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Doomsday Clock Remains at Five Minutes to Midnight
Lasrick writes "The Doomsday Clock remains at 5 minutes to midnight. In a letter to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and members of the UN Security Council, the Bulletin announced its decision and how it was made. The decision to move (or to leave in place) the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock is made every year by the Bulletin's Science and Security Board in consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which includes 18 Nobel laureates. The Clock has become a universally recognized indicator of the world's vulnerability to catastrophe from nuclear weapons, climate change, and new technologies emerging in other domains."
Reasons for the clock remaining at five minutes include the U.S. and Russian not doing much for disarmament increasing nuclear weapon stockpiles in India and China, stalled efforts to reduce carbon emissions globally, and "killer robots."
We have an unstable dictatorship in range of several extremely wealthy Asian nations with mutual defense treaties. World War III is just one temper tantrum away.
Ah yes, killer robots.
Seriously, this particular instrument has always been a "be afraid, due to mangled metaphor" instrument for PR, and never really meant anything meaningful and measurable.
I mean, we do lack an objective instrument for how screwed we are as a species, but "any minute now" is just a terribly uninformative model.
Or is there no links?
So the doomsday clock is a fucking joke?
Ok, I understand nuclear weapons stockpiles, and natural catastrophes... but "killer robots"? Isn't the doomsday clock supposed to indicate how close we are to global disaster? How does "killer robots" enter in exactly? I mean in the real world, not in the Terminator universe.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Does anybody really care about this stupid metaphor and the idiots in charge of setting the time? It's so ridiculous that when I saw it in a movie I laughed, and then later found out it was real and laughed much harder.
Anyone seen any mentions of safe nuclear power technologies?
"[...] catastrophe from nuclear weapons, climate change, and new technologies emerging in other domains"
So if the nuclear stockpile was reduced but the climate change and destruction of environment were still going on, would the
clock have been moved back then ?
The doomsday clock is what inspires people to keep proclaiming this to be the year of Linux on the desktop.
Where is this Doomsday clock? It certainly can't be Europe or America, because otherwise it'd be at 5 minutes to 11 due to daylight savings.
Summation 2
As clearly this is for those causing it to exist at all.... You know those who like living on the edge...
The real reason the clock remains so close, is the very real possibility of the singularity caused by the Grey Google.
When the Google consumes every last company on earth, what else can they acquire but your matter?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Sending off drones or other machines/vehicles with weapons into foreign nations, without declaring war, and covertly, seems pretty dangerous to me. Seems like very fertile grounds for an international crisis. Lots of groups will like the idea, not all of them nations.
what the fuck are you going on about.
get back on your meds
Since when did the doomsday clock include climate change? Since Al Gore became master of earth?
Call me crazy or old but I thought it was about nuclear holocaust.
Now That's What I Call EDGY
The US and Russia have had nukes for 70 years now. I don't know the exact numbers but IIRC a Tom Clancy's novel says Russia / Soviet Union has 27,000 nukes alone. India and China have possessed them for the better part of the last half-century. North Korea can always go nut, but their nuke is more is a gerrymandering device than a serious global threat. They may hit Seoul... if they aim at Tokyo.
Climate change take years to become a major problem for homo sapiens. The dinosaurs took 100,000 years to go extinct from the impacts of the K-T event. And that's considered a very rapid extinction.
If the 24-hour clock is the age of the Earth, human only existed in the last minute. 5 minutes to catastrophe is plenty of time.
A stopped clock is right twice a day. The doomsday clock, it turns out, has never been right.
But maybe this time is different.
... than to constantly use fear of imminent danger to try to scare them into action, and then have nothing happen.
It's classic 'boy who cried wolf'. I don't know what the right way is, but I can't see any evidence that the Doomsday Clock is having any effect (...is there any?)
I'm surprised they aren't claiming it's 1 minute 'til.
The clock inspired an Iron Maiden classic 80s nuke rock piece. When MTV played videos, nuclear war and/or post nuclear settings were a recurring theme since the cold war was still on and intensified during the Reagan administration. I should make a list of these videos if somebody hasn't already.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Technological changes are outpacing humanity’s ability to manage them in ways that ensure our safety and security.
Combine that with automated killing of automatons. I challenge you not to shiver.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Never attribute to conspiracy what can be adequately explained by a bunch of hippies desperate for attention.
Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons. This has been verified repeatedly by the IAEA. The only people who say otherwise are the Israeli government, because they would really really like the United States to attack Iran. That's why their lobbyists have been working really hard to undo the deal that the Obama administration cut with the Iranians and the rest of the UN Security Council to make sure that the Iranians never get a nuke.
North Korea has had nukes for about a decade now. The serious threat has never been North Korea nuking the US, it's been North Korea nuking South Korea or Japan. They could already do that if they wanted to, and haven't, because they and their Chinese backers aren't really that crazy or stupid. Kim Jong Un has to make a lot of noise like he's going to launch a serious attack in order to gain credibility with the hardliners at home who would probably have him killed if he didn't look like he was one of them. The NK nukes are pretty much there as a doomsday device to make sure the US and its allies doesn't attack them again, and they're doing exactly that.
I am officially gone from
Why aren't we a little bit safer? The doomsday clock was primarily about WW3 and the huge overkill of nukes that the US and the USSR had literally pointing at each other. Sure we still have some, but the stockpiles are significantly smaller. Communism fell in Russia, and they are sorta kinda our friends.
How are we going to kill ourselves? WW3 would have done it in a matter of hours.
Global warming? I doubt thats gonna be doomsday for us.
North Korea? If they ever tried to fire anything, it would be blown out of the sky.. (by our killer robots)
Killer robots are just dumb and nobel laureates should be ashamed for putting that in.
5 minutes to midnight lasted for hours on Polar Express, so I'm not too worried.
Heathen! The doomsday clock and the government knows better than you. Now go back to your straw hut and eat your ration of tofu, citizen!
From the airport: Terror level is "Orange". I have a hard time believing that people get paid to come up with this stuff.
Does anybody else think it's funny that we're reading an article about an anachronistic clock?
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
From wikipedia:
Reflecting international events dangerous to humankind, the Clock's hands have been adjusted twenty times since its inception in 1947, when the Clock was initially set to seven minutes to midnight.
They give a good graph here.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
we do lack an objective instrument for how screwed we are as a species, but "any minute now" is just a terribly uninformative model.
Relative to the timescale of the human species, I'd say "any minute now" is pretty accurate. We've been around for over 200,000 years - but in the space of about one hundred years, we've irreversibly altered the planet and created the tools with which to destroy it completely, and I'm not just talking about the nukes.
I'd give us about 100 years tops before we're at post-apocalyptic climate/civilization status.
Also, given that both the USSR/Russia and the US have had numerous accidents and close-calls involving nuclear weapons and those weapons are aging and not really going away...yeah, I'd say it's pretty accurate. I've always been amazed that we haven't blown up anything "by accident" yet.
Please help metamoderate.
While it is true that the existence of any nuclear weapons *at all* brings us a lot closer to midnight than we otherwise would be....the existence of "a lot more than we would like" does not and should not bring us any closer to midnight.
Once we have enough nuclear weapons on hand to destroy the world, the only indicator of risk is the likelihood of us using them. Having the ability to destroy the world twice over doesn't make us any more likely to destroy the world than if we could only destroy it once over.
Further, anyone who believes that a nuclear-capable country will voluntarily give up *all* its nuclear weapons is simply being naive.
So, disarmament gestures are just that...gestures....they don't actually increase our safety at all.
.. because 5 minutes is not long enough at all to hook up with the hottie down the hall and be all "GAAAA!!! We're all going to die!!! Quick! .. now! In the supply closet!!" So we really need at least 20 minutes on the clock at a minimum. I'm going to write my congressman.
Janet Black: Doctor Manhattan as you know the Doomsday Clock is a symbolic clock face analogizing humankind's proximity to extinction, midnight representing the threat of nuclear war. As of now it stands at four minutes to midnight. Would you agree that we are that close to annihilation?
Jon Osterman: My father was a watch maker. He abandoned it when Einstein discovered time is relative. I would only agree that a symbolic clock is as nourishing to the intellect as photograph of oxygen to a drowning man.
China doesn't bat an eyelash at the idea of 25 million starving people - in the 80's that was normal in China. North Korea is basically a puppet and useful if China needs an excuse to attack someone else by provoking a fight they can enter (and have some nominal reason for invading said 3rd country)
The NK nukes are pretty much there as a doomsday device to make sure the US and its allies doesn't attack them again, and they're doing exactly that.
