Don’t Panic. It’s only the end of the world…
On Thursday, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists raised the likelihood of an apocalyptic nuclear catastrophe to its highest level in the clock’s 70+-year history, the Washington Post reported.
The clock was moved from two-and-a-half minutes to midnight to two minutes to midnight – like the classic Iron Maiden song…
During a press conference announcing the escalation, the group of scientists comprising the Bulletin offered a “grim assessment” of the factors that preceded the increase: These factors included North Korea’s nuclear program, tensions between India and Pakistan and Russia’s and China’s incorporation of nuclear drills into its military exercise.
President Donald Trump’s mercurial tweets were also cited in the report.
The group which includes 15 Nobel Laureates said the risk of nuclear annihilation in the present day has surpassed previous highs witnessed during World War II, and during the most intense periods of the Cold War.
The organization – which has 15 Nobel Laureates on its board – now believes “the world is not only more dangerous now than it was a year ago; it is as threatening as it has been since World War II,” Bulletin officials Lawrence M. Krauss and Robert Rosner wrote in an op-ed published Thursday by The Washington Post.
“In fact, the Doomsday Clock is as close to midnight today as it was in 1953, when Cold War fears perhaps reached their highest levels.”
The last time the clock advanced so far, the United States had just tested its first thermonuclear device, and the Soviet Union had tested a hydrogen bomb.
Today, Bronson said, “to call the world’s nuclear situation dire is to understate the danger and its immediacy.”
With President Trump’s now infamous “Fire and Fury” remark reverberating in their ears, the committee said it also “considered at length” the unpredictability of US nuclear policy, which one member said “an unpredictability that is embodied in statements and tweets, by the US.
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