It’s always a bad day to have crushing anxiety about the future of the planet, but today is particularly bad. The Doomsday Clock, an ominous invention designed to tell us how close we are to disaster, has been moved to 100 seconds to midnight.
The Doomsday Clock has been around since 1947, and works as a symbol of how close humanity is to a man made Armageddon. The end of the world is signified by midnight, and the closer we get to midnight, the closer we are to a global disaster.
Speaking of disasters, listen to the GOAT team chat about the recent bushfires.
It’s updated every year by the team at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and this year they have decided that the clock should sit at 100 seconds to midnight – the closest it’s ever been.
In a statement, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists have outlined the two major reasons for this decision: climate change and the threat of nuclear war (hello Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un…)
“Civilization-ending nuclear war – whether started by design, blunder, or simple miscommunication – is a genuine possibility. Climate change that could devastate the planet is undeniably happening. And for a variety of reasons that include a corrupted and manipulated media environment, democratic governments and other institutions that should be working to address these threats have failed to rise to the challenge.”
It is actually possible for the time to be moved backwards, but it would require one hell of an overhaul. If humanity can get its shit together, we can still avoid disaster. In 1991, just after the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty was signed with the Soviet Union, the clock went back to 17 minutes to midnight.
With only 100 seconds to midnight, the thought of being 17 minutes away feels like a dream. On the up side though, we’ll never see it hit zero. It’ll be because we’re all dead or dying, but I’m going to ignore that detail.
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