation as interpreted and told by a couple of people.
Kind of how like religion is entirely dependant on the interpretations of certain individuals, and varies on who you talk to, and, like the clock, does not give an accurate reflection of reality as it actually is. Also, what use is a clock, even as an interpretational device, if it's movement is entirely subjective, and does not have a set standard of criterion that determine it's fowrad or backward movement except for the feelings of certain individuals. The indicative value of the clock is the same as the DHS color coded Terror Threat Level.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
OMG I've got 7 minutes to live!!!
Which raises an interesting question.
What would you do if you knew you only had 7 minutes to live?
Heh .. I don't have words for the stupidity. The world is relatively safe. The major disaster and major fear we have is from islamic terrorists sending a couple of planes into a building or two. A BUILDING OR TWO! THATS IT! Eighteen years ago we were afraid that New York as a whole would be anhilated in a few minutes. ALL of it. Not just a building or two on manhattan.
People living in Tokyo or Tehran might not share your sentiment.
You certainly have a point, but please also consider that several world leaders have at least played with broadening the military situations where nukes would be considered an apt tool. A 'local' war in th middle east would still kill tens of millions and have severe worldwide consequences. I would feel rather uneasy as an Israeli or Iranian now.
And there are still thousands of nukes in the hands of the superpowers - enough to destroy most of the world's population. The MAD principle is still true, maybe only in a more passive variant.
it basically tells how much good feelings and vibes the folk had after reading the news that day, every bit as religious and superstitious and as meaningful as going to a Tarot card reader or staring at goat entrails.
speculation is now modded informative? WTF has happened to this place?
Damn, that means Doomsday will be tape-delayed on the west coast.
Nothing to see here, move along.
True, but if we manage to wipe humanity off the planet, I'm not really going to care how much bacteria is left.
it's safe to say that when environmentalists say we are going to end the planet they mean it in the context of humankind. it is well within our means to make earth uninhabitable by humans and thus non-existent to humans (if we dont exist then we cant conceive of anything and thus nothing exists to us).
granted they're not using the best language but their warning is certainly worth listening to.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
I was with you up until there. You were born in '79? I was born ten years earlier, so I spent the '80s as a teenager. There's just no possible way that you could live through the '80s as a teenager and not be affected by the Cold War. I remember having a few (just a few) nightmares about being roasted in a nuclear fire.
That, or I was super clued-in or hypersensitive, which I can't possibly believe.
Then again, after the Challenger disaster, the next morning I woke up with tears streaming down my face. So... yeah, maybe you have a point.
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
I just remembered Iron Maiden's song "2 Minutes to Midnight". There is a good wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_Minutes_to_Midnight article about it that references the doomsday clock.
Okay, I admit it -- I'm an idiot and I got my signs reversed. You may now publically lambast me. Or get me a job at NASA.
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
1. Iran's working on developing nuclear technology.
2. North Korea already has nuclear technology and is working on a delivery mechanism. And their leader is batshit insane.
3. The collapse of Russia is not the sort of thing that moves us farther from doomsday. The central government of the old USSR understood MAD and that they shouldn't bomb us back to the stone age because we'd do the same thing right back to them. Now we have a bunch of independant Soviet states with a bunch of poorly secured and not-centrally-managed nukes laying around.
4. You can fit a nuke in a suitcase nowadays. What do you want to bet the US has some sort of system set up right now leftover from the cold war that will detect a nuke going off in a major US city and interpret it as a time-to-blow-up-Russia scenario? A terrorist blowing up one city might end up in more than just that one city going up.
I was also born in '79. I'm more afraid now than I was in the 80s.
Doodily-ding-dong tick tock
Doodily-ding-dong tick tock
Doodily-ding-dong tick tock
Doodily-ding-dong tick tock
Doodily-ding-dong tick tock
Doodily-ding-dong tick tock
Dethklok, Dethklok, Dethklok, Dethklok
I'm
Ticking
For
The
Dethklok, Dethklok
Skwisgar Skwigelf taller than a tree
Tokie Warthoot not a bumble bee
William Murderface Murderface Murderface
Pickles the Drummer, Doodily-doo
Nathan Explosion!
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
Thank God, we were all waiting with baited breath to know.
Seriously though, isn't this basically just some stupid press release from a magazine that very few people subscribe to about something they're about to do that is of no real consequence whatsoever?
Jonathan B.
