Doomsday Clock
Monday, October 16, 2006
Since 1947 there has been a Doomsday clock counting down the minutes until nuclear obliteration. Below is a writeup from Wikipedia regarding its history. It hasn't been adjusted since 2002 but people are wondering if the North Korea nuclear test will move it. Currently we are 7 minutes til midnight. We have been as close as 2 minutes and as far back as 17.
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The clock was started at seven minutes to midnight during the Cold War in 1947, and has subsequently been moved forwards or backwards at intervals, depending on the state of the world and the prospects for nuclear war. Its setting is relatively arbitrary, set by the Board of Directors at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in response to global affairs. The setting of the clock has not always been fast enough to cope with the speed of global events, either; one of the closest periods to nuclear war, the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, reached its head and resolution in a number of weeks, and the clock either could not be changed or was not changed to reflect any of this at the time. Nevertheless, the changing of the clock usually does provoke attention, which is presumably the goal of the Bulletin Directors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_clock
Posted by mardenhill 10/16/2006 05:07:00 PM
Labels: Science
