Tick…Tick…Tick

Doomsday Clock: Minutes to Midnight, 1947-2012 (US-PD)

On Friday, Vladimir Putin said this: “I want to remind you that Russia is one of the most powerful nuclear nations. This is a reality, not just words.” He’s also started calling eastern Ukraine “New Russia,” which is a little scary since we have a good idea where that could go and more than a little ironic because Putin seems intent on bringing the Cold War “Old Russia” back into our lives. On reading about these events, I wondered if they had moved the hands on the Doomsday Clock.

If you’re not familiar with the DC (and why should you be?), it first appeared in 1947, created by the members of the Science and Security Board of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. The “minutes to midnight on the clock” represent how close the world is to a politically related global catastrophe. Initially, this meant nuclear war but now climate change and “new developments in the life sciences and technology that could inflict irrevocable harm to humanity” have been added to the cheery mix.

The closest we’ve ever been to such a disaster is two minutes. This happened in 1953 when the United States and Soviet Russia tested atom bombs within nine months of each other. The farthest it has ever been away from midnight is seventeen minutes. This occurred in 1991 when (more irony) the US and Russia signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. In 2014 (so far), the clock sits at five minutes to twelve, put there for these reasons:

Stalled negotiations to reduce nuclear arsenals in the United States and Russia, expansion and modernization of the nuclear stockpiles in China, Pakistan and India, not properly secured nuclear materials worldwide, continuing construction of nuclear power plants without bulletproof safety features, lack of political will in the world to address the issues related to climate change.

An op-ed piece on the Discovery News website suggests that the Doomsday Clock is a tired metaphor and should be retired. It’s been the “boy who cried ‘Doom!'” for sixty-seven years now and we all know how that story goes. The author suggests a new metaphor for what we can “look forward” to: “In light of the ever-increasing dangers posed by climate change, might we suggest a goose with a thermometer sticking out of it? Once it gets to a certain temperature, then we know we’re cooked.”

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Visit Kim Pederson’s blog RatBlurt: Mostly Random Short-Attention-Span Musings