So, does this piss anyone else off. Yeah, sure, South Korea just got nukes, the Russians are still a bit scary, and Iran getting nukes would be like the Kazon getting their grubby little paws on the Death Star, and there is a real threat of nuclear attack, but is a few seconds in the spotlight really worth getting people panicked, as these things tend to do? Apparently, they think so. Every idiot knows that fear breeds hate, and I'd say there's enough hate going around right now, so, in a sense, the action of predicting nuclear doom may speed it up slightly. What I personally love about nuclear war is that, if it does happen, it will probably be thanks to the assholes in power on both sides who won't just say, 'Okay, those guys are a different race/religion/whatever pathetic excuse they're poisoning the minds of the people with, so what?' In other words, dying in a nuclear war will probably be the equivalent to getting killed by a baby with a big gun. Yay.
Rather than maintain this fear clock, wouldn't their time be better spent trying to dismantle the potential causes of nuclear war? Example, in Iran, young children are taught that they are divinely created by Allah, whereas 'the evil, bloodthirsty Jews' evolved from monkeys, not unlike early eugenics movements tried to tell us that white people were 'more evolved' than black people. The people are essentially being infected by a generational hate meme. Find a way to dismantle that, and the threat of war will greatly diminish.(improving the quality of life and getting the leaders to spread the oil income around rather than buying themselves yet another solid gold shitter and blaming America for poverty wouldn't hurt either)
In other words, if they really cared, they'd ditch the clock of AHHHH! and try to generate tolerance rather than fear.
The day after the burning crusade comes out? This can't be good...
How the hell did I get such bad karma? I blame the meds...
Conservationists are the ones who are truly concerned about preserving natural resources for future generations, and appropriately restoring and maintaining balance in the ecosystem.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
This was a pretty wicked nuke. Only a 7 on the Richter Scale though.
For anyone who is curious as to how the world would end up after a nuclear war, watch the movie Threads. It should lay any and all questions to rest.
Do not downmod posts "overrated" simply because you disagree with them.
When would you NOT feel uneasy as an Israeli or Iranian in, say, the past 100 or even 1000 years?
Do not downmod posts "overrated" simply because you disagree with them.
Course we can't. Roaches have 600 times the radiation resistance that humans do, right up there with Neocons. Course, who can tell the difference these days?
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Sure, if you just drop bombs randomly, we probably couldn't blow up the planet. Give them to me and I'm sure I could split this sucker in half. Am I restricted just to using them on Earth or can I use them in space too?
Ok, so who will put the clock at midnight? If doomsday arrives there will be no one to advance the clock. Or will doomsday only arrive if we put the clock at midnight.
Then who is going to set the doomsday clock to midnight when it is doomesday? ...so every slashdotter realize what has happened outside? ...wait...(looking out the window)
--
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly, until he know that every day is Doomsday -Ralph Waldo Emerson-
I would imagine they're more concerned with the Americans starting a global nuclear war, not Islamic "terrorists."
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
You forgot:
- China has both the nukes and the missiles - loads of them
- Israel has nukes and they are arguably the most militant nation in the Middle East
- India has nukes and did *not* sign the Non-Prolifration Treaty; they can also take stuff to space
- Pakistan has nukes
- India and Pakistan are US-friendly *now*, but so was Saddam ~20 years ago
- The Australian government wants to export as much uranium as possible and also toying with the thought of setting up enrichment facilities
- There were rumours of the US examining the use of "tactical nukes" in "local conflict"
- France and the UK have their toys too, although they are possibly the only ones who don't rattle their sabres these days
- The US seem to have this "only remaining superpower" superiority complex, loads of nukes, and is trigger-happy (although Iraq should be sobering)
I was born - well, long before '79. I am *much* more worried now than I was in the 80s or 70s.
All these posts, and not a single mention of Skynet.
Disclaimer: I browse at whatever the default score threshold is.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
I was with you up until there. You were born in '79? I was born ten years earlier, so I spent the '80s as a teenager.
I've got a pretty good memory from 1985 and onwards. I started following the news around then.
I remember having a few (just a few) nightmares about being roasted in a nuclear fire.
I don't remember any nightmares, but I do remember reading quite a bit about the Hydrogen bomb, and calculating how far away the Big Bastards of Hydrogen bombs would have to be without me being torched. SS-18 SATAN, wasn't that the big bad Soviet nuke?
Then again, after the Challenger disaster, the next morning I woke up with tears streaming down my face.
