Doomsday Clock Research Articles

Engaged Scholarship in Times of Crisis

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Tech Talk: Global Gas Outlook 2050

Those of a pessimistic persuasion could see 2050 looming just over the horizon as a doomsday clock kind of countdown, while the more romantically inclined among us might regard these numbers as a Cinderella fairytale ticking towards the midnight hour. Either way, the mid-point of the 21st century has been declared a pivotal point in world history as the date where countries, companies and individuals will either have achieved net zero emission targets or, according to the naysayers, we will all go hurtling towards the cliff and perish in a self-induced climate change apocalypse. Against this backdrop it’s fair to suggest that global energy in a time of transition has never faced as much uncertainty.

Superman as the Measure of All Things: Black Gods and White Saviours in Watchmen and Doomsday Clock

Abstract While the groundbreaking graphic novel Watchmen (1986) responded to Cold War paranoia with a nihilistic critique of a benevolent God, recent spinoffs have taken radically different approaches to race and Christology in the Trump Era. Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ original Watchmen has spawned two unlikely and unauthorised—by Moore, at least—quasi-sequels in different media: HBO’s limited TV series Watchmen (2019), created by Damon Lindelof, and Geoff Johns and Gary Frank’s graphic novel Doomsday Clock (2020). Like estranged siblings, HBO’s Watchmen and Doomsday Clock take the same source material in opposite directions. HBO’s Watchmen explores themes of racial justice by foregrounding 1921’s Tulsa Massacre and vesting Black characters with divine power. In contrast, Doomsday Clock departs from the original Watchmen’s cynicism about cultural and political change, embodying its message of hope and renewal in a white saviour. This article contributes to the growing body of literature examining how pop culture circulates Christological concepts by exploring the racial and theological significance of two of DC Comics’ most iconic characters—Superman and Dr Manhattan. I examine how Black theologians conceptualise Christology, discuss the deistic portrayal of Dr Manhattan in the original Watchmen, analyse the character’s incarnational iteration in the television series, and contrast this with how moral influence Christology underpins the relationship between Superman and Dr Manhattan in Doomsday Clock to show that superhero comics in particular, and pop culture more broadly, are crucial sites of Christological imagination and negotiation over race.

Reducing the risks of nuclear war - The role of health professionals

In January 2023, the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the hands of the Doomsday Clock forward to 90 seconds before midnight, reflecting the growing risk of nuclear war. In August 2022, the UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned that the world is now in “a time of nuclear danger not seen since the height of the Cold War.” The danger has been underlined by growing tensions between many nuclear armed states [...]. Note: this Editorial is being published simultaneously in multiple journals. For the full list of journals see: https://www.bmj.com/content/full-list-authors-and-signatories-nuclear-risk-editorial-august-2023.

The US DOD budget: Can it be predicted?

The Department of Defense (DOD) is part of the United States Federal Government which oversees the U.S. Military. This Department is one of the largest and most complex organizations in the world. The DOD mission is to protect and defend the United States (US) and provide national security. To achieve this, the DOD requires a major portion of the federal budget. Each year, the DOD portion is based on a variety of political and economic factors. The results of this study are noteworthy. A regression model was derived that explained 82.14% of the variation in the target ratio of the federal budget with a significance level of 0.05. Four variables were identified and listed in order of greatest impact, as determined, by their standardized coefficients. These variables may have a significant relationship with DOD's budget. The four variables are: (a) House Majority Political Party, (b) Doomsday Clock Value, (c) US President's Political Party Affiliation, and (d) US Gross Domestic Product Growth Rate. If corporations and other agencies that deal with the DOD were to be able to accurately predict year-by-year DOD budget levels, this would give them a unique, competitive advantage. The strong presence of political factors in the results may be a key indicator for DOD businesses to consider in ensuring the balance of an appropriate level of politically motivated drivers within their corporate strategy models. Further recommendations focused primarily on the factors and, ultimately, the variables that should be selected for future studies. Variables need to be selected to allow for a greater number of observations to increase the likelihood of producing accurate study results.

The Doomsday Clock at 75 ed. by Robert K. Elder and J. C. Gabel (review).

The Doomsday Clock at 75 ed. by Robert K. Elder and J. C. Gabel (review).

