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?

Re:Arbitrary?

[GuyMannDude]

I doubt there is an equation involved. But I think one look at today's front page of slashdot justifies moving the hands a little closer to midnight:

• A schoolteacher could get 40 years because her antivirus software subscription ran out.
• A schoolboard rules that global warming is a "mere" scientific theory.
• The US continues to use some idiot system of measurement based on some dead dude's foot.
• The next Star Trek film is about Kirk and Spock -- The Early Years.
• Shatner was allowed to break the news.

If these aren't a sure sign of the apocalypse (especially the last item), I don't know what is.

GMD

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.

strike 12 already...

[10100111001]

I'm sick of waiting for the return of my deity.

Re:strike 12 already...

[Matt Edd]

Hey! Some of us don't have a deity so keep it down.

Preemption

[ewg]

Some superpower or another needs to preemptively attack and destroy this doomsday clock before it hurts someone.

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.

stupid clocks....

[dnc253]

Where did they get their doomsday clock? On my former planet we got one of those, but we could never figure out how to program it, so it just blinked 12:00.

...And our world tragically came to an quick end......

PST

[Ikcor]

Damn, that means Doomsday will be tape-delayed on the west coast.