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Doomsday Clock moved to 2.5 minutues to midnight. Cloest to midnight since 1953.

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J

Joe Shlabotnik

Banned
JK-Money said:
HOLY SHIT THIS IS A THING, I THOUGHT IT WAS MADE UP FOR WATCHMEN..........shit
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It's just a group of scientists giving a subjective general evaluation.

Saying "we didn't have a chance to change the clock" for the Cuban Missile Crisis is a cop-out because if we were less than a year from the brink of nuclear war then the clock was too far out at 12 minutes to begin with.

That's not to say there's no value in this kind of public awareness exercise. But that's what it is, not some empirical measurement.
 
R

RipperGrim

Member
Was going to say bullshit when an event like cuban missile crisis happened but I see they don't work fast enough to take that into calculations. I do wonder what the biggest threat is though, nuclear or environmental?
 
R

Rebel Leader

THE POWER OF BUTTERSCOTCH BOTTOMS
RipperGrim said:
Was going to say bullshit when an event like cuban missile crisis happened but I see they don't work fast enough to take into calculations. I do wonder what the biggest threat is though, nuclear or environmental?
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Both are equal.. If either happens so does the other
 
R

RinsFury

Member
jett said:
How can this be closer than during the Cuban Missile crisis? This is looking like nonsense.
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There's an unstable psychopath that has taken up residence in the White House, could take something as simple as a tweet by another world leader to set him off.
 
E

ElectricBlanketFire

Member
giphy.gif
 
T

The Albatross

Member
Baron von Loathsome said:
"Mr. Trump, they say the Doomsday Clock is at two and a half minutes to midnight."

"But it's 10 in the morning. Stupid!"
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This may be the one time that I agree with hypothetical Trump.

The Doomsday Clock is for Republicans the media equivalent of the National Debt Ticker is for Democrats. "2009: OH NO, the National Debt Ticker goes above 1 gajillion billion trillion mamillion!!!" "2016: The Doomsday Clock is 8 seconds to midnight!" The hysterical stories just cycle every four or eight years depending on who's in power.

It's stupid anyway. Like, somehow nuclear war was less of an scenario for virtually the entirety of the Vietnam War than it has been for the last 20 years? Even given that there was no Kissinger-era nuclear arms deal between 1963 and 1968...? It's a garbage media narrative to write headlines and create hysteria.
 
P

Plum

Member
FriedConsole said:
That timeline just seems random. So we are worse off now than the Cuban Missle Crisis? OK.
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It's likely because they're factoring in climate change, economic disasters, etc now. Climate change is an all but guaranteed global disaster at this point; at least the Cuban Missile Crisis could be prevented.
 
R

Regiruler

Member
Plum said:
It's likely because they're factoring in climate change, economic disasters, etc now. Climate change is an all but guaranteed global disaster at this point; at least the Cuban Missile Crisis could be prevented.
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I thought the doomsday clock was more explicitly for Nuclear disaster.

Outside of japan the major powers won't be as dramatically affected as the lesser powers by it, so it's not really going to increase tension among the nuclear powers.
 
P

Plum

Member
Regiruler said:
I thought the doomsday clock was more explicitly for Nuclear disaster.

Outside of japan the major powers won't be as dramatically affected as the lesser powers by it, so it's not really going to increase tension among the nuclear powers.
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See:

g859 said:
They've added a few more categories:

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-...ay-clock-is-now-30-seconds-closer-to-midnight

http://thebulletin.org/doomsday-dashboard
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And I think it just means how close we are to inevitable 'doomsday', i.e. it could happen five minutes from now or fifty years from now but it's still happening. Trump being pro-climate change practically makes that an inevitability at this point when before we had a slight chance that things could be changed in time.
 
AHA-Lambda

AHA-Lambda

Member
Lombax said:
I just don't understand. How much worse do things have to get?
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WW3?