Deus ex Poiesis: A Manifesto for the End of the World and the Future of Art and Technology

In 2020, the Doomsday Clock advanced to just one hundred seconds before nuclear midnight, the hour at which atomic armageddon would end the world as we know it. Using the Greek theatrical device of deus ex machina and Heidegger's reliance on poiesis as a liberating force from technological enframing, I propose the concept of deus ex poiesis as a potential model for addressing the seemingly insurmountable challenges of the anthropocene, an era in which industrial technologies have instigated global climatic changes on the scale of Earth's five mass extinctions. Drawing on additional theoretical insights from Gregory Bateson, Jack Burnham, Donna Haraway, Alva Noë, Rita Raley and others, my essay discusses two aesthetic approaches: 1) digital artworks that explicitly engage in forms of (h)activism through tactical media; 2 artworks that develop and apply ways of knowing that lie outside of rational scientific models and that explore hybrid forms of perception and expanded states of consciousness. Artists considered include Electronic Disturbance Theater, rTMark, Julian Oliver and Danja Vasiliev, Roy Ascott, Pauline Oliveros, and Kim Jeong-Han.

Climate Scientist Reflects as Doomsday Clock Stays at 100 Seconds to Midnight

On the 75th anniversary of the Doomsday Clock, major threats against the world have not waned, say organizers.

Unwelcome consequences: Christina Dalcher’s Vox and John Lanchester’s The Wall

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientistsʼ Doomsday Clock, first introduced in 1947, recently movedthe fictional clock forward; it now rests at 100 seconds to midnight, or 100 seconds from destroying our selves. The numerous threats posed by nuclear weapons, pandemics, weaponized technology, and catastrophic climate change create an ʻenvironment of miseryʼ in which all action—and all inaction—is fraught with risk. Two recent novels employ dystopian visions of the United States and Britain, respectively, and explore the consequences of social engineering that takes place to minimize (perceived) risks and increase safety. Dalcherʼs Vox (2018) and Lanchesterʼs The Wall (2019) are two novels that are a commentary on a world in which risk is pervasive and in which (in)action can exacerbate dire circumstances. At the same time, the novels highlight that local (national) action is doomed to fail if it does not also consider the global interconnectedness of challenges and risks.

Born Into the Dark

Born Into the Dark Timothy Shenk (bio) Movements discover their limits when they gain just enough power to get some of what they want. That's why the last year has been so tough on progressive Democrats. They came in hoping to crush the pandemic, clear a path beyond the wreckage of neoliberalism, and take major steps toward saving the planet from climate change. Instead, they gave a leftish tilt to a string of ad hoc responses that averted COVID-19 apocalypse without delivering structural change. It's tough to slay neo-fascism when you can't even raise the minimum wage, or to launch a political revolution with a paper-thin majority divided between sincere reformers and Washington swamp creatures laser-focused on slashing tax rates for the blue-state one percent. And with Republicans poised to retake Congress in the midterms, and the political class already turning its attention to 2024, the road only gets steeper from here. Which raises a question: what happens to progressives who give up on progress? The problem isn't just about the frustrations of the last year. Yes, the headlines have turned into an eerie replay of the 1970s: inflation, rising crime rates, Afghanistan as the new Vietnam. But the day-to-day setbacks are part of a distinctive set of concerns that have been gathering strength over the last decade. There's the dwindling faith that millennials and zoomers will claw their way back to the economic security so many of their parents took for granted, along with the fraying of meaningful human relationships in the age of social media (and, maybe, recurring lockdowns). Plus the constant ticking of a doomsday clock as the planet heats up little by little. It adds up to the deepening conviction that progress itself is an illusion, that history is always ready to undo any temporary advances over humanity's natural state, where the strong do what they can and the weak do what they must. In the face of all that, we have a caretaker presidency as a bridge to … what, exactly? For now, it seems like a Harris-Buttigieg ticket, or some other human counterpart to an "In This House We Believe" sign. No wonder progressives aren't exactly chipper these days. For which, I suggest, readers of Dissent should be grateful. We're a tribe united by our recognition that pessimism of the intellect is the starting point for serious politics. Liberals have merely adopted the dark, but democratic socialism was born into it—;born out of the realization that history wasn't going to deliver a ready-made [End Page 4] working-class majority to our side, born out of the belief that collective action could nevertheless inch us toward a more just world. We know how it feels to lose faith in the inevitability of progress. But we also know you get something better in return: hope for real democracy. [End Page 5] Timothy Shenk Timothy Shenk is co-editor of Dissent. Copyright © 2022 Foundation for the Study of Independent Social Ideas, Inc. (FSISI).

Contemporary indicators of security. An attempt to measure the level of security.

