The “Doomsday Clock”—the symbolic meter of the proximity to global catastrophe (“Midnight”), usually imagined as nuclear war and the end of the world, maintained by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Currently at 90 seconds to midnight, as of this writing.
Something I’ve always wondered, though—and especially if someone actually has a contingency plan for—is: what’s the plan if there’s a limited nuclear war, but not a civilization-ending (or science magazine publication ending) one?
Say, Ruritania and Berzerkistan get into a scrap over the Banoi Archipelago, leading to the use of ten tactical nuclear weapons, split between each side, almost entirely in battlefield use, before the fighting grinds to a halt with a ceasefire and a formal armistice. 'Takes about a week. None of the permanent members of the UN Security Council (the major nuclear powers) are even anything more than tangentially involved.
Obviously horrifying and bad, likely with far-reaching geopolitical consequences, but most of the world escapes intact, and physically unaffected. So…what do the fellows manning the Clock do, next? Just move it closer but not to Doomsday, or is it time for a more indepth rebranding, so they can update the official merch before the holiday shopping season?