Short Stuff: Tick tock goes the Doomsday Clock

The Doomsday Clock is closer too midnight than it's ever been, which is not awesome. But what does this metaphorical clock even indicate? See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 0:39Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck and we're sitting in for Jerry, who usually sits in for Dave. So yeah, let's go.

• 0:48Speaker 02

  Let's go. This is, well, it's a follow-up to our doomsday clock episode, but it turns out we didn't do a doomsday clock episode. I know we've talked about this, so it might've been in one of, when we were doing videos years ago. I think it was probably in one of those, but I know for a fact, the only reason I would have known about this is because of this job and you.

• 1:11Josh Clark?

  That makes me feel good that I wasn't completely unaware that we had done an episode on doomsday clocks.

• 1:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. It popped up in someplace, but what's the doomsday clock, Josh?

• 1:21Josh Clark?

  So the doomsday clock is a metaphorical clock that is operated or overseen by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which was a group of scientists who had worked on the Manhattan Project. They got together and they said, we need to create a group that is going to basically keep an eye on this nuclear proliferation that's starting up. And one of the things they did in 1947 was create the doomsday clock. And it essentially is this.

• 1:53Josh Clark?

  I guess it's a graphic representation of how close humanity is to self-inflicted disaster, like a nuclear war.

• 2:01Speaker 02

  Perfectly said, elegantly said.

• 2:03Josh Clark?

  Thank you.

• 2:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, so like you said, been around since 1947. They set the time every year. It's sort of a thing where they say like, all right, the time for this year is going to be this. Would they move it forward if something really went down within a year?

• 2:20Josh Clark?

  I think they do it every year.

• 2:22Speaker 02

  So like in January, they set it. And if like four months later, like the S goes down, they wouldn't be like, they'd be like, no, got to wait till next year.

• 2:30Josh Clark?

  Well, I think two things would happen. Either it would be something that they would take into account the next year, yes, or the world would end and they wouldn't have anything to do anyway.

• 2:40Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:42Speaker 02

  But again, we're talking about it this year because there was, and you know, we'll talk about a little bit how it's fluctuated with years. But the reason we bring it up is because this year, January 28th, 2025, is when they moved the second hand on the clock forward to 89 seconds to midnight.

• 2:58Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 2:59Speaker 02

  Which means it's the closest that clock has ever been to midnight since they started.

• 3:04Josh Clark?

  Yeah, since they started or when they started in 1947, when the US and Russia were starting the Cold War, creating nukes, testing nukes out in the open, underground in space, there was seven minutes to midnight. We're now less than two minutes away from midnight because stuff is just so close to hitting the fan. And we should say that they've actually moved the clock backward. They've moved the second hand backwards, further away from midnight in the past. And the furthest away it was from midnight was 1991, after the Soviet Union dissolved. It was all the way back from 17 minutes to midnight, which is, I think, I think that's called tiki time.

• 3:50Speaker 02

  It's like bust out the rum, everybody.

• 3:52Josh Clark?

  Exactly.

• 3:53Speaker 02

  We had 17 minutes.

• 3:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 3:55Speaker 02

  The closest pre this time in 2025 was in 1953. It was two minutes before midnight. So we are 89 seconds till midnight and the closest previous was two minutes. So that's, you know, it's pretty drastic. And again, you know, I guess we can go ahead and mention one of the criticisms of this is that it's, it's something that just gins up. The critics will say it's something that just gins up paranoia in people and like pushes the panic button. And what is it even doing? But what it's doing, I think it's a valuable thing because it just raises awareness every year with people. It's just another thing to kind of say, hey, like, we're not headed in the right direction as humanity goes.

• 4:36Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So the first editor of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists was Eugene Rabinowitz. And Eugene Rabinowitz said that the purpose of the doomsday clock is to, quote, frighten men into rationality.

• 4:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:49Josh Clark?

  And to basically say like, hey, you know, this, this is, this stuff's out of control, people, you need to be paying attention to these things because they don't just say, we're 89 seconds from midnight, see you next year. They explain what the, what the reasoning is for moving or even not moving or moving back to secondhand. And this year, being 89 seconds, the closest we've ever been, they had a whole crop of issues that go well beyond the nuclear risk that was originally, the clock was originally designed to track. And I say we take a break and we come back and talk about why we're so close to midnight right now, according to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

• 5:46Josh Clark?

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• 7:02Speaker 02

  All right, everyone, we're back. We're 80 seconds to midnight. Not 10 minutes to midnight, like Charles Bronson was in that great movie.

• 7:12Josh Clark?

  What was it called? 10 Minutes to Midnight?

• 7:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. You didn't see that one?

• 7:15Josh Clark?

  No.

• 7:16Speaker 02

  You should check that out. It's got a couple of choice scenes. It's about a creepy serial killer that he's chasing.

• 7:24Josh Clark?

  Oh, Bronson's not the creepy serial killer? He's being chased by a creepy dude?

• 7:28Speaker 02

  Charles Bronson is always the guy on the hunt for the bad guy.

• 7:32Josh Clark?

  Have you ever seen Death Wish 3? Where like the group of monks is taking over the neighborhood?

• 7:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, all the Death Wish movies. I mean, the first one was genuinely pretty good, but they got really sort of over the top after a while.

• 7:42Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it was good, though.

• 7:44Speaker 02

  It's good. You got the Death Wish, pal. This is my favorite impression to do, by the way.

• 7:48Josh Clark?

  I can't wait till you get your Morgan Freeman down.

