geronimo_appleby
always on the move
- Joined
- Nov 25, 2004
- Posts
- 91,248
The end of the world officially got closer at 2.30pm on Wednesday.
That was the moment when scientists altered the planet's Doomsday Clock to better reflect our proximity to armageddon. The Clock, conceived in 1947, is about as stark an embodiment of our world's wellbeing as you can get. During its 60-year existence it has been shifted forwards and backwards as the likelihood of nuclear destruction has waxed and waned.
It hit two minutes to midnight in 1953 when the US and USSR openly tested thermonuclear warheads. It then sank back to 12 minutes to midnight by 1963 when both powers signed the Partial Test Ban Treaty limiting atmospheric nuclear testing. Fast forward to 1984, however, and the Clock was up at three minutes to the hour in the wake of President Reagan's gung-ho attitude towards the Cold War. Come 1991 it was safely down at 17 minutes thanks to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Recently, though, we've been creeping back towards zero hour. The last update was in 2002 when the Clock was moved to seven minutes to midnight to represent the threat of nuclear terrorism and George W. Bush's antipathy towards disarmament. And now it has changed again. In a co-ordinated announcement in London and New York, scientists reported that the minute hand has been brought forwards a full 120 seconds. We are now five minutes away from a nuclear holocaust.
To be honest, I was expecting it to be closer. I was anticipating four, even three minutes to midnight, such is the perilous condition of the world and the way a climate of fear is being stoked by aggressors of both the elected (the United States) and unelected (North Korea) kind.
But maybe it's right to not be too alarmist - yet. Much of that tangible feeling of catastrophe is just that: a feeling. The likelihood of actual nuclear meltdown perhaps isn't as great as, to use that brutally clinical phrase, 'conventional' war: conflict between real people using guns and tanks and missiles.
Moreover, the threat from environmental disaster currently seems just as potent as that from any manmade weapon. One manifestation of this, the battle to save certain species from extinction, we featured on the homepage on Wednesday. Another, the thorny issue of carbon offsetting - which we investigated last weekend - seems to bedevil even Tony Blair. If we, as a nation, can't figure out how to solve the destructive capability of our own dustbin or our holiday travel plans, you do wonder what hope there is for inching towards worldwide nuclear disarmament.
As the Doomsday Clock ticks on, one thing above all else strikes me as true. Demonising those who you fear - calling them part of an "axis of evil", for instance - merely breeds more fear and accelerates the chances of destruction rather than peace. In the words of Franklin D. Roosevelt, America's greatest ever President, speaking in 1933 at a moment of comparable global anxiety:
"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyses needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."
Can you imagine Bush ever saying something so enduringly, poetically profound?
That was the moment when scientists altered the planet's Doomsday Clock to better reflect our proximity to armageddon. The Clock, conceived in 1947, is about as stark an embodiment of our world's wellbeing as you can get. During its 60-year existence it has been shifted forwards and backwards as the likelihood of nuclear destruction has waxed and waned.
It hit two minutes to midnight in 1953 when the US and USSR openly tested thermonuclear warheads. It then sank back to 12 minutes to midnight by 1963 when both powers signed the Partial Test Ban Treaty limiting atmospheric nuclear testing. Fast forward to 1984, however, and the Clock was up at three minutes to the hour in the wake of President Reagan's gung-ho attitude towards the Cold War. Come 1991 it was safely down at 17 minutes thanks to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Recently, though, we've been creeping back towards zero hour. The last update was in 2002 when the Clock was moved to seven minutes to midnight to represent the threat of nuclear terrorism and George W. Bush's antipathy towards disarmament. And now it has changed again. In a co-ordinated announcement in London and New York, scientists reported that the minute hand has been brought forwards a full 120 seconds. We are now five minutes away from a nuclear holocaust.
To be honest, I was expecting it to be closer. I was anticipating four, even three minutes to midnight, such is the perilous condition of the world and the way a climate of fear is being stoked by aggressors of both the elected (the United States) and unelected (North Korea) kind.
But maybe it's right to not be too alarmist - yet. Much of that tangible feeling of catastrophe is just that: a feeling. The likelihood of actual nuclear meltdown perhaps isn't as great as, to use that brutally clinical phrase, 'conventional' war: conflict between real people using guns and tanks and missiles.
Moreover, the threat from environmental disaster currently seems just as potent as that from any manmade weapon. One manifestation of this, the battle to save certain species from extinction, we featured on the homepage on Wednesday. Another, the thorny issue of carbon offsetting - which we investigated last weekend - seems to bedevil even Tony Blair. If we, as a nation, can't figure out how to solve the destructive capability of our own dustbin or our holiday travel plans, you do wonder what hope there is for inching towards worldwide nuclear disarmament.
