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Doomsday Clock To Advance
Posted by
kdawson
on Sat Jan 13, 2007 05:36 PM
from the fire-next-time dept.
from the fire-next-time dept.
Dik Zak writes "Many news sites are reporting that the magazine Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists intends to move the hands of the Doomsday Clock on Wednesday 17 January. The clock was started at seven minutes to midnight during the Cold War and has been moved forward or back at intervals, depending on the state of the world and the prospects for nuclear war. Midnight represents destruction by nuclear war. It is not revealed in which direction the hands of the clock will be moved, but it should be safe to assume that they will move closer to midnight: the magazine cites 'worsening nuclear [and] climate threats.' The clock stood at two minutes to midnight when both the United States and the Soviet Union tested nuclear weapons in 1953. The farthest away from midnight it ever got was 17 minutes, in 1991 when both superpowers signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. It currently stands at seven minutes to midnight."
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Midnight? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
CST? Uhoh... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
PST (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Reality Check Boys and Girls (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
(For those who don't know Newfoundland is in a half hour timezone and on Canadian TV shows are always advertized as starting 1/2 hour later in Newfoundland. And of course the Newfies are just weird so are the butt of many a joke)
Arbitrary? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Arbitrary? (Score:5, Funny)
I doubt there is an equation involved. But I think one look at today's front page of slashdot justifies moving the hands a little closer to midnight:
If these aren't a sure sign of the apocalypse (especially the last item), I don't know what is.
GMD
Parent
Re:Arbitrary? (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, I live in the Seattle area:
What they ruled on was that it was a scientific theory with more than one side to the story and that "An Inconvenient Truth" was not a dispassionate, non-partisan, objective look at the science involved. They were also concerned that none of the producers and Al Gore were scientists, and that showing it in a class without context would be a disservice to students.
It was widely misreported, probably helped by the fact that the most vocal opponent to the film being shown is a nut-job zealot parent, and the fact that Seattle PeePee, uh, P-I ran an editorial as news and the fact that local right-wing radio really went ape-shit. But, that doesn't mean we have to get the reporting wrong here. Wait, this is /., I'm sorry, go about your business.
Parent
Re:Arbitrary? (Score:5, Funny)
Come on... Star Trek, the early years? I'd rather be nuked.
Parent
Re:Arbitrary? (Score:4, Insightful)
The *length* of the meter is arbitrary. Same for the length of the second and most other basic units in the metric system.
What is, however, *not* arbitrary, and where the large win lies is in making the derived units straigthforward combinations of the basic units, and the different scale units factors of 10^x larger/smaller.
There's an exception for time. The larger units of time aren't 10^x larger than the smallest one. 60,60,24,7,365.24 is a mess. The latter can't be helped: There really *are* 365.24 (or thereabouts) days in a year. But we could've split the day a lot more sensibly than 24/60/60. For example we could have 10 seconds to the minute, 10 minutes to the hour, 10 hours to the day. That'd be kinda disruptive, but it would simplify some stuff further. So, a foot makes exactly as much sense as a basic unit of length as a meter. Agreed.
However, once we've set the basic units, the connections are extremely straigthforward:
If I travel 1 meter in 1 second I travel at 1m/s, if I used a second to get to this speed I accelerated at 1m/s^2. If I weigh 1kg, then this required a force of 1N. If this force 1N work over a distance of 1m, it does 1J of work. If that was done in 1s then the power was 1W. If this was provided by electricity, then that is for example 1V and 1A. 1A means 1C electrons pro 1s flows trough the conductor. Now you do that, using only imperial units. :-) How many hogheads *are* there to a fluid-oz anyway ?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If I travel 1 meter in 1 second I travel at 1m/s, if I used a second to get to this speed I accelerated at 1m/s^2. If I weigh 1kg, then this required a force of 1N. If this force 1N work over a distance of 1m, it does 1J of work. If that was done in 1s then the power was 1W. If this was provided by electricity, then that is for example 1V and 1A. 1A means 1C electrons pro 1s flows trough the conductor. Now you do that, using only imperial units. :-) How many hogheads *are* there to a fluid-oz anyway ?
If I travel 1 foot in 1 second I travel at 1 foot/s, if I used a second to get to this speed I accelerated at 1 foot/s^2. If I weigh 1lb, then this required a force of 1 pound-force. If this force 1lbf works over a distance of 1', it does one foot-pound force (ftlbf) of work. If that was done in 1s then the power was 1 ftlbfs^-1.
I can't do any more from memory - we only used metric terms when discussing electricity, whereas we used imperial and metric with anything else, but I'm sure they exist. My point
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Same thing happened with the kilogram.
Hyperbole? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's like holding the stupid "threat level" at yellow or orange for a long amount of time, eventually people accept it and begin to ignore it.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It's kind of like illustrating the age of the planet as 12 hours and the appearence of humanity and civilization as the last minute/second whatever...
Re:Hyperbole? (Score:5, Insightful)
Except without any basis in mathematical fact or measured reality.
Parent
Re:Hyperbole? (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem it points to does have mathematical facts and is consistent with reality aka it exists. It is a mathematical facts that governments around the world have enough nukes that it can display all civilisation on earth and potentially wipe out the human race. It is a mathematical fact that more and more governments are capable of using nuclear weapons. It is part of reality that those who aquired nukes recently are not the sanest people around, like Kim Il - if we can believe the reports about the test they carried out which I'm not sure I do.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hyperbole? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Watch Threads. (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's kind of instructive to think what we would have to do - start with the hard to reach - we need to kill all the life around the "smokers" at t
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Environmentalists are not and never have been interested in helping mankind. They are simply an alliance between the ivory-tower preservationists and the Gaia-theory radicals who would frankly prefer that the earth swallow up all the filthy parasite humans (except them and their nature-worshipping friends, of course) and spit out the bones.
