Doomsday Clock To Advance

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."

Re:Arbitrary?

[Andrew Aguecheek]

It looks to me as if what is significant is not what the time is (unless of course it is midnight), but instead how much the hand moves by. When a significant leap is made towards nuclear disarmament, it moves back significantly, vice versa when a situation appears to be escalating.

Re:Midnight?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is located in Chicago, so that would be Central Standard Time.

Related to troop increase in Iraq?

[Sargeant Slaughter]

I was listening to an interesting radio show out here in San Diego yesterday (The Dangerous Dick and Scibba show) and they were talking about the 20K troop increase as a way to get ready to go into Iran (a nuclear power). People were guessing that Bush/Cheney/and company want to try and neutralize the Iranian threat before leaving office. Me thinks this might be related...

Be prepared! Read and print...

[paj1234]

Now is a good time to read and print...

The good news about nuclear destruction
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=516 48 [wnd.com]

What to do if a nuclear disaster is imminent!
http://www.ki4u.com/guide.htm [ki4u.com]

Re:Arbitrary?

[WED Fan]

A schoolboard rules that global warming is a "mere" scientific theory.

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.

Re:Not Climate Threats directly

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Take a look at Pol Pot in Vietnam. He had full control over the lives of many of the citizens of Vietnam and yet he killed millions of them.

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.

Re:Arbitrary?

[sgt_doom]

Although not on /.'s front page, that mad dog Bush Administration's scheduled attack on Iran (March or early April) should be considered as well.....

Watch Threads.

[thealsir]

For anyone who is curious as to how the world would end up after a nuclear war, watch the movie Threads [imdb.com]. It should lay any and all questions to rest.

Re:Arbitrary?

[mikek3332002]

It makes more sense for measurment tho be based upon the speed of light because they can calibrate the measurement the same everywhere. How are they going to calibrate a measurment based on the length of a decaying dead foot?.
Also the metric/SI system is a lot more logical because the difference between each unit are multiples of 10, which makes it easy to perform calculations with.

Re:Arbitrary?

[mithluin]

1000 Km from the equator to the pole? Cue "It's A Small World"...

The meter was actually intended (back in the 1790s) to be one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the pole along a meridian.

Reality Check Boys and Girls

[ukemike]

Actually we are getting dangerously close to a nuclear war. The US now has TWO Carrier Strike Groups in the Persian Gulf. The Gulf is getting so crowded that a US sub bumped into a Japanese tanker. Ted Koppel on NPR Friday evening said that people in the military have indicated that our assets in the Gulf are not useful for combating the insurgency in Iraq but are well suited for strikes on Iran. Koppel said that senior military personnel have told him that it is likely that the US will be at war with Iran before 2007 is over.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?story Id=6836561 [npr.org]

Israel is drawing up plans for a NUCLEAR strike on Iran's nuclear power program.
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?t ype=topNews&storyID=2007-01-07T185259Z_01_L0675940 5_RTRUKOC_0_UK-IRAN-NUCLEAR-ISRAEL.xml&WTmodLoc=To p%2BNews-C1-Headline-8 [reuters.co.uk]

In the last several weeks Bush has fired and reassigned several high level military and intelligence people that were in some way in his way to a broader mid-east war. Generals John Abizaid and George Casey who were opposed to an escalation in Iraq and John Negroponte who has recently stated that Iran is 10 years from having the Bomb.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010807R.shtml [truthout.org]

I'd say that the doomsday clock is definitely ticking, and we are in for a shit storm in 2007.

Re:Arbitrary?

[Oktober Sunset]

It was intended to be, but as the job of working it out the distance was done by the French, it got cocked up, and by the time anyone realised, it was too late, so now, a Metre is the length of a stick of platinum in France (blah blah atomic clock speed of light, yea whatever, it's the fucking stick just accept it).

Same thing happened with the kilogram.