As the Doomsday Clock ticks on, one thing above all else strikes me as true. Demonising those who you fear - calling them part of an "axis of evil", for instance - merely breeds more fear and accelerates the chances of destruction rather than peace. In the words of Franklin D. Roosevelt, America's greatest ever President, speaking in 1933 at a moment of comparable global anxiety:
"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyses needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."
Can you imagine Bush ever saying something so enduringly, poetically profound?
vella_ms said:
Me too Kid - a long time ago. I remember being on holiday in the late 1950's (told you it was a long time ago) and my older sister and I discussing the end of the world, it would have been post-Suez, when England and France risked a new war by trying to annex Egypt, and probably the Korean War was in full flow. There was a lot of talk about 'The Bomb'. We were given instructions at school about hiding under our school desks if the bomb siren sounded. Where we were staying, near the sea, they tested the siren that morning. Of course, we didn't know it was a test, most people didn't and there was panic for a short while. My sister asked me if I thought we would be alive this time the following year. Worrying times, and not just for us kids. It ought not be the sort of thing you forget, and I still worry, more so that many of the current decision makers have little, if any, recollection of those times, and those of us who do, have little sway over policy.
Trusting to luck is no longer an option. There is a real danger of nuclear proliferation and real and unrational hatred might yet bring catastrophy. What can you do about, Vella? Do what you are doing. Each little step, by each of us, whether it be recycling garbage, compassion for a fellow, or accepting an individual regardless off their creed and understanding their right to be different, will, in the end make a difference. The mountain of misunderstanding stands tall, yet only a few steps can take you from its shadow.
On a personal note: you are more loved than you realise, and you reflect that love to those you grace with your presence.
TheeGoatPig
There is no R in my name
- Joined
- Dec 29, 2004
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- 13,163
Lisa Denton said:
That is one of the hottest posts I have ever seen
I don't worry about "Doom" type things. I go with the flow and let the world happen around me as it is going to anyway. I can't save the world, and in a lot of situations I probbaly couldn't save myself either, so why bother worrying about it? so I don't.
I do worry about the things that I should have done but didn't, but those are in my control, and I should have known better
SeaCat
Hey, my Halo is smoking
- Joined
- Sep 23, 2003
- Posts
- 15,378
vella_ms said:
Vella,
We all do what we can. None should feel shame at not being able to do more.
You do more than you realize. Just by your actions you remind many of us, me included, just what humanity and love is and can be. You show us what true bravery is. (Look at what you deal with on a daily basis and try to say I am wrong.)
As for me? Well I do more than some and less than others. I, as you, do what I can with what I have.
Cat
slyc_willie
Captain Crash
- Joined
- Sep 4, 2006
- Posts
- 17,732
When I was a kid growing up in Zweibrucken, West Germany (think mid-eighties), my friends and I were all well-entrenched in Armageddophobia. On the one hand, there was the 'cool' fantasy aspect of surviving WWIII and fighting of hordes of mutant zombies with futuristic ray guns. We were boys; that kind of thing was 'bad ass.'
But in the back of our minds, we held a real fear that the Reds would invade, that Frankfurt and Munich would vaporize under a brillant mushroom cloud and all hell would break loose.
So we practiced 'survival skills.' We taught ourselves how to build forts, heat up canned food, hide in the Fasanerie (a forest along the edge of town). All normal things for young, adventurous kids, of course, but we were doing it for a more particular and apparently imminent reason.
I'll never forget the day my mother picked up my 'survival jacket;' a denim jacket with tis pockets filled with all sorts of thigns I thought would be useful when the Big One came: a sewing kit, military lighters, a survival knife, water purification tablets, compass, etc.
She asked me why I carried all that stuff around all the time. I just told her, with boyish casualness, 'just in case.'
I couldn't understand at the time why she started crying.
But now i do.
But in the back of our minds, we held a real fear that the Reds would invade, that Frankfurt and Munich would vaporize under a brillant mushroom cloud and all hell would break loose.
So we practiced 'survival skills.' We taught ourselves how to build forts, heat up canned food, hide in the Fasanerie (a forest along the edge of town). All normal things for young, adventurous kids, of course, but we were doing it for a more particular and apparently imminent reason.
I'll never forget the day my mother picked up my 'survival jacket;' a denim jacket with tis pockets filled with all sorts of thigns I thought would be useful when the Big One came: a sewing kit, military lighters, a survival knife, water purification tablets, compass, etc.
She asked me why I carried all that stuff around all the time. I just told her, with boyish casualness, 'just in case.'
I couldn't understand at the time why she started crying.
But now i do.
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