ObjectivesThe subject of consideration in this article are contemporary indicators of security, which allow to determine its level in quantifiable values.MethodsFor the purposes of this research, the following research methods were applied: analysis, synthesis, generalisation and inference.ResultsThis paper is a review of selected powermetric studies on security, which were divided into global studies estimating state power such as: Global Firepower Report, 2021 Measuring National and Power Index of the power of states and their indicators - area-specific studies, which prove to be increasingly useful due to growing cyber threats or threats related to the current COVID-19 pandemic. The so-called doomsday clock was selected as an indicator of international security, in which individual hours define the level of security, with midnight indicating the annihilation of humanity. In addition to models for estimating security and state power, on the basis of the results of the studies cited, the paper also mentions possible directions for further development of threats and recommendations in this regard.ConclusionsThe research results presented in the analysed studies are useful for estimating various types of security indicators, both in terms of state security, as well as various other aspects of security, including health, soft power or cyber security. Security indicators can be used by analysts, politicians, decision-makers, and other entities involved in security management as a source of knowledge and measurable values determining the level of security and threats. They also help to indicate weaknesses in security systems in order to quickly diagnose and eliminate them.

Introduction: How to dial back a disinformation dystopia

Since 2018, the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board has explicitly included internet disinformation in its deliberations1 on setting2 the Doomsday Clock,3 noting that disinformation acts as a thr...

Perdurant Time

Sustainability is a matter of time. For years, scientists have been warning us that our time is up, if we do not “bend the curve” of greenhouse gas emissions. Thinking about future generations calls into question our inherited relationship with nature and the time-scale shift to the Anthropocene. Arguably this trend began with the Industrial Revolution around 1750 and has reached catastrophic levels with the increase of tropical cyclones, wildfires, flash flooding, and heatwaves. The question on most people’s mind is, do we have time to change? Change may occur over eons, such as geological events with the appearance or disappearance of significant life-forms. It may be momentary, such as a flash of insight where our perception of the world changes. Or, indeed, change can happen retroactively - as physicists conceptualize - time can be diffracted, changing the past. This suggests three ontological structures of time. Time is atemporal where things endure and preserve their identity through change. Time is subjective. Or entities have different temporal parts wherein entities unfold through time, referred to as perdurants. Our time is a time of a geological shift. Many geologists agree that we are moving from the Pleistocene to the Anthropocene, with the Doomsday Clock ticking ever closer to 12:00 midnight, deeply affecting the mood of the current generation. The battle cry for sustainability, already a contested word, has been appropriated by petroleum companies and big tech with promises of moving towards 50% lower carbon emissions by 2050. But when we read the fine print in their disclaimers, we find the language of “speculation,” “projection,” “forward looking,” and “risk,” rendering the term meaningless. This paper aims to extend the term sustainability to include all three ontologies of time. I will do this by (I) looking at Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant’s transcendental aesthetic in Section 3 of Heidegger’s 1929 monograph Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, where he overcomes subjective time and the ontology of endurance that accompanies it. (II) Heidegger interchanges between endurance and perdurance in, “The Principle of Identity” (1957) and “The Onto-theo-logical Constitution of Metaphysics” (1956) navigating a knife-edge between identity and difference. (III) I will conclude by suggesting, when thought in terms of perdurance, sustainability can bend the curve in our current trajectory towards ecological destruction, by reimagining a better world.

Should We Govern Geoengineering like Nuclear Weapons or the Internet?

