The Doomsday Clock just moved: Its now 2 minutes to midnight, the symbolic hour of the apocalypse

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: Washington Post

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists advanced the symbolic Doomsday Clock a notch closer to the end of humanity on Thursday, moving it ahead by 30 seconds. It is now set at two minutes to “midnight.”

In moving the clock 30 seconds closer to the hour of the apocalypse, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists cited “the failure of President Trump and other world leaders to deal with looming threats of nuclear war and climate change.”

The organization now believes “the world is not only more dangerous now than it was a year ago; it is as threatening as it has been since World War II,” Bulletin officials Lawrence M. Krauss and Robert Rosner wrote in an op-ed published Thursday by The Washington Post. “In fact, the Doomsday Clock is as close to midnight today as it was in 1953, when Cold War fears perhaps reached their highest levels.”

Krauss, a theoretical physicist, and Rosner, an astrophysicist, added: “To call the world nuclear situation dire is to understate the danger — and its immediacy. North Korea’s nuclear weapons program appeared to make remarkable progress in 2017, increasing risks for itself, other countries in the region and the United States.”

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2018/01/25/after-a-missile-scare-and-insult-war-with-north-korea-its-time-to-check-the-doomsday-clock/?utm_term=.a2703f267ebb&wpisrc=al_news__alert-hse--alert-national&wpmk=1

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It should be 30 seconds to midnight, not two minutes.

[dewsgirl]

1. I remember being freaked out when it was 6 minutes till midnight.

[sarisataka]

2. Couldn't resist...

[Initech]

3. If we're going to go out, Iron Maiden is a good way to go!

[Liberalagogo]

4. We're now back to 1953

https://thebulletin.org/timeline

This is the closest it's ever been. Tied with 1953.

[Hortensis]

5. I don't understand why people keep worrying about nuclear

attacks when cyber and energy grid are so much more likely. It would take nation-level technology to take down our entire energy grid, but that would kill most Americans, and thus America, and not send clouds of fallout around the planet. Unlike missiles, an attacking nation might be able to hide its identify from us, for a while anyway.

And even a rogue nation or terrorist group could conceivably have the ability to take out enough of our nation to cripple us dreadfully, in the process killing at least tens of millions. Imagine the southwest without power and water in August.

Then there is pandemic illness, which we are nowhere near ready for, and the Republican government is dismantling many of our proactive programs to stop it in other nations before it breaks loose. If it ever comes to stopping planes from landing here, as simple-minded fools like Trump imagine, it's too late.

[BumRushDaShow]

6. If you look at their modern criteria, it is no longer narrowed to "nuclear"

it also includes climate change and other things that could contribute to "the end".

The group's reasoning has traditionally focused on the availability of nuclear weapons and a willingness among the world's great powers to use them. But in recent years, the scientists have also considered the threat posed by climate change, which they said in 2007 is “nearly as dire” as the dangers of nuclear weapons.

In advancing the famed clock last year, the group noted that “the global security landscape darkened as the international community failed to come effectively to grips with humanity’s most pressing existential threats, nuclear weapons and climate change.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2018/01/25/after-a-missile-scare-and-insult-war-with-north-korea-its-time-to-check-the-doomsday-clock/?utm_term=.8ebf92b0a2b1

[Hortensis]

8. Yes. I actually mostly meant here on DU and in the media.

It's likely that the media seldom speak of cyber and grid threats because meeting those threats would require extensive investment and physical and legal restructuring that just aren't happening. Also because it hasn't happened big time yet and trying to get people to imagine it enough to be interested isn't profitable.

Nuclear's more familiar. A lot of people have the comfortable notion that we can stop incoming missiles. Trump sure had that notion and, after his "fire and fury" threats to NK, reportedly got educated that it was something like trying to stop a bullet with a bullet. Let's just hope that that at least stuck.

[BumRushDaShow]

10. Protecting the grid

should be a top priority infrastructure project but no one wants to even fathom how to go about it. Just seeing what happened to P.R. and their fragile patchwork grid after Hurricane Maria, should have been enough to be a trigger for something that faded away after the big Northeast/Midwest blackout 15 years ago.... but alas.

[Hortensis]

12. It requires change. One big change would require allowing

some government authority over and coordination of currently independent power companies. The anti-government Kool-Aid served up for decades now affects many of them, who know they are vulnerable more than anyone else. They know remaining unprotected means they can fail completely, and they know that the customers who depend on their energy for life will die if they do, but freedom from government interference is more important.

