Joe's Air Blog

An occasional Brain Dump, from the creator of Joe's SeaBlog

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Doomsday Approacheth

I was not aware of it exists, but there is such a thing as a Doomsday Clock, and it's been moved closer to midnight. As of right now, it's five minutes 'til "nuclear" midnight. Like any good clock, it's not constrained to any linear definition of time, as it's been as close 11:58 (the height of thermonuclear testing in 1953), to the downright comfy spread of 17 minutes when it was set to 11:43 following the fall of the Soviet Empire in 1991. According to the referenced articles,

The major new step reflects growing concerns about a "Second Nuclear Age" marked by grave threats, including: nuclear ambitions in Iran and North Korea,
unsecured nuclear materials in Russia and elsewhere, the continuing
"launch-ready" status of 2,000 of the 25,000 nuclear weapons held by the U.S.
and Russia, escalating terrorism, and new pressure from climate change for
expanded civilian nuclear power that could increase proliferation risks


I say nuclear war is less of a threat to our civilization than climate change and natural resource reduction will be in the not-too-distant future. For sure more wars are to follow the current skirmish. I just don't have them pegged as "Nuclear".

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1 Comments:

At 4:03 PM, Blogger Wisdom Weasel said...

Thank god they are closing BNAS then is all I can say. No first strike for us any more, just lingering death from dispersed contamination and reduced crop yields.

Oh bugger: I forgot Bath Iron Works. I guess we'll still fry in a global TN exchange.

 

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