In another thread mention is made of the doomsday clock. Since its inception 73 years ago it has never been further that 17 minutes from midnight. What type of world would it need to be for the clock to be set to, oh let’s say 6AM? or Noon?
I’ve wondered that too, since it all seems to be up to their own agenda, anyway. But look here (and scroll down a bit): Doomsday Clock - Wikipedia
It goes positive when a treaty gets signed. That’s it. Why’d they ignore the Oslo Accords? Just because one group doesn’t have nukes? Proxy wars can still cause accidents, can’t they? So, we sign more treaties and the number goes down – add to that climate change treaties, since they’ve added that to the clock. Re-neg on a treaty, clock goes closer to midnight. Sign a bunch of treaties, and don’t follow through for years? You get a comfy number on the dial that means nothing real.
Since this is basically going to be based on opinions, let’s move it to IHMO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Hrm… sorry about that, I actually DID wonder what the group’s rules were, and I DID get an answer from Wikipedia, but really, so much bias from inception, to which treaties they include, to going fractional, to adding climate change, its all a house of cards.
It would certainly have to be pre-nuclear and probably pre-twentieth century. Maybe the “Gay Nineties” of the 19th century? That was a pretty benign era.
Did it change recently due to current events, I wonder?
[Googling…]
Yep, will have an announcement on it in 2 weeks, meaning a change is likely then.
Yeah that would be there annual news conference explaining how the world is going to 'ell based on their opinion. Still wonder why it is always so close to the end.
Ever since they started adding climate change to the clock it really started to make things complicated, almost a “mission creep” sort of thing.
I’d say noon would probably be if everyone agreed to disarm nuclear weapons but still had stockpiles that needed to be decommissioned. 6AM would be all major nuclear powers completely decommissioned but rogue nuclear states like North Korea and Israel not being fully transparent still with their arsenals. 1am
I think they lean too far to the pessimistic side of things. Despite Trump and other nationalist rulers around the world, I think the world is safer than during the Cold War, and not just by a little bit. Even including global warming I think we’re a lot closer to something like 8 or 9 PM, and the vast majority of that would be from the global warming rather than the threat of nuclear war. Im not an expert on geopolitical issues, but I doubt we’re less safe now than we were during something like the Cuban missile crisis.
I feel greater confidence in “pessimistic” alarms that may trigger corrections, than in “optimistic” decrees that everything is pretty much okay, don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. I’m not confident the world won’t go to shit. And I’ve no rocket to escape in.
When Donald Trump was elected President, they moved the hand forward by 30 seconds. This was my take before the announcement, and while the numbers may have (slightly) shifted, it’s still correct:
IMHO, they’ve blown up the analogy by keeping the time so close to midnight that it’s irrelevant if it moves forward. There’s 100 seconds left. What happens if there are 14 10-second movements on the “bad” side? How does that even get… ugh. Don’t even get me started. Just a dumb analogy.
US troops have not entered a new theater of active belligerence in four years. First time we have gone that long since the 70s. (Not all sources agree on those definitions,)
As long as nuclear weapons exist, can the clock ever be moved back (much)?
That’s because they’ve run out of places that the troops haven’t gone to.
I don’t think there is full agreement anymore that nuclear detonation is the only, or even the most compelling doomsday scenario we have to consider.
There’s going to be a lot of really embarrassed people if it makes it to 5 minutes after midnight and nothing happens.