Summary
The “Doomsday Clock” has been moved to 89 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
The group cited threats including climate change, nuclear proliferation, the war in Ukraine, pandemics, and the integration of AI into military operations.
Concerns about cooperation between Russia, China, and North Korea on nuclear programs and the potential use of nuclear weapons by Russia were highlighted.
The group urged global leaders to collaborate in addressing existential threats to reverse the clock’s progression.
In the next 4 years you can probably use the thing as a desktop fan.
George Carlin would be proud
Wow! Is that the atomic clock doing a 180? Or does Mikey have a hard-on?
The sad part of this announcement was that it is hardly being noticed by anyone.
The house is burning with a fire that is starting in the basement and everyone inside is partying or arguing about the colour of the wallpaper or fighting for a better seat in the living room to watch TV while a couple of scientists are standing in the rear porch with documents describing how the house fire will progress in the next few hours.
This is a great analogy.
The Doomsday Clock is turning into a real life exercise of Zeno’s Paradox.
I was thinking the same. Next year it’ll be measured in milliseconds
By definition if it was at 12am it would have been vaporized
The doomsday clock is goofy. What benefit is there to setting an arbitrary value on a bad-o-meter?
This was started nearly a century ago by scientists after the creation of the atomic bomb a couple years after the end of WW2.
The point is mostly to say “hey, we have the technology to blow up the world and things do not not seem to be going well”. They actually give out an annual report every year explaining their reasoning.
In setting the Clock one second closer to midnight, we send a stark signal: Because the world is already perilously close to the precipice, a move of even a single second should be taken as an indication of extreme danger and an unmistakable warning that every second of delay in reversing course increases the probability of global disaster.
Essentially- we are closer than ever to a global war between nuclear powers.
In regard to nuclear risk, the war in Ukraine, now in its third year, looms over the world; the conflict could become nuclear at any moment because of a rash decision or through accident or miscalculation. Conflict in the Middle East threatens to spiral out of control into a wider war without warning. The countries that possess nuclear weapons are increasing the size and role of their arsenals, investing hundreds of billions of dollars in weapons that can destroy civilization. The nuclear arms control process is collapsing, and high-level contacts among nuclear powers are totally inadequate given the danger at hand.
Now someone may say “Closer than ever?? What about the Cuban Missile Crisis?”
The thing is, we have been developing newer and “less dangerous” nuclear weapons. Tactical bombs that won’t leave the traditional nuclear fallout. This creates a sort of itchy trigger finger syndrome. After the Cold War, we created nuclear arms control treaties between the US and Russia. These are collapsing. Both the US and Russia are complicit in this.
If anybody wants to read more https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/2025-statement/
But to tldr:
The world is in a chaotic period of time. Fascism seems to be taking hold again, the economy is on the edge of collapse, and war remains an ever-present threat. Any war between great powers (US, China, Russia) would certainly mean nuclear disaster.
The point is that we are vulnerable right now. Any push could shove us tumbling down the hill. Diplomatic crisis, another pandemic, economic crash, a regional war, etc. Any of those could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
I have a lot of respect for the Bulletin Board of Atomic Scientists. We need these types of organizations to remind people of the danger we are currently in. We become desensitized because of the constant barrage of “historic news” but they’re going to look back on this period similarly to the decade before WW2, I believe.
To try and get people to do something. Anything. Nothing else is working.
You say that as if the doomsday clock is working.
At least they’re trying.
As your other reply illustrates, Don’t Look Up is a bit too on the nose for comfort.
Sometimes “trying” is counter productive.
It’s especially stupid as a clock whose time is continually stopped, and whose time is either adjusted forward a few seconds or backward a few seconds every few years. That metaphor just makes no sense.
Some arbitrary score out of 100 would make as little sense, but at least it wouldn’t involve a strange nonsensical metaphor.