Conservationists are the ones who are truly
Re:Hyperbole? Define "blow up the planet" (Score:5, Funny)
How to Destroy the Earth [qntm.org]
Parent
Re:Hyperbole? Define "blow up the planet" (Score:5, Funny)
On that topic, amateur geocide watchers and fans of the International Earth-Destruction Advisory Board [qntm.org] will be reassured to learn that unlike the Nuclear Death Clock, the Current Earth-Destruction Status is expected to remain at its current status of "Not Destroyed" for the forseeable future.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I know this one (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
strike 12 already... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:strike 12 already... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:strike 12 already... (Score:5, Insightful)
Lately I've been looking into the history of man kind and it seems like at any point in time people were certain that the end of the world was only a generation or two away.
I think it is about time everyone started to ignore anyone who claimed the world was about to end and listened to more rational voices.
Parent
Preemption (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Preemption (Score:5, Funny)
All right. I guess I can spare one and still be feared.
Parent
Iron Maiden! (Score:4, Funny)
DST? (Score:3, Funny)
Not Climate Threats directly (Score:5, Insightful)
These guys are not claiming doomsday from climate change.
And despite the increase of proliferation and individual threats, the global doomsday we legitimately feared in the 80's is long gone.
I think proliferation in the Middle East will bring some long needed maturity to those ridiculous tribal governments or be self-limiting. Bad for some cities, but not global conflict. India-Pakistan nukes may have even calmed that situation. Mutual destruction pacts might actually work.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
However, I can say without a doubt that there are plenty of people who do not have any of these characteristics, including Americans. MAD is far too unstable a concept to be institutionalized. I'd much rather have no nukes than be the only one to have them. It
Re:Not Climate Threats directly (Score:4, Insightful)
However, I can say without a doubt that there are plenty of people who do not have any of these characteristics, including many Americans.
There, better.
Yes, Kennedy and Khrushchev did very well not to go down the hardline path. But we won't get lucky every time.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I think the Cambodians would be very surprised to learn that Pol Pot killed a bunch of Vietnamese too.
Seriously, if you're going to use historical analogies to bolster your arguments, you should at least try to get the elementary facts right.
Related to troop increase in Iraq? (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Can't control things in Iraq and Afganistan so start a new war? Somebody shut Kissenger up or stop people listening to that corrupt old idiot - this didn't work last time either.
I hope the new winds of change don't just turn into a draft.
Be prepared! Read and print... (Score:4, Informative)
The good news about nuclear destruction
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=51
What to do if a nuclear disaster is imminent!
http://www.ki4u.com/guide.htm [ki4u.com]
One Bomb is Not "Doomsday" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:One Bomb is Not "Doomsday" (Score:4, Interesting)
Two words for you, sir: Vassily Arkhipov.
This man, a commissioned officer in the soviet navy, was aboard a soviet submarine making it's way to the naval blockade imposed upon Cuba by the United States in October of 1963. Unknown to the Kennedy government, the Kremlin had authorized soviet submarines to fire nuclear weapons at will, as long as the three main officers concurred unanimously.
For a period of aproximately 24 hours, this particular soviet submarine was subjected to a barrage of depth charges. The level of tension was beyond the breaking point, they were running out of oxygen and the temperature was running at about 125 degrees farenheit, so the captain basically said "fuck it, we're at war, we have to launch". The other officer concurred, but Vassily Arkhipov, under incredible pressure, put his foot down and said NO. We can only imagine the amount of pressure Mr Arkhipov was subjected to (a Hollywood representation would be the film 'Crimson Tide'), but he held his ground, and when the submarine finally emerged to the surface, the world was not at war, so that they would have precipitated nuclear war if they had launched.
Now consider this: the Secretary of Defense under Kennedy, Robert MacNamara, has been quoted as saying that he went to bed that night not knowing if there would be a world to wake up to next morning (I doubt he got much sleep), even as he did not know that the Kremlin had delegated authority to their submarine officers to launch nuclear weapons, MacNamara found out a quarter of a century later, in the late eighties.
How's that for a close call nobody knew about?
With that said, I have a question: why aren't there monuments to Vassily Arkhipov being erected all over the place?
I hope you'll be happy to know that Mr Arkhipov died peacefully of old age in the late nineties. Bless you, Mr Arkhipov, I truly hope that your wife made the best borscht with oxtail in the world and that you slowly enjoyed every time you dipped it with your freshly baked bread, for years and years and years. Yum.
Parent
Do the submitters even RTFA??? (Score:5, Insightful)
From the summary...
It is not revealed in which direction the hands of the clock will be moved...
From TFA...
The minute hand of the Doomsday Clock will be moved closer to midnight on January 17 (emphasis added).
stupid clocks.... (Score:5, Funny)
I remember the 80s. This doomsday clock sucks. (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember, vividly, how my parents thought me that it was a cold war between the US and the Soviet Union.
I remember the retorics. I remember the fear. I remember how I was told that we could be destroyed by nuclear weapons.
I remember MAD.
I was born in 1979.
People born just 5 or 6 years later than me - do not remember this. They have never experienced the cold war. They can't remember it. They can't even understand the doomsday clock, the fear, the MAD uncertainty.
I was 10 years old. I helped chop the Berlin wall down. Physically.
People, just 5 years younger than me - don't understand what it was all about. They don't remember.
Now, this article is about the doomsday clock moving forward. From 17 minutes to midnight. Heh
And these guys want to move the hands forward on a clock of global doom. Right.
It was right in the 80s. It's not right anymore. Move it backwards three or four hours, and it might be right. This way - it's just ridiculous.
yawn (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)