People just two years younger than me do not remember neither the Challenger disaster nor the Palme murder in Stockholm/Sweden (I'm in Oslo/Norway). I remember both very, very well.
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
People living in Tokyo or Tehran might not share your sentiment.
Not when you rip only parts of what I said out of the context of this entire thread - which is the DOOMSDAY clock. Doomsday for all the world. I was comparing the fear of terrorists knocking down a few buildings to the fear of the entire city being leveled - not to mention all major cities.. at the same time.
Tokyo certainly is under threat from NK. Teheran isn't. Israel wouldn't nuke Teheran, as they would know the response of the entire middle east - and the entire world.
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
On that topic, amateur geocide watchers and fans of the International Earth-Destruction Advisory Board will be reassured to learn that unlike the Nuclear Death Clock, the Current Earth-Destruction Status is expected to remain at its current status of "Not Destroyed" for the forseeable future.
qntm.org
Seven minutes 'till the next episode of Metalocalypse starts? Rock On!!
Deathclok! Deathclok!
Don't worry if you're a kleptomaniac, you can always take something for it.
I understand where you're coming from. I'm five years older than you, and I remember watching documentaries on the effects of a nuclear strike as a kid. We had a general assumption that it was pretty much a matter of time back then. When reagan was president and was joking on a live mic about bombing russia, it just wasn't funny for people who didn't have access to an underground bunker. :D
I'd like to think that this is all behind us, and I agree, the chances of a US V Russia nuclear war are minimal now, but sadly, I think climate change is getting to the point where its just as bad a concern.
I don't expect there will be some nuclear-war scale tsunmai or similar event that will flatten London, but I *do* expect there to be enough seriously destructive weather events that lead us towards mass refugee problems, maybe some localised wars over resources, and some serious disruptions to the global economy as the climate shit hits the fan, and oil prices go insane.
Maybe that's just me justifying not having a pension though
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
No, really. Since when, out of morbid curiosity, does an on-topic political exaggeration get troll rated? If the moderator thought this was wrong, they should have posted a rebuttal.
From the Slashdot FAQ;
Troll -- A Troll is similar to Flamebait, but slightly more refined. This is a prank comment intended to provoke indignant (or just confused) responses. A Troll might mix up vital facts or otherwise distort reality, to make other readers react with helpful "corrections." Trolling is the online equivalent of intentionally dialing wrong numbers just to waste other people's time.
Actually we are getting dangerously close to a nuclear war. The US now has TWO Carrier Strike Groups in the Persian Gulf. The Gulf is getting so crowded that a US sub bumped into a Japanese tanker. Ted Koppel on NPR Friday evening said that people in the military have indicated that our assets in the Gulf are not useful for combating the insurgency in Iraq but are well suited for strikes on Iran. Koppel said that senior military personnel have told him that it is likely that the US will be at war with Iran before 2007 is over.y Id=6836561
t ype=topNews&storyID=2007-01-07T185259Z_01_L0675940 5_RTRUKOC_0_UK-IRAN-NUCLEAR-ISRAEL.xml&WTmodLoc=To p%2BNews-C1-Headline-8
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?stor
Israel is drawing up plans for a NUCLEAR strike on Iran's nuclear power program.
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?
In the last several weeks Bush has fired and reassigned several high level military and intelligence people that were in some way in his way to a broader mid-east war. Generals John Abizaid and George Casey who were opposed to an escalation in Iraq and John Negroponte who has recently stated that Iran is 10 years from having the Bomb.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010807R.shtml
I'd say that the doomsday clock is definitely ticking, and we are in for a shit storm in 2007.
-- QED
Try it for yourself! ;)
Side note: Fun game (DEFCON).
It's never just a game when you're winning. - George Carlin
Your post very-much confuses me. Who cares if they are a Teddy Rosevelt style preservationist, who's ultimate goal is preserving the world so that HUMANS can enjoy it, or a spiritual conservationist who believes it's our moral duty to preserve the world for its own sake... ultimately their goals are the same. The term "envirnomentalist" is an umbrella term for all of the above, and it seems like you've pigieon-holed it to a group of almost non-existant radicals.
Very very few environmentalists have any interest in removing the human species from this planet... but drawing attention to our viral-like properties is a dramatic, and motivating analogy. Sure, it might be a bit mellodramatic, but if it gets people's attention, and gets people thinking about how to do better for the future of this world and ourselves, I'm not going to complain.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
It'll advance to midnight after the Chicago Cubs win the World Series in October of this year!
