Yes. Then, we had world leaders whose philosophies and policies almost led to war, but who personally didn't really want to go there. Now we have a couple world leaders who don't seem to grasp the significance of their fights, and are just driving their decisions with their own egos.
This "warmongering" was the rationale for advancing the clock dramatically under Reagan, but Reagan's policies led to the collapse of the soviet union, so two years after Reagan's term, the clock was moved to its safest ever levels (17 minutes to midnight).
https://www.investors.com/politics/commentary/the-doomsday-c...
Regarding the saber rattling from current POTUS, stating our nuclear arsenal is the most powerful in the world is a non-statement. It changes nothing other than public perception of his political position. It doesn't reduce or increase the power he wields nor does it reduce or increase the power held by NK.
Weirdly, I don't remember The Doomsday Clock being advanced like this during the last decade, when North Korea was furiously and successfully building its store of warheads. That was evidently a time of perfect pacificity.
Also of concern is the new Russian coastal city killer drone submarines and their new generation of hypersonic reentry ICBMs. It is clear evidence that they do not wish to accept a world where the largest military power has anti missile technology capable of diminishing the effectiveness of the Russian offensive nuclear capability.
A nuclear arsenal isn't the only deterrent between US and Russia. Both countries have decades of experience with nuclear defense. NK is relatively (or possibly absolutely) defenseless. While there would be enormous casualties (which is horrific and sad but is not doomsday), the fight would be extremely one-sided. Nobody else, including Putin, wants to get involved in a global nuclear catastrophe. At worst, US would be slapped with consequences six-ways-from-Sunday: think Germany after WW2. With a sane president, US wouldn't even have to use nukes to quash NK and, you never know, someone might actually calm the president if that time comes.
However, there is always a possibility - a nuke is sabotaged and lands in Russia, or something.
In contrast, inaction is now precisely what will doom us.
"Scientists <verb>."
Nobody cares that "scientists" did something. We care about the science of what they did, sure. But this is a built-in appeal to authority that seems completely anti-hacker to me.
For making the actual bombs, yes, you need scientists and engineers, but the use (or likelihood of use) of the bombs is not a scientific issue.
> It only breaks when one uses authority in one field to claim credibility in something else.
Which is exactly what they're doing.
I don't think that qualified authorities need to be introduced with "scientists <verb>."
What they should be doing is providing a confidence level of nuclear war, eg 3±2% chance of nuclear war in 2018.
Furthermore, conflating nuclear apocalypse with other existential threats to humanity (climate change, disease, asteroid, gamma ray burst, vacuum decay, etc.) is at best confusing. I guess a general "5% chance irrevocable extinction event begins in 2018" would have some value, it would be far better to report on individual extinction vectors so we can prioritize countermeasures.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_Clock#/media/File:Doo...
So... depending on how they meant to word that, are they seriously wagging their finger at the public for not blindly falling in line behind this unprecedented, petty shit-show? That's an impressive amount of hubris.
"Doomsday Clock #3" is out today from D.C. comics.
It's a mega event that crosses characters from Alan Moore's The Watchmen with more traditional D.C. characters like Batman and Superman. I'm enjoying it quite a bit even though its exploitative and somewhat tarnishes the legacy of the greatest comic book of all time.
Or clever marketing? #FollowTheMoney (just kidding)
"The world has seen the threat posed by the misuse of information technology and witnessed the vulnerability of democracies to disinformation."
2 minutes to midnight in 1953:
"from Moscow to Chicago, atomic explosions will strike midnight for Western civilization."
https://thebulletin.org/timeline
Are they being secretly ironic, giving an example of "fake news"? (To be fair, the longer statement is more detailed than their summary.)
To note:
NK's latest public test would kill ~33 mi^2. Not a lot of fun.
The US's Castle Bravo kills ~1,400 mi^2, most of the DMV region.
The USSR's Tzar Bomba kills ~6,600 mi^2, nearly the entire LA basin.
http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/
Pro-tip: The button sizes don't matter
Sure, it'd be remembered in history books forever and up to hundreds of millions would die but this wouldn't even register on a "doomsday" scale.
During the Cold War, by contrast, the Soviet Union had approximately ~48,000 warheads.
There's a nice graph on Wikipedia that provides a nice overview that is worth taking a look at:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_Clock#/media/File%3...
[edit: usage/grammar]
If you don’t think the way Trump and Kim Jong Un have been interacting is a reason for concern I don’t even know what to say to you.
And the point of this isn’t to make people panic, it’s to point out how dangerous of a situation we are in and maybe get people to think about it and change course in some way.
So much for percived danger and actuall danger.
Let's be frank; if North Korea simply goes insane and launches everything it could conceivably have 5 years from now, it wouldn't even remotely resemble that outcome. At a civilizational scale, the millions of deaths, the square miles of uninhabitable land, the major disruption to international trade and unknowable potential changes in the international political landscape would still be a civilizational inconvenience, not the end of civilization. Even if it literally precipitated World War Three somehow, it would very likely still not even remotely reach the outcome that the doomsday clock was originally created to warn against. The Cold War legitimately threatened civilization as a whole, with a distinct possibility of human extinction.
To advance the clock in 2018 "because North Korea" is, in a sort of ironic backfiring way, an admission of just how far we have in fact come since the clock was started, because back in the 60s or 70s, the thought of advancing the clock because of this level of sabre rattling wouldn't have even crossed anyone's mind. This would just be Tuesday in the Cold War world.
(Similarly, advancing the clock because of "climate change" is another admission that the world has gotten much safer since the Cold War. "In 50-100 years, things might get civilizationally-inconvenient" is not the same threat as "Tomorrow, the human race may be on an irreversible course to extinction.")
My generation has not grown to fear the bombs as the previous generation did. When someone of my generation is behind the buttons, I wonder if somewhere in the back of their minds there isn't a part of them that says 'perhaps in this and this situation it'd be okay to press the big red button?'.
I think the horror that war/these weapons cause will slowly drift from collective memory in mainstream western society. The warnings of the previous generation will be an endorsement of the destructive power of these weapons, instead of a deterrent of their usage.
...ummm....
"North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the “Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times.” Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!"
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018
Is this just a way for some people to broadcast their current level of fear that's caught on with the wider public?
My point isn't that we are blameless, but that this has been forced upon us in varying degrees. Our options each election year are purposefully limited, and no matter the campaign promise, we get the same results each time--and those are the officials we have a modicum of control over through elections.
We're responsible for fixing it, but distrust in the system is an integral part of fixing it.
As it turned out, the First World War was not fought between Serbia and the Austro-Hungarian royalty, nor was the Second World War fought between Germany and Poland.
> Even if it literally precipitated World War Three somehow, it would very likely still not even remotely reach the outcome
There are things happening today that are more dangerous than the Cold War. You just don't know about them yet.
That is not a defense for the scientists moving the clock. That's not what the scientists were claiming. They claim they're moving the clock for North Korea and Climate Change, not biological warfare (with or without a soupcon of genetic engineering), the immanent victory of the New World Order, the immantization of the eschaton, or whatever else you're referring to. The stated reasons are showboating, compared even to the known dangers of the Cold War.
Try a library?
If the US military seriously thought the North Koreans were about to nuke an ally, it'd pre-empt that with conventional and/or nuclear means. And if POTUS were serious about nuking another country, I don't think he'd last long in office, let alone manage to carry out the act.
I'd be happy to bet as much money as I can muster as an indication of my confidence in our continued existence. Any takers? :P