SyNapSe said:
Is 17 minutes from doomsday good? lol. That isn't much scale.
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well that's the best the clock has been in it's 70 year history

FriedConsole said:
That timeline just seems random. So we are worse off now than the Cuban Missle Crisis? OK.
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No, we're 30 seconds better than 1953, and even then they didn't take into account climate change then.
 
B

Beartruck

Member
Look at that, every single time a democrat was in power the time went up, and every time a republican was in power it went down. But no though, republicans are good for the country. /s
 
T

The Albatross

Member
Beartruck said:
Look at that, every single time a democrat was in power the time went up, and every time a republican was in power it went down. But no though, republicans are good for the country. /s
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I don't know if we're looking at the same graph, or if you just have a hopeless misunderstanding of which presidents were in power when.

That said, the Doomsday Clock is still meaningless hysterical bull shit.
 
H

hydragonwarrior

Member
Also don't forget it's also about climate change as well so there's a whole bevy of things.

But God damn if that doesn't inspire the conspiracy theory/alarmist/reactionist side within me.
 
F

Fancyarcher

Member
The doomsday clock is kinda useless, though. It's been constantly moving closer to midnight when nothing seems to happen for decades now. It really doesn't mean anything at this point.
 
B

Beartruck

Member
The Albatross said:
I don't know if we're looking at the same graph, or if you just have a hopeless misunderstanding of which presidents were in power when.

That said, the Doomsday Clock is still meaningless hysterical bull shit.
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Maybe I phrased it wrong: every time a repub was in power we got closer to midnight and every time a democrat was in power more time was added (farther from midnight).
 
P

Plum

Member
Fancyarcher said:
The doomsday clock is kinda useless, though. It's been constantly moving closer to midnight when nothing seems to happen for decades now. It really doesn't mean anything at this point.
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Climate change has been slowly getting worse for decades now.

The Albatross said:
Exactly.

Consider this, the Doomsday Clock theorists think that Barack Obama was more likely to launch global thermo nulear war than Richard Nixon.
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See:

g859 said:
They've added a few more categories:

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-...ay-clock-is-now-30-seconds-closer-to-midnight
http://thebulletin.org/doomsday-dashboard
Click to expand...

It's not just about global nuclear war anymore.
 
T

The Albatross

Member
Fancyarcher said:
The doomsday clock is kinda useless, though. It's been constantly moving closer to midnight when nothing seems to happen for decades now. It really doesn't mean anything at this point.
Click to expand...

Exactly.

Consider this, the Doomsday Clock theorists think that Barack Obama was more likely to launch global thermo nulear war than Richard Nixon.

Beartruck said:
Maybe I phrased it wrong: every time a repub was in power we got closer to midnight and every time a democrat was in power more time was added (farther from midnight).
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This is... not true, as long as we're looking at the same bull shit chart:

600px-Doomsday_Clock_graph.svg.png


I mean, even aside from the fact that the Doomsday Clock is a bull shit contrivance... In 1991, George HW Bush was in office. By 1993, Bill Clinton would take office and the Doomsday clock wwould apparently tick closer to midnight by some 10 seconds over those 8 years. Further back, during the Carter administration, the clock would tick closer to midnight by 2 seconds. During the HW Bush administration (1989 to 1993) it would tick back some 10 seconds (the largest drop). Looking at this chart, Obama would enter office in 2009 about 5 seconds to midnight, and then by 2015 while Obama was still in office, the clock would be 3 seconds to midnight. What you're saying is just wrong as long as we're looking at the same chart in the OP.

But, still, the clock is meaningless bull shit.
 
L

Lime

Member
The Albatross said:
Exactly.

Consider this, the Doomsday Clock theorists think that Barack Obama was more likely to launch global thermo nulear war than Richard Nixon.
Click to expand...

Uhm, no, there's a host of factors as to why it moved closer during Obama's tenure. It's not just the US and it's not just nuclear war that are included in the analysis
 
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