I'm come to appreciate that one's overall level of anxiety has a great deal to do with assessment of danger. Anxiety disorders are the most common psychiatric disorders, and often are not severe enough to interfere with daily functioning, thus not qualifying as a pathology. Millions of people, therefore, are unaware of this subtle coloring of their perceptions.
I've had a couple of mild episodes of OCD, during which I become irrationally fearful of things such as a nuclear attack. At the time, the fears seem fully grounded, usually by such things as 9/11 or new stories about nuclear proliferation and loose nukes. The fear, however, is truly out of proportion, and I fully expect an imminent attack, avoiding places I identify as likely targets. Months later, after treatment, I still recognize that there is a potential for such an event, but that it isn't as realized as I had feared. I have an appreciation of the danger, but not excessive worry about it.
Again, it's a very subtle process. Extreme anxiety is obvious to those around you, and likely yourself, but mild cases aren't so identifiable. They simply steer your thoughts into somewhat more fearful, pessimistic speculation. Most importantly, the anxiety operates at a level below your conscious processes, and thus contaminates your conscious thoughts without your awareness. You can't reason around it, as it is the origin.
So let me understand, a bunch of people that are thought of highly and are very smart still don't know what time it is?
Obama = Socialism.
Actually, a clock is very good. Sagan has pointed out that as long as we have these weapons, their eventual use becomes a statistical certainty. So, the clock will get to midnight unless it is made irrelevant via total disarmament. Ralph Nader's sister pointed out a long time ago that even just nuclear power implies a perpetual security state. Perhaps to make the clocks fully irrelevant, all nuclear waste must be transmuted to stable isotopes so that the requirement for state security structures can be relaxed to the point where thinking of bombing someone just seems silly.
Oh my god, your website is awful. I am appalled that this kind of thing exists. I am going to write my senator (Hillary) and request that this filth be taken off of the internet. You should be ashamed.
I remember the eighties and the Cold War very clearly, as well. It was a scary time, but I don't see any evidence that governments, or even individuals, have become any more rational in the last two decades. If anything, now might be a scarier time. People are more informed, but don't seem to evince more intelligence or common sense.
In the eighties, discussion of nuclear disarmament was everywhere. I went to marches. They told me in school that any day now we'd probably all get blown up by the USSR and we couldn't do anything except complain to our government who didn't seem to give a F&*$ if the world ended.
But that's all ancient history, now, which is what makes now more scary, in my opinion. A threat that no one talks about, a problem that no one acknowledges, and, as you pointed out, a whole generation of people that don't remember or seem to care is a "Bad Thing".
As for the Dooms Day clock, perhaps it has outlived its usefulness, but I don't think so. As a metaphor, it is still valid. A more modern take would be to get a digital Dooms Day clock, have a Web site where people can put in their estimations of the "time", and average the results to move the clock. Or, perhaps, it could give an automated time based on people's threat assessment scores of relevant news items, similar to the SlashDot system.
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." - Mohandas Gandhi
I wonder if any of the following has had an influence on selection of the date to advance the clock:
January 17th,
1945 - Soviet forces capture the almost completely destroyed Polish city of Warsaw.
1961 - U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivers a televised farewell address to the nation three days before leaving office, in which he warns against the accumulation of power by the "military-industrial complex."
1966 - A B-52 bomber collides with a KC-135 Stratotanker over Spain, dropping three 70-kiloton hydrogen bombs near the town of Palomares and another one into the sea.
1991 - Gulf War: Operation Desert Storm began early in the morning. Iraq fires 8 Scud missiles into Israel in an unsuccessful bid to provoke Israeli retaliation.
(Thanks to Wikipedia for these)
As others have indicated; the "clock" is indeed arbitrary and the criteria for setting the clock subjective. In light of that, I'm sure someone on the panel to determine the clock's time is trying to make a statement by selecting the 17th.
I know this will never get modded up, but, the one thing everyone needs to remember about Nuclear War is this:
It isn't profitable.
As long as we as a planet continue to elect cowardly, money-grubbing politicians and letting big business grip them tightly by the short-and-curlies we have nothing to worry about.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Atomic scientists prepared to move the hands this morning but found the batteries dead, now they're not sure how close the earth is to total destruction: http://carbolicsmokeblog.blogspot.com/2007/01/atom ic-scientists-discover-batteries.html