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."

Comments

Arbitrary?

[Rhesusmonkey]

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?

Hyperbole?

[Gothmolly]

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.

Re:Hyperbole?

[The One and Only]

It's kind of like illustrating the age of the planet as 12 hours and the appearence of humanity and civilization as the last minute/second whatever...

Except without any basis in mathematical fact or measured reality.

Re:Hyperbole?

[gsn]

That most people live their daily lives blissfully ignorant of the dangers of nuclear weapons is entirely irrelevant. I don't think most people have a sense of scale for what a nuclear weapon can do. Therefore, the risk of a nuclear war is meaningless to them. Worse, I've heard and met some people who believe it won't be any worse than a conventional war, and are quite happy saying nuke Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and while you are at it, N. Korea. Sure most people ignore risks and only react after something happens. The trouble with a doomsday scale nuclear war is there isn't an after. Perhaps if you kept that in mind it wouldn't lose so much of its impact.

Not Climate Threats directly

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:strike 12 already...

[HappySqurriel]

I don't know ...

Lately I've been looking into the history of man kind and it seems like at any point in time people were certain that the end of the world was only a generation or two away.

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.

One Bomb is Not "Doomsday"

[timeOday]

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.

Do the submitters even RTFA???

[laughingcoyote]

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).

I remember the 80s. This doomsday clock sucks.

[arcade]

I only remember the 80s.

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. .. and I'm still young.

Now, this article is about the doomsday clock moving forward. From 17 minutes to midnight. 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.

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.