• 7:51Speaker 02

  Oh, no. I don't think so. All right, so how did we get 89 seconds to midnight? This comes direct from the Bulletin website. Some we can kind of summarize. A few of these, I'm just going to read outright, because it's so like, sort of expertly put. But the first thing is the ongoing war in Ukraine, and not just that, but the nuclear risk therein involved in the third year of that conflict that, you know... Hopefully it doesn't go that way. Maybe things are wrapping up, but at the peak of this thing, like any weird, bad decision could have led to something like that happening.

• 8:30Josh Clark?

  Yeah, same with the Middle East right now. That can spiral out of control and suck in nuclear powers against one another. That's a nuclear risk for sure. And then we're back to increasing the size of our nuclear arsenals, which is a reverse of what we were doing in the 80s and 90s, where we were getting rid of them. That's not a good sign. And then one other thing, too, and this is definitely new. Countries that hadn't had nukes before were basically like, well, we're never going to have nukes because that's just not the way things are. It's changed geopolitically, and now countries are starting to think about developing their own nuclear programs where if you have more countries with more nukes, you have that much more risk.

• 9:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. Climate change is the next thing they have listed. And, you know, this one kind of speaks for itself. We don't need to beat a dead horse. But their take, basically, is that global greenhouse gas emissions are still rising. No one is doing enough to combat this. This is bringing on extreme weather and climate changed events, or climate change influenced events, and it's affecting people all over the world. And even if we're growing things like solar and wind, it's just not fast enough and not nearly enough to make a dent in the damage that's being done.

• 9:47Josh Clark?

  Right. Also, there's the biological arena, as they put it.

• 9:52Speaker 02

  Oh, boy, this one is very scary.

• 9:55Josh Clark?

  That's the most mucousy arena.

• 9:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, but obviously, coming out of COVID, and with the avian, the avian flu now expanding, you know, to farm animals, to dairy products, human cases, all this stuff is very scary. And the point of this episode isn't to scare the crud out of everybody.

• 10:15Josh Clark?

  No.

• 10:16Speaker 02

  But it's hard to read the stuff and not... Get the crud scared out of you sometimes.

• 10:20Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Also, don't leave AI on the sidelines in their disruptive technology part. They were like, like, yes, AI, they didn't get into the existential threat that AI itself posed. They more looked at it like, hey, some militaries are starting to incorporate AI in their like battlefield decision making. Like, we're a step away from AIs deciding whether to kill or not kill, and then eventually giving AIs control over our nuclear arsenals. And that's not a direction we want to be going. And then the whole thing, this is the reason why all these things that have been around for a while, or have been developing for a while,

• 10:59Josh Clark?

  have been accelerated to 89 seconds from midnight because of the threat multiplier of misinformation and disinformation and conspiracy theories.

• 11:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. And this is the one, I wanted to read a part or two from this. Because it just kind of speaks volumes of things. They really, they really put it very succinctly. Spread of misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theories that degrade the communication ecosystem, increasingly blur the lines between truth and falsehood. And then they talk about AI making it even, you know, we've talked about deep fake video and stuff like that, like making all that stuff just so much easier. And then this final line is really, really good. The battered information landscape is also producing leaders who discount science and endeavor to suppress free speech and human rights, compromising the fact-based public discussions that are required to combat the enormous threats facing the world. So, like, all of

• 11:54Speaker 02

  the problems that we've been listing are bad enough. And then when you've got disinformation and conspiracy theories and misinformation thrown on top of that, and AI exacerbating all that, that's when it's like, they're moving that clock as close to midnight as they've ever been.

• 12:10Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And the reason why is because people would be, under that circumstance, they're being led away from paying attention to the stuff the doomsday clock is warring against. And that just makes it that much riskier, too, because we have to be paying attention to it, whether you like it or not. For some reason, when I was researching this today, I was like, this is striking me as a little ridiculous. And Like, I get the point of it, and I think it is noble and worthy. But there's also some, like, real, um, I don't know, real criticisms of it. And I found one piece by a guy named Stephen Johnson on Lifehacker.

• 12:50Josh Clark?

  And he interviewed Lawrence Krauss, who's a physicist and a member of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. Sorry, the New Republic interviewed Krauss. And he said, "It's not scientific. It's a number that's arrived at by a group of people. We're exploring each of the questions, then having a huge amount of discussion, and ultimately convergent on a number. That number is frankly arbitrary." And that's true. You have to remember, it's a metaphor. There's no way to measure, okay, if we're 89 seconds from midnight right now, how much longer is the world going to last?

• 13:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:23Josh Clark?

  And the big problem with it, I think, is National Geographic put it, "If everything's a crisis, nothing's a crisis." So before, the whole thing was created to say, "This one thing, nuclear proliferation. This is what we're warning about." Now you've got climate change, AI, avian flu, disinformation. It's just, like, being piled on. And I think it's really diluted the point and the pointedness of the whole thing.

• 13:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe. But that's also the world we're living in right now.

• 13:57Josh Clark?

  Yeah, but it makes it so easy to just be like, "Oh, well, I give up. I'm gonna just go pay attention to, I don't know, flowers versus zombies." Do people play that still?

• 14:08Speaker 02

  I didn't know that was a thing.

• 14:10Josh Clark?

  I think it was at some point, unless I had a fever dream.

• 14:13Speaker 02

  Uh, well, you didn't have a fever dream. One thing, whether or not you agree with the doomsday clock or not, one thing I can recommend, because you're too humble to, is a little limited podcast series called "The End of the World" with Josh Clark. That way, you can really learn something and take a deep dive into real existential threats that face humanity.

• 14:34Josh Clark?

  Thanks, Chuck. I appreciate that.

• 14:36Speaker 02

  Holds up. Still great, I imagine. I haven't gone back and listened to it again. I bet it still holds up, though.

• 14:41Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Well, because one of the number-one rules in show business is "Leave 'em wanting more." I say, "Short stuff is out."

• 14:51Speaker 00

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