
Scientists move Doomsday Clock ahead to 2 minutes to midnight - alphonsegaston
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/doomsday-clock-2018-1.4502382
======
PopePompous
It's depressing to see adults participate in such a stupid publicity stunt.
Their silly clock was at 7 minutes to midnight during the Cuban Missile
Crisis. Does _anyone_ think we're in a more dangerous moment now than we were
then?

~~~
codingdave
> Does anyone think we're in a more dangerous moment now than we were then?

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.

~~~
cabaalis
Publicly. I highly doubt either of the two leaders you are thinking about
really believe nuclear war is an actual option. Mutual assured destruction is
still a thing.

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.

~~~
bmm01
There's no mutually assured destruction between the US and NK. The US can
destroy NK, but NK cannot annihilate the US, even if it can severely damage
many of its urban centers.

------
jMyles
Stories like this are the reason that I think that the following headline
format is rightly banned from HN in the future:

"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.

~~~
bllguo
The doomsday clock is somewhat silly, but I disagree in general. I think
"appeal to authority" fallacy is misunderstood. How is it illogical to listen
to qualified authorities? It only breaks when one uses authority in one field
to claim credibility in something else.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
But that's exactly the situation here. The scientists' authority is not in
fields related to international relations, or to arms control theory, or to
game theory applied to military escalation.

------
elmerfud
"I would only agree that a symbolic clock is as nourishing to the intellect as
a photo of oxygen is to a drowning man"

~~~
kbenson
The best part of this submission is definitely the pithy comments.

~~~
jerf
It was always little more than a political statement made by scientists using
their scientific respect in non-scientific contexts, a major negative. But
they had some justification; the Cold War threat was that the two major
superpowers would fling thousands upon thousands of highly-destructive
warheads at each other, and anything that might conceivably be valuable in one
of their proxies, which meant every major city in the world, quite a chunk of
the merely medium-sized ones, and a whole whackload of "militarily-valuable
targets" all over the place.

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.")

~~~
kragen
> _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_

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.

~~~
jerf
"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.

------
mLuby
A clock is such a terrible metaphor. It only moves forward. And it moves
forward despite any actions humans take. If anything, it is _slightly_ better
suited for climate change.

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.

~~~
ModernMech
They've actually moved it backward several times:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_Clock#/media/File:Doo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_Clock#/media/File:Doomsday_Clock_graph.svg)

~~~
mLuby
Yeah I know (thanks for the link). I mean using a clock as the way to
communicate how likely nuclear war is happens to be a terrible way of
communicating to a public that knows clocks only, and naturally, move forward.
Having seen a clock and reading this news, it would be reasonable for children
to expect us to reach nuclear war very soon, which is not at all accurate.

~~~
labster
It's pretty accurate. Presidents of two countries have been declaring that
they will use nuclear weapons against the other. They have been provoking each
other, and each interprets the provocation as an act of war. It's pretty bad.
The only reason no one is reacting is because there's nothing we can do. Might
as well live your life while there's still time, and hope rationality will win
out.

~~~
mLuby
The reason people aren't reacting is because they don't believe the bluster,
not because they're resigned to a slow death in an inevitable nuclear winter.

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

~~~
labster
Sure. I'll bet you one million dollars that we're all going to die. Zimbabwe
dollars, of course.

------
tambienben
>The group also cited concerns over public distrust of political leaders and
the media, saying it is drawing away from the focus on real threats.

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.

~~~
iamcasen
No, I believe they are trying to say that rule of law is breaking down, and
the fabric of our society is at stake.

~~~
tambienben
It still sounds as though they accuse the public for this, though. I can't
abide that.

~~~
Thriptic
Well, it is the public who elected the leaders, the public who chooses the
advice of biased talking heads while disregarding those with legitimate domain
expertise, and the public that is unwilling to engage in real debate between
factions and engage in independent critical thought. So yes, it is the
public's fault.

~~~
tambienben
I agree, but only so far. There is also the enormous amount of corruption that
keeps these political machines opaque and inaccessable to the public, by
design.

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.

------
ghostbrainalpha
On a completely unrelated, but way less scary note....

 __" 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.