Should We Govern Geoengineering like Nuclear Weapons or the Internet? Elizabeth L. Chalecki (bio) As the doomsday clock attests, humans are losing the struggle with climate change. The climate crisis isn’t just an environmental problem. It is a governance problem and reducing our greenhouse gas emissions hasn’t worked so far because nations have only agreed to piecemeal steps.1 Adapting to hurricanes, wildfires, floods, heat waves, and the other effects of a changing climate has been painful and dangerous and is likely to get harder. Climate change even threatens our national security.2 It is what is known as a wicked problem, affecting every part of our ecology and economy, defying all easy solutions, and requiring a level of collective action we haven’t yet been able to achieve. If the climate threats to human well-being become sufficiently dire, nations will begin to consider deliberate manipulation of the Earth’s climate as an increasingly attractive option. Known as geoengineering, some of these technologies could be beneficial, but all of them carry risks of their own. Before we are forced to consider deploying geoengineering from a position of desperation, we should plan for its governance. Geoengineering is currently defined as “an array of technologies that aim, through large-scale deliberate modification of the [E]arth’s energy balance, to reduce temperatures and counteract anthropogenic climate change.”3 The term widely encompasses various kinds of technology designed to either bounce sunlight away from the Earth or pull carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases directly from the air. The table below lists various methods: The majority of these technologies are land-based and slow-acting, so their governance falls to the states on whose territory they operate. However, aerosols, cloud brightening, and ocean iron fertilization are known as commons-based geoengineering, as they have to be deployed from or have access to the upper atmosphere Solar Radiation Management4 Carbon Dioxide Removal5 • stratospheric aerosol injection • marine-based cloud brightening • reflective crops and surfaces • space mirrors or mirror confetti • ocean iron fertilization • weathering • carbon capture and storage (sequestration) • afforestation [End Page 112] or high seas in order to work.6 This means that their governance then becomes a matter for all sovereign states and, thus, an issue area within international law. Humans have never before had the scientific and technological ability to purposefully modify the Earth’s environment on a global scale. We do have ethical guidelines for future scientific research and development like the Oxford Principles and the Asilomar Report, and considering “the general good” and recommending “open and cooperative research” may be wise advice.7,8 But these frameworks do not provide enough specificity to help states build a new governance regime nor add geoengineering to an existing one. Global scientific and technological regimes Given the scientific and political unknowns (including whether these technologies will work, who gets to use them, and who will be responsible if something goes wrong), what can we learn about governing geoengineering from the international treaties and agencies that oversee other advanced scientific technologies? Several of them are governed at the global level, such as chemical and biological weapons and genetic modification. Others, like advanced computing and weapons technology, were considered so critical to national security that they were the subject of export controls like CoCom.9 Still others, like synthetic biology and nanotechnology, are new enough that they only have limited uses at the moment, and their governance lags well behind their development. But the mere existence of a treaty addressing geoengineering is not enough. As with most new technologies, the devil is in the details: what form would the treaty take and what should it contain? Comparing geoengineering with nuclear technology and the internet can provide us with useful points of consideration because, though both regimes’ scopes are worldwide, they are nevertheless governed differently. Devastation from misuse of nuclear weapons would have planetary ecological effects.10 Simultaneously, satellite coverage and the nonexistence of borders in cyberspace mean that there is almost nowhere on Earth that the internet cannot reach.11 By looking at the utility, the barrier-to-entry, and the regulation of each technology, we might be able to...

Anticoagulants and Progression of Injury after Subdural Hematoma: Doomsday Clock or No Big Deal?

Sadri, Lili MD; Martin, Jennifer PhD; Katsnelson, Jacob MD; Traczuk, Ashley; Leigh Butler, Karyn MD, FACS Author Information

100 seconds to midnight

For almost 75 years, the Doomsday Clock has monitored how close humankind is to global catastrophe. With the clock now closer to midnight than ever before, Rachel Brazil talks to physicists who say we must step up our efforts to prevent disaster

The node is nonsense

One of the most famous maxims in technology is, of course, Moore's Law. For more than 55 years, the “Law” has described and predicted the shrinkage of transistors, as denoted by a set of roughly biannual waypoints called technology nodes. Like some physics based doomsday clock, the node numbers have ticked down relentlessly over the decades as engineers managed to regularly double the number of transistors they could fit into the same bpatch of silicon. • When Gordon Moore first pointed out the trend that carries his name, there was no such thing as a node, and only about 50 transistors could economically be integrated on an IC. • But after decades of intense effort and hundreds of billions of dollars in investment, look how far we've come! If you're fortunate enough to be reading this article on a high-end smartphone, the processor inside it was made using technology at what's called the 7-nanometer node. That means that there are about 100 million transistors within a square millimeter of silicon. Processors fabricated at the 5-nm node are in production now, and industry leaders expect to be working on what might be called the 1-nm node inside of a decade.

Doomsday Clock is reset to 100 seconds until midnight, closest ever

Doomsday Clock is reset to 100 seconds until midnight, closest ever

Nuclear Accidents Will Happen

In January 2018, theBulletin of the Atomic Scientists(BAS) moved its Doomsday Clock closer to midnight: it now reads 11:58. The last time the minute hand was this close to the hour of Armageddon was 1953, just after the United States and Soviet Union tested thermonuclear bombs. Since then the stylized clock has ticked backward and forward, each year metaphorically registering civilization's proximity to global catastrophe. “To call the world's nuclear situation dire,” the group warned in its January statement, “is to understate the danger—and its immediacy.”

Doomsday Clock stalls at two minutes to midnight ― but global threats increase

Heightened tensions between nuclear powers and inaction on climate change are the “new abnormal”, says the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Increased tensions between nuclear powers and inaction on climate change are the "new abnormal", says the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.