The Doomsday Clock has been updated to just 89 seconds until a civilization-ending disaster

zohaibahd

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In context: The Doomsday Clock, created in 1947 by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a group co-founded by Albert Einstein, is a striking symbolic timekeeper. Midnight on the metaphorical clock represents a world-shattering cataclysm. The closer we get to midnight, the more dire the Bulletin judges the current existential threats from nuclear weapons, climate change, disruptive technologies like AI, and more.

On January 28, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists updated the Doomsday Clock from 90 to 89 seconds until "midnight," as world-ending threats continue escalating at a terrifying pace. Bulletin scientists listed several conditions that influenced the clock update.

Experts see the war in Ukraine, which still rages into its third year, as posing real risks of going nuclear through accident or madness. Nuclear powers like the US, China, and Russia continue pouring staggering resources into modernizing and building up their doomsday arsenals rather than negotiating limitations. Greenhouse gas emissions climbed again last year as most nations failed to do enough about climate change.

The Bulletin adds that new bioweapons research and lack of oversight also heightens the potential for human-engineered pandemics. Meanwhile, AI capabilities continue to advance rapidly despite calls for regulations to slow it down. Experts fear uncontrolled AI growth will supercharge the spread of misinformation, undermine democracy, and potentially turn autonomous machines hostile.

"Trends that have deeply concerned the Science and Security Board continued, and despite unmistakable signs of danger, national leaders and their societies have failed to do what is needed to change course," writes the Bulletin.

If all this isn't enough to keep you up at night, the scientists highlighted AI's growing ability to turbocharge misinformation and fake news. This "corruption of the information ecosystem" is kneecapping democratic discourse and honest debate over all these challenges.

The Bulletin's statement warns that blindly continuing on the current path is a "form of madness." It singles out the US, China, and Russia as the nations with the collective power to push the Doomsday Clock to midnight. The group believes in an urgent need for the leaders of these countries to conduct high-level talks to lower the potential of disaster.

The United States, China, and Russia have the collective power to destroy civilization. These three countries have the prime responsibility to pull the world back from the brink, and they can do so if their leaders seriously commence good-faith discussions about the global threats outlined here. Despite their profound disagreements, they should take that first step without delay. The world depends on immediate action.

There remains some question as to whether the metaphorical Doomsday Clock resonates as strongly as the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists hopes. While the experts' annual warnings about global risks are certainly grave, decades of pronouncing that we are just minutes from midnight make the warnings feel hollow. Fortunately, the clock can run backward and has several times following world-changing events.

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I single nuke going off will likely trigger a chain of unstoppable events leading to global catastrophe. And we now have a whole bunch of trigger-happy morons worldwide. Seems like an unescapable eventuality. After all, the history says that we only learn the hard way.
 
"Trends that have deeply concerned the Science and Security Board continued, and despite unmistakable signs of danger, national leaders and their societies have failed to do what is needed to change course,"

Welcome to reality on planet Earth. Why do people only think of the children when it's profitable?
 
Trump in office, that alone should have push forward the doomsday clock to any second now...
And yet unlike Biden, he actually will meet with opposing world leaders to put an end to these conflicts. But apparently that makes him a Russian asset! Regardless, the article suggested doing exactly that:
The group believes in an urgent need for the leaders of these countries to conduct high-level talks to lower the potential of disaster.
 
I know sticking it to Russia is fun for politicians, but haven't the Ukrainian people lost enough lives and the US people lost enough money for the masses to say enough already on the proxy war in Ukraine?
It's up to Russia to stop invading their neighbors. All that talk of brotherhood with the Ukrainian people rings hollow as yet another winter of bombing civilian infrastructure passes by.
 
The Doomsday Clock has been stuck in “we’re all doomed” mode for so long that people have kind of tuned it out. Ticking down by one second feels both absurdly precise and completely meaningless at the same time. Like, are we supposed to feel relieved it wasn’t two seconds? Or should we be terrified that we’re now one microwave beep away from oblivion?
 
And yet unlike Biden, he actually will meet with opposing world leaders to put an end to these conflicts. But apparently that makes him a Russian asset! Regardless, the article suggested doing exactly that:
Of course Trump would meet with those "leaders" as impunity and corruption always have someone on common.
 
I know sticking it to Russia is fun for politicians, but haven't the Ukrainian people lost enough lives and the US people lost enough money for the masses to say enough already on the proxy war in Ukraine?