~~~
mLuby
Coincidence?

Or clever marketing? #FollowTheMoney (just kidding)

------
badmadrad
These "intellectuals" complain and have these elaborate demonstrations about a
destabilizing world all the while doing everything they can to create FUD and
usher in that world.

------
PopePompous
The Ig Nobel Prize people really should honor this group.

~~~
jnbiche
One top-level comment is sufficient on HN. It takes a certain amount of
hubris, or blithe ignorance, to post multiple top-level comments.

~~~
PopePompous
Sorry - It was ignorance.

------
creaghpatr
The Doomsday Clock is the Advent Candle of Scientism.

~~~
_red
...and taxpayer funded Grants are the selling of "religious indulgences". Each
$10M we provide, they agree to move the clock back 30 seconds.

------
martin1975
I feel like this clock has been asymptotically reaching midnight now for the
last several decades and will do so for at least several more decades if not
longer. In other words, it's about as accurate as predictions of the second
coming of Jesus Christ.

------
kbutler
2 minutes to midnight in 2018:

"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](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.)

------
Balgair
For a 'fun' exercise, the NUKEMAP is illustrative on the effects of these
horrific devices. Try dropping various payloads on your location to have a
peek at what is at stake.

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/](http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/)

Pro-tip: The button sizes don't matter

------
Alex3917
I wonder if the Doomsday clock correlates at all with the sales of EMP-proof
bags. (I also wonder if EMP-proof bags actually provide any non-trivial level
of EMP protection.)

~~~
gambiting
You mean like those metallic pouches sold by Amazon? I got one to keep my car
keys at night in, since it completely stops the keyless go system from working
and protects them from a relay attack and car theft.

------
lagadu
This is pathetic. It's not even a "doomsday" clock, it's a "a couple of random
countries go to nuclear war with each other while the rest of civilisation
watches and cleans up after they're done" clock.

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.

~~~
Retric
Every country would see significant death totals from a very large scale
nuclear exchange. 50-100 nukes would as you say be far less significant, but
do 100x that and you get more worldwide impact.

~~~
Turing_Machine
The thing is, there isn't going to be any large scale nuclear exchange. For
one, North Koreans don't have that many bombs. On the other side, it wouldn't
take that many bombs to glass the entire country of North Korea.

During the Cold War, by contrast, the Soviet Union had approximately ~48,000
warheads.

------
dkonofalski
Cue the Iron Maiden...

~~~
mindcrime
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qbRHY1l0vc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qbRHY1l0vc)

------
KillerRAK
The Mayans applaud the efforts of these scientists.

------
thrillgore
How many minutes have to remain before we take drastic action to stop the
nuclear sable rattling, and ignorance to the climate???

------
ataturk
Does it ever move back? I mean, I've read this same article a half dozen times
over the past 20 years or so and I keep wondering what kind of clock it is
that is perpetually 5 mins. to midnight but can move two minutes forward all
the time and yet NEVER REACH FREAKING MIDNIGHT?

~~~
JasonFruit
It's Zeno's doomsday clock. (It doesn't make the news when they move it back,
because it's harder to take political advantage of baseless reassurance than
baseless fear.)

------
ebbv
Aye carumba the comments on this article are a cesspool.

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.

~~~
hi-im-mi-ih
I don't think that angry Twitter comments are a sure sign of impending nuclear
war. We'll become wary when there are border skirmishes and killing of
diplomats.

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louithethrid
If it were not for nukes, the people moving the clock would be drafted and
clock materials used to build a cannon in world war 5.

So much for percived danger and actuall danger.

~~~
tambienben
[http://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/ABomb/english/e_abomb](http://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/ABomb/english/e_abomb)