On the plus side, going solar the right way could create many thousands of mini energy sources that could run independently in an emergency, even though normally they would be part of big grids moving energy around as needed as they do now.

Hillary had intended to have over half a billion solar cells on our roofs by the end of her first term. Unlike the property rights seizures some red states are doing, property owners would still own any energy produced on their own properties but would contract with energy companies to manage it. It's very doable.

[BumRushDaShow]

13. Yes

and with something as "portable" (position-able) as solar, it becomes its own backup. But then there will need to be quite a bit of training to go along with that - notably if something goes wrong. I only mention because there was a huge 11-alarm fire at a Dietz and Watson meats warehouse over in Jersey a few years ago that was sparked on the giant solar-covered roof of their brand new distribution center. The local fire departments were completely at a loss for how to handle it given parts of the roof were potentially still energized, thus the fire could not be tackled as is normally done for a warehouse.

[Hortensis]

14. Interesting, and obvious when pointed out.

Solar would have to be maintained as well as instaalled, not something that can be offshored. Some materials in the cells would have too much value to scrap, so more business and more jobs. An expansion of roofing perhaps that would to some degree offset building industry slowdowns?

I just got a new worry about trees. We need them more than ever now, but cells need sun and branches falling on solar cells would be far more problematic than on roofing materials. Not all are well positioned to have both, by a long shot. Sigh. I'd never buy in one of those neighborhoods without trees...

[burnbaby]

15. finally

thank you for your post. I agree completely with what you wrote

[Kablooie]

7. Someday the doomsday prediction will come true, that's certain.

Nuclear weapons exist and since we see how even as solid and powerful a government as the U.S. can put an insane maniac in control of them, it's inevitable that someday they will be deployed somewhere without any consideration for the future of mankind.

It's inconceivable that they will remain unused forever unless a technology is developed that can neutralize them before they detonate. But as far as I know there is no technology like that on the horizon.

Let's just hope that this doesn't happen within our lifetimes.
Or our children's lifetimes.
Or our grand children's lifetimes.
Or ... etc.

[Hortensis]

16. Completely disagree that "doomsday" is certain.

Ending planetary civilization's kind of a big deal, you know, Kablooie. But just something killing me and mine, or even destroying the part of the nation we live in, isn't "doomsday."

Even much of Eurasia's losing 30-60% of its population to the Black Death wasn't doomsday, and many argue convincingly that a better world arose after, that it was a catalyst to many changes that would have taken much longer otherwise. Like WWI and II ultimately proved to be. For those who survived them, of course.

If you'd like to predict a continuation of disasters that in their times kill large percentages of populations, though, setbacks that take a generation or more to rebuild from at all, I'm, sadly, not up to disbelieving that.

This subject is reminding me of that silly dystopian fiction genre with all books and knowledge dying too so that mankind returns to hunter-gatherer days.

[Kablooie]

17. The doomsday scenario ...

is based on drastic, rapid climate change caused by large scale use of today's extremely massive nuclear weapons.

I don't think it necessary means the end of all human life on earth but it would mean end of modern civilization.
All the global interconnected systems would break down forcing a massive shift to a primitive, local form of self sufficiency.

Nothing like this has occurred in world history so the effects are speculative but I would think that the loss of our technological systems and regression to daily struggle for survival would still fulfill the definition of a "doomsday scenario".

I hope that this is silly dystopian fiction but it is a physical possibility so shouldn't be taken lightly.

[Hortensis]

18. Even given that extremely unlikely event, I think you

and these scientists are vastly underestimating humanity's attachment to indoor pluming and electricity. For sure, understanding of plumbing and hydroelectric power would become extremely valued skills in a village.

[Blue_Tires]

9. Remember when even on this site Hillary was a bloodthirsty warmonger

and Trump was the anti-intervention peace candidate?

Seems like 100 years ago...

[BumRushDaShow]

11. Ain't that the truth.

[Hortensis]

19. Not "EVEN" on this site. Especially on our side.

These foolish people threw the election to Trump as surely as most other factors put together.

And now, drip, drip, drip...another two years of the same sort of slow negative, malcontent poison spread to anyone here and anywhere else who'll listen, nothing here, don't bother.

...
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand; ...

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?