![]() These problems might be worthy causes, but they don’t hold a candle to total nuclear destruction. “Information monocultures, fake news, and the hacking and release of politically sensitive emails may have had an illegitimate impact on the US presidential election, threatening the fabric of democracy,” wrote the Bulletin in their justification for why the world is now closer to the brink of annihilation. This week’s Doomsday Clock update included warnings about climate change, cybersecurity and - somewhat incredibly - fake news. ![]() What started out as a Cold War indicator meant to tell people the likelihood of their city being turned to dust is now used to sound the alarm on a whole range of global ills. Part of the problem is that the keepers of the Doomsday Clock have greatly expanded their purview. That would be way more dangerous than the world situation now, but there isn’t much room left on the clock for that: the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists have already essentially moved us to the edge of Doomsday. What if, this time next year, Iran obtains a nuclear bomb, a Pakistani missile base is seized by jihadists and Vladimir Putin starts moving nuclear-capable weaponry into the Middle East? Article contentĪll around the world, militaries have been stood down from a hair-trigger footing of destroying all life within 24 hours.įar be it from me to say that the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists are crying wolf, but they seem to be running out of minutes. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Missile silos that once held city-destroying weapons have been converted into underground villas for eccentric millionaires. The Arctic no longer hosts a 24-hour presence of airborne nuclear bombers ready to lay waste to Russia at a moment’s notice. The Doomsday Clock, meanwhile, was at four minutes to midnight.ĭoes the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists honestly believe we are now in more peril than when Petrov sat pulling the night shift in a Soviet command centre and holding the fate of the world in his hands? Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images “They were lucky it was me on shift that night,” Petrov later told a BBC interviewer. Even more frightening, he is pretty confident that his by-the-book colleagues would have ordered retaliation. Article content Prensa Latina via AP ImagesĪnd what about September 26, 1983? That was the day when a malfunction caused the Soviet Union to falsely detect an incoming missile strike from the United States.Īs sirens sounded around him, a single duty officer, Stanislav Petrov, made the gut decision to forego the required protocol to order a retaliatory nuclear strike.Ĭhillingly, Petrov has since said it was a “50-50” chance that he would have made the decision he did, that saved so much of humanity. ![]() Manage Print Subscription / Tax Receipt. ![]()
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