The 2022 update to the Doomsday Clock, a symbolic assessment of how close humanity may be to destroying itself, saw the metaphorical time remain where it has been for the last three years at 100 seconds to midnight. Created in 1947 by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS), the ominous-sounding annual evaluation of the pressing issues facing the planet is announced each January. In 2020, the organization raised eyebrows when they moved the clock closer to midnight than it had ever been before and, as with last year, 2022's appraisal found that the planet is still in that rather perilous state.
In a press release detailing this year's assessment, the BAS stressed that their determination for 2022 "does not, by any means, suggest that the international security situation has stabilized" and, instead, they cautioned that "the clock remains the closest it has ever been to civilization-ending apocalypse because the world remains stuck in an extremely dangerous moment." According to the group, the factors that informed their evaluation were "continuing and dangerous threats posed by nuclear weapons, climate change, disruptive technologies, and COVID-19." They also lamented that these issues have been "exacerbated by a corrupted information ecosphere that undermines rational decision making."
As the group does every year, they offered an expansive list of potential steps that could be taken by world governments to help 'turn back the clock.' The recommendations largely mirror what the BAS has suggested on multiple occasions in the past, including that the United States and Russia should establish new agreements concerning "limits on nuclear weapons and delivery systems," a global commitment to accelerating decarbonization, and increased efforts from technology companies to thwart online misinformation. Unfortunately, if the 2022 assessment is any indication, it's likely that these proposals will once again fall on deaf ears and that 2023 just might see the clock tick even closer to midnight.
SOURCE: Coast 2 Coast AM
And that my friend is why so many of us enjoy horror movies. Because the fantasy horrors of the screen are so much preferable to the true terror which defines the modern age since the birth atomic weapons. Sigh.
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Thanks for posting this, John. While I don't disagree with the assessment, I wonder if there is an element of "presentism" at work. Are we closer to midnight than we were in the darkest days of WWII, during the Black Plague, etc.?
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