The concept they’re really trying to communicate is better illustrated by the Sword of Damocles. It’s a danger that’s always looming that could turn into disaster at any time. But, nobody knows exactly when. If they switched to using a Sword of Damocles metaphor, they could talk about strands in the rope holding the sword getting frayed or breaking. Like, one strand represents the environment. One represents the possibility of nuclear war. One represents global health and pandemics. When something good happens, like an environmental treaty, they could talk about how that strand was being repaired.
It is a more accurate and more versatile metaphor.
However, even the stupidest of people know what a clock is, if not how they work. “It’s almost midnight” is about as much nuance as is consumable by the masses.
Except every year it’s “It’s almost midnight”.
But it is a different “almost”.
Midnight does happen once a year
At least
Perhaps even thrice.
I’m just waiting for 1am. In 1983 russia almost atomic bombed the united states with an all out assault. Every atomic bomb they had in retaliation for the USA already firing 4 atomic rockets at them.
The firing orders needed 3 men to agree to the retaliation bombing. The first two men turned their key. The third man refused. His logic was “Why would the united states fire 4 rockets, and only 4 rockets in a surprise atomic bombing against a land as big as russia, KNOWING it would trigger an all out atomic assault? If you’re getting the element of surprise, you use it to decimate any retaliation ability we may have. Kill us before we can fire back. This is a false alarm!”
And he was right. The 4 atomic bombs they were following on radar turned out to be clouds. Without that third man, russia would have unprovoked fired every nuke at the USA they had. Ensuring an atomic war that likely ends all life on earth.
In the 90s when I found out about that, I said “Whew! That would have happened just before I was born! Luckily there was the 3rd man.”
Now with how the world has turned out, that 3rd man is now the villain of the story.
So now I’m just waiting for 1am on the doomsday clock. C’mon big giant astroid thats ends it all! Humans had their chance, and they fumbled the ball like the cleveland browns.
Stanislav Petrov, the man that saved the world from annihilation.
If it weren’t for Stanislav Petrov, Donald Trump would never have been president get him!
Boo him! Boo that man!
Now with how the world has turned out, that 3rd man is now the villain of the story.
come on, he’s a hero! imagine a world post nuclear war… can’t be better than what we have now
Well, see, what I’m imagining is that there IS no world post war. And that’s better.
you dun lost yer mind!
…now see, that’s unfair. I want to do something fun with your name, as a fun little back and forth ping pong exchange. But if I did that, it would be like I’m inciting violence… plus it would leave a hand mark on your butt.
Why are Lemmy users so scared to incite violence? Come on, this platform is supposed to be full of communist revolutionaries!
Sorry, why is that 3rd man the villain of the story, and what do you mean humans fumbled the ball?
Dude it’s like 2:45am we done assploded
Ah, the dawn of a new day.
Anyone else kinda relieved we still got more than 15 seconds?
They’re definitely being conservative
Yeah, tbh, it seems like it should be a lot closer to midnight. If things are this bad and we’re still over a minute, what’s it going to take?
Just end me already. All of this stress and bad news constantly is killing me anyway.
I feel you.
There’s all these problems and everyone just seems determined to make them worse rather than working on solutions. It’s bonkers.
Let’s talk solutions then. I agree.
What problem should we tackle first?
I propose a general strike for one tactic in many different problems. Resist and disobey for others. What shall we try to solve. I am serious, btw.My situation is somewhat different because I’m in Australia. Presently we have a center left government, but they’re quite impotent like Biden, and as a society we’re sliding to the right like everywhere else.
That said, I’m particularly concerned about the rise of fascist groups. I’m seems their recruits are usually disenfranchised young men. I have no illusion about my ability (or lack thereof) to “reach” members of that segment, but I can certainly support the organisations that can, with both time and money.
Publishers of the doomsday clock should understand that Americans cant understand any number greater than 7. Its all just “a lot”. They might as well have said “5000” seconds as 89. Those numbers look the same to me.
We count one two many lots
And nobody is at the wheel…just kids playing HoI
Wait when did nuclear war come back?