Agree with you on everything but the "again." North Korea invaded the South, not the other way around. Minor quibble, though.
Yeah....you have no clue.
... than to constantly use fear of imminent danger to try to scare them into action, and then have nothing happen.
It's classic 'boy who cried wolf'. I don't know what the right way is, but I can't see any evidence that the Doomsday Clock is having any effect (...is there any?)
You don't see any evidence? Are you somehow magically immune to taxes and travel policies?
Might I direct your attention to the trillion-dollar DHS organization that continues to justify itself through FUD.
Ironically, death by 1,000 cuts is the government mantra. The fact that you didn't see these cuts goes to show you just how good they are at it.
This device continues to serve it's purpose. To justify pointless budgets in the war on "terror", which includes the age-old threats and the new ones.
Me and the CIA
Right, because clearly we are closer to doom than in 1968, when the clock was at 7 minutes, and the world was involved in numerous proxy wars including the 6 day war, the Vietnam War, and the Indo-Pakistani War while two more nations, France and China, acquire nuclear weapons. We are definitely closer to imminent destruction today than we were in 1968.
We are doomed, I say, doomed as doomed can be! (y' know)
He will save us from nukes.
People have felt like the proverbial doomsday clock is at five minutes before midnight for most of recorded history. I bet, someday, they'll discover a "doomsday" gene that causes our species to always feel this way. Probably a holdover from our primordial ancestors who were always five minutes away from being some other animal's next meal. Except now we have big brains and can speculate and imagine the future, and the future always looks bleak to us -- possibly because we know we will not be a part of it.
Proverbs 21:19
I thought they made the doomsday clock up for Watchmen.
It doesn't surprise me much that it existed during the Cold War, but that there's an organization that maintains it to this day is a pretty sad commentary on modern bureaucracy.
Killer robots? Is this a movie?
Climate change? Climate always changes up and down, it has not ended earth in the last million years.
Nukes? Hardly matters how many there are, its whether a country is going to use them that should matter.
Just a way for governments to bring fear to people so they can pass laws that people normally do not want.
A little edit due to a typo in the summary: "The Clock has become a universally recognized indicator of the world's vulnerability to fearmongering, and our desperate need for people to tell us how we're 'utterly certainly doomed...any minute now' by anyone wanting our attention."
-Styopa
What?? Only 5 minutes to midnight?
Damnit, I've been scared way back when from a teenager from the cold war and MAD and all. And now it's terrorists and the economy and the government and global warming and nanobots and job migration and what-all?
You've got to be kidding me. No, that's not right -- you ARE kidding me. Crank that thing up to exactly midnight already and let's get this global party started! Otherwise SHUT THE HELL UP -- things aren't always as bad as they seem. (...or as good as they seem, either.)
By the way, you forgot about the upcoming water shortage and superbug antibiotics problems. Oh, supervolcanos, black-holes and upcoming entropy problems too!
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
The "again" part was that once the US/UN forces had pushed the North out of the South, they kept right on going until the North was crammed up against the Chinese border. There was of course a counteroffensive which sent the border close to where it had started.
I am officially gone from
Fair enough.
or super-sharkanos.
"While it is true that the existence of any nuclear weapons *at all* brings us a lot closer to midnight than we otherwise would be....the existence of "a lot more than we would like" does not and should not bring us any closer to midnight."
That they exists keeps the clock between 5 and 10 minutes to midnight. how many is the variable of a minute or two.
not to defend the practice as a whole, just comparing 60 minute's variable to a 5 minute variable. A minute change is a minute. (pun intended)
The missile, if ever built and launched at SK, will hit China. Then the problem will immediately and with extreme prejudice solve itself.
Their feed from SkyNet is very informative.
Their treaties supersede US constitutional law.
Is that Eastern time or Zulu?
No brain, no pain.
80's China is very different from 2014 China.
To remember when it was at 2 minutes during the Cuban Missle Crisis I think?
People once told me 68K ram was all we needed,
That thing has never kept good time. Someone needs to change the batteries.
This reminds me of the color coding terror system. It's never going to be green. Think about it. What's the ideal time anyway on this clock? 6:05p ?
OMG have you people seen their website! It's all "subscribe now" "donate now" "we bring fear, give us your money!" ridiculous
If 'global warming' is calculated into a doomsday prediction, you already know it's fake.
Then we can all sing "Two minutes to miiiidnight, the hands that threaten doooom..." \m/