- Nah, makes a really good testing ground for all of the new weapons systems the Soviets and the West have developed but hadn't had a chance to properly try out yet.

Say what you will about the American arms industry, but its one of the few truly "Made In America" industries left.
 
Civilization seems to have run along the edge of the precipice since, according to Graham Hancock's research, humans lost their spiritual sensibility. The difference between 'we will use resources to explore and enliven ourselves' and ' I will use resources to enrich myself'. Hey, Rudy....
 
And yet unlike Biden, he actually will meet with opposing world leaders to put an end to these conflicts. But apparently that makes him a Russian asset! Regardless, the article suggested doing exactly that:
I'm sure invading Mexico and Greenland, and bombing Middle Eastern countries qualifies as "putting an end to these conflicts" in your book
 
I'm sure invading Mexico and Greenland, and bombing Middle Eastern countries qualifies as "putting an end to these conflicts" in your book
Obama was the one enthusiastic about bombing the middle east, but every president since Bush was in office during that. I'm unaware of any invasions of Mexico and Greenland at the moment.
 
The Doomsday Clock has been stuck in “we’re all doomed” mode for so long that people have kind of tuned it out. Ticking down by one second feels both absurdly precise and completely meaningless at the same time. Like, are we supposed to feel relieved it wasn’t two seconds? Or should we be terrified that we’re now one microwave beep away from oblivion?
Agreed. The clock is based solely on the opinions of a small group of people. That's all fine and good, but is it at all meaningful? When the Doomsday Clock was invented in 1947, it was set to 7 minutes to midnight. Not an hour or anything less worrisome, but 7 minutes. We had just ended WWII using nuclear might and the scientist who founded the Bulletin, knew that their peers in other nations would catch up in a matter of time. At that time, I think the designation held merit and meaning.

However, since then, the clock's hands have swung wide -- as wide as 12 minutes when US and Russia banned atmospheric testing in 1963 and as wide as 17 minutes in 1991 with the START agreement. The clock has ticked to within minutes of midnight numerous times based on "scary" world events, but hey, every time, we have escaped doom unscathed. Whew, that was close!

That's not to say humanity won't blow itself up -- it probably will. I'm just saying that the Clock has little influence on the leaders of the world who can affect the changes necessary to assuage the Bulletin's fears.
 
Now that trump is on office china WILL invade Taiwan and trump will do absolutely nothing, ending 90% of all chip production, and NO the US's paltry sad useless fabs will not be able to supply the US with chips since CHINA controls 85% of all CPU GRADE silicon and no other nation geologically has that kind of out of the ground quality and purity. I also expect trump to end all support for the ukraine, which will ALSO kill all US chip production since russia supplies 75+% of all industrial neon for wafer processing and...SHOCKER ukraine the next largest supplier will be owned by russia after trump lets russia have it.

by 2026.5 the china and russia will own the US economy

Google > "mining-and-refining-pure-silicon-and-the-incredible-effort-it-takes-to-get-there" <- hackaday article

Google > "silicon production by country statista" <- statista website

Google > "low-on-gas-ukraine-invasion-chokes-supply-of-neon-needed-for-chipmaking" <- arstechnica website
 
I know sticking it to Russia is fun for politicians, but haven't the Ukrainian people lost enough lives and the US people lost enough money for the masses to say enough already on the proxy war in Ukraine?

Shoot, every war after WW2 was an east/west proxy war.
Korea
Vietnam
Various middle east conflicts
and on and on.
 
Shoot, every war after WW2 was an east/west proxy war.
Korea
Vietnam
Various middle east conflicts
and on and on.
True. So maybe we could take a break from war since we're too in debt to fund it without devaluing the dollars I get paid in? Nvidia's already making it hard enough to afford their GPUs without more inflation.
 
True. So maybe we could take a break from war since we're too in debt to fund it without devaluing the dollars I get paid in? Nvidia's already making it hard enough to afford their GPUs without more inflation.
Was the war against Saddam a proxy war? No, it was not, the dictator simply added a neighboring country just like Putin tries to add Ukraine. He then wanted to go further.
The biggest misconception about thinking that the West wages proxy wars is the assumption that the world is a heaven on earth, peaceful and loving, only asking that the US does not start another bloody war.
If Obama supplied Ukraine with everything they are getting right now, Putin would not try to occupy it in 2022. See, he was not alone who thought that the US should stop with its stupid proxy wars. The dictators were preparing to start multiple bloody wars because the US showed its unwillingness to intervene.
 
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