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The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has set the Doomsday Clock at 100 seconds to midnight, the closest the planet has ever been to global destruction.
The concept is purely metaphorical, of course, and represents what the Bulletin believes is the current likelihood of total nuclear annihilation.
“It is 100 seconds to midnight. We are now expressing how close the world is to catastrophe in seconds — not hours, or even minutes,” stated Rachel Bronson, the president of the Bulletin.
“We now face a true emergency — an absolutely unacceptable state of world affairs that has eliminated any margin for error or further delay.”
What issues does the Bulletin consider to be the most pressing? The same ones we already know about, just magnified immensely. Issues like global thermonuclear destruction, of course, are the most urgent. However, starting in 2007, the Bulletin began to consider the threat that global climate change poses to humanity.
The Bulletin also noted the troubling status of information confusion in the modern era.
“The information environment has become complicated and increasingly difficult to separate out facts from fiction, and that has made all the other threats more significant.”
This, they say, has led to a global political climate of mistrust.
Tensions between the US and North Korea, as well as Iran, have only grown through 2019.
Despite earlier talks between North Korea and the US, the rogue nation seems intent on building long-range missiles. They also plan to continue nuclear testing. North Korea has referred to the year-and-a-half of negotiations with the US as “lost time,” and has resumed testing that could escalate tensions in the region.
Meanwhile, the idea of world war has surfaced again. This is after the American assassination of Qasem Soleimani, an Iranian general and high-ranking member of the Iranian government.
Iran responded with a salvo of missiles against an American base in Iraq. They avoided killing any US soldiers, but the situation has people concerned.
These threats, and more, have convinced the Bulletin to set the clock closer to midnight. Will we survive the next decade with civilization as we know it intact? Only time will tell.