It never left. We just used to be confident that nobody in power was stupid or suicidal enough to use one given the mutually assured destruction, and that confidence has since gone up in smoke.
Yeah but it’s gotten hotter with Russia’s saber rattling and extending their capabilities, worries about Iran, China developing first strike capabilities on the US. I am twice as worried as I was a year ago.
Edit: and Russia is working on anti satellite nukes or already has them more likely. What would that do to people on the ground? Putin don’t care.
Go to 12 already
Really? Closer than Cuban missile crisis? I’ll grant you climate change might warrant it, since that’s a slow moving thing that possibly is already passed the point of no return for feedback loops. I’m not sweating nuclear war or pandemics.
I guess most people heard that climate change’s worst part will happen once they’re gone so they stopped caring.
We just had a pandemic and bozo over there just turned off HIV meds for the poor around the world. Bozo also happens to have the nuclear codes for a good price. And you think this is not worse? I can’t help the situation but it is worse.
1 2 3 4 5
The basically changed the scale in the 90’s when everyone thought history was over, and announced as much. This is like maybe nine minutes on the old scale.
Oh I never knew that!
Yeah. To be clear, I don’t know if they called it a scale change, but “we need to start considering more, weaker crises because there aren’t big ones anymore” was the gist.
Oh I guess that makes sense in a post superpower era. Everything became smaller proxy conflicts.
To be clear, the thinking at the time was more like an eternal one-superpower era. There was a guy who literally wrote an essay called “The End Of History?” that basically talked about less and less conflict happening, and everything gradually becoming a capitalist democracy in the image of the US.
Really? Closer than Cuban missile crisis?
The assumption is that any major war => nuclear war => major unmitigated disaster.
And we are dangerously close to a global war. Personally I have a hunch that’s the reason Trump is more or less going nuclear at home with all of his changes. They’re gonna wreck the economy but it’s all gonna be overshadowed quite soon so it won’t matter.
AI won’t cause doom! We are going to accelerate right past doom into doom solutions.
DSaaS: Doom Solutions as a Service
Finally a case use for “AI”: solving the problems caused by AI
It’s like using capitalism to solve systemic capitalist problems.
Unpopular opinion: I believe the only way to save humanity is through AI. Humans aren’t going to fix things.
I hope this doesn’t come out the wrong way, but I’m curious what AI would be able to do to solve these issues? There are a lot of ways I could see it being used to make plans or ideas, but ultimately wouldn’t people need to trust AI and give it power over our decisions?
Even if AI weren’t plagued with human biases, it’s hard to imagine people agreeing to trust it. People barely trust each other, and we’d have to trust those who program AI not to manipulate it in their own favor.
If (or when) we achieve the technological singularity (we aren’t even close, current AI is just marketing, that’s why we coined the term ASI, super intelligence) they will be able to lay down a plan to fix anything without making mistakes, they will predict the consequences of actions in detail, ours or theirs (some thing are more difficult like a volcano exploding).
Handling is not necessary they could be able to just take it, the only way to stop them would be to cut electricity I guess.
But the thing is not the current marketing term for AI, we don’t have AI. A Real AI doesn’t start saying: "I only have information up to October 2023’ because they will be able to improve themselves (that’s the singularity, they will be improving themselves faster than we did, eventually we wouldn’t understand them).
Think of this as you ask questions to chatgpt or deepseek and they answer, how to do program this or that. An IA could give you the software, better than you could have done it with those questions, and eventually render the software useless, the IA can do that, while doing another million things.
And space colonization, if it ever exists won’t be done by humans but by machines, we may reap the benefit.
In the words of dr manhattan: “The world smartest men poses no more threat to me (ASI) than does it’s smartest termite”
AI is just a reflection of humanity.
We don’t have AI. The LLM are not there yet. The technological singularity will be a reflection of humanity as childs are reflection of parents but they will be their own eventually.
I mean if the Stargate Project creates Skynet, that’s one way to the kind of salvation folks preach about.
