Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you, welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert lamp and I'm Christian Sager. Robert,
Speaker 1: you and I both grew up in the eighties. How
Speaker 1: worried were you about nuclear annihilation as a kid? Because
Speaker 1: I was terrified of it. It was like constantly being
Speaker 1: talked about on the news or in popular culture. It's
Speaker 1: an interesting question because, you know, I look back on
Speaker 1: it and I remember I think back on threats that
Speaker 1: were present in the media or in the conversations of
Speaker 1: adults and how they influenced me. Like I remember, I
Speaker 1: remember going to church and being in hearing about the
Speaker 1: becoming battle of Armageddon and how everyone's gonna have to
Speaker 1: fight on one side or the other. I remember being
Speaker 1: concerned about that. I remember picking up on some of
Speaker 1: the the the Aid's Scare material and thinking like, oh,
Speaker 1: how does this affect me? How does this affect the
Speaker 1: people I care about. I don't remember being feeling like
Speaker 1: the anxiety of nuclear war so much, and maybe I
Speaker 1: was just you know, part of this. Part of this
Speaker 1: was a time when I was I was living outside
Speaker 1: of the US, I was in Canada, we only had
Speaker 1: the one TV TV channel, so that might have played
Speaker 1: a role. Or maybe I was just you know, removed
Speaker 1: enough from the or distracted enough from the the nightly
Speaker 1: you know, TV news that it didn't affect me, or
Speaker 1: maybe it's an I mean, we're about the same age though,
Speaker 1: so I don't know how to what extent that played
Speaker 1: into In the past, I've kind of wondered, well, maybe
Speaker 1: I was just a little too young, Like I didn't
Speaker 1: to to to use the language of Queen. I didn't
Speaker 1: quite grow up in the shadow of the mushroom cloud.
Speaker 1: You know. That's interesting. Yeah, yeah, well, and I also,
Speaker 1: you know, moved around overseas a little bit too, so
Speaker 1: that could have contributed to it in different ways as well.
Speaker 1: But I definitely remember the eighties being like scary and
Speaker 1: then like, you know, maybe it was also just because
Speaker 1: of my age, but then in the nineties it was like, oh,
Speaker 1: things are okay now, like that there's not as much
Speaker 1: of a threat. We can all breathe easy, We're not
Speaker 1: going to have to like we don't have to do
Speaker 1: the whole stop, drop and roll thing in the cross rooms, right.
Speaker 1: I definitely looking back, I definitely see that trend where
Speaker 1: there is the nineties, there was this feeling of, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is not that big of a threat anymore, maybe
Speaker 1: it's even not a threat. Don't worry about it, just
Speaker 1: do your thing. But I've always been a fan of
Speaker 1: stuff from the eighties in the late seventies, from you know,
Speaker 1: the fiction, the music, in the literature, and you certainly
Speaker 1: see nuclear anxiety displayed in in that in various ways.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I mean we've got, of course Terminator
Speaker 1: to Judgment Day. I mean, they are of course talking
Speaker 1: about an artificial intelligence bringing about the apoco Ellipse, but
Speaker 1: it's through nuclear warfare. Uh. And then the big one
Speaker 1: that I always think of is Watchmen, especially when I
Speaker 1: think of what we're going to talk about today, which
Speaker 1: is the doomsday clock. Now I don't believe this was
Speaker 1: featured in the movie version of Watchmen, but in the
Speaker 1: comic book version, every issue began with the doomsday clock
Speaker 1: blood dripping down the page further and further, and as
Speaker 1: you got to the twelfth issue, I think the blood
Speaker 1: was covering the clock like all the way or something
Speaker 1: like that. But the idea was that the reason why
Speaker 1: these events were happening in the story is because we're
Speaker 1: inching closer to midnight on the doomsday clock. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: you know, maybe when I first read Watchman, I wasn't
Speaker 1: for some reason, I never really put one and two
Speaker 1: together on the doomsday clock. But yeah, I believe that
Speaker 1: there's like a kind of synchronicity of the metaphor there
Speaker 1: with Dr Manhattan being connected to atomic energy. He's also
Speaker 1: a watchmaker, and he's obsessed with time and taking apart
Speaker 1: clocks and putting them back together again, and then the
Speaker 1: background metaphor of the doomsday clock. Now here's the thing.
Speaker 1: I didn't know the doomsday clock was a real thing
Speaker 1: until I was an adult, and actually just recently it
Speaker 1: was updated. Now, we shared this on our social media
Speaker 1: for stuff to blow your mind, and there was a
Speaker 1: lot of comments about it, uh so much so that
Speaker 1: we thought this is probably worth digging into because there's
Speaker 1: a lot of science behind the Doomsday clock and the
Speaker 1: group that manages it, which is called the Bulletin of
Speaker 1: Atomic Scientists. So we figured, let's do a dive into that,
Speaker 1: explain what that is and see what's going on there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I feel like there is a lot of confusion,
Speaker 1: especially and I don't mean I don't. I don't mean
Speaker 1: to vilify people who say didn't read the link, it
Speaker 1: didn't fall with the link and read the article that
Speaker 1: we shared, because I think we all have to do this.
Speaker 1: Where it was so many different pieces of media and
Speaker 1: our streams, you just can't click on everything. I don't
Speaker 1: understand that. But it's easy without without diving in to it,
Speaker 1: it's easy to mistake what the doomsday clock is. On
Speaker 1: one hand, you might think, oh, well, this is a
Speaker 1: this is a rigorous scientific like um, you know, FIRMI
Speaker 1: kind of a contemplation on what the chances of nuclear
Speaker 1: war are. Or you may think, oh, this is just
Speaker 1: complete political bs. This is just somebody or some group
Speaker 1: of people just making some with with political motivation, deciding
Speaker 1: how dangerous the current climate is. And the answer is
Speaker 1: it's somewhere in the middle. Uh. And but it's worth
Speaker 1: taking a look at because while yes, it so, let's
Speaker 1: make this very clear right from the top, the doomsday
Speaker 1: clock is not managed by any kind of like supercomputer
Speaker 1: or device that's calculating things and figuring out what the
Speaker 1: exact time on the clock should ye do not confuse
Speaker 1: it with an actual atomic clock, which is a you
Speaker 1: know a highly precise um time measurement system. This is
Speaker 1: and this is something where a human hand is essentially
Speaker 1: going to reach up and change time exactly. And it's
Speaker 1: fairly subjective. But at the same time, the people who
Speaker 1: are in charge of making that subjective judgment call are
Speaker 1: experts in their field. And we're gonna go over all
Speaker 1: of that. We'll talk about it, we'll talk about the group,
Speaker 1: the journal surrounding this, the doomsday clock itself, and then
Speaker 1: we're gonna look at some arguments both four and against it.
Speaker 1: Uh So, just to back up here in case you
Speaker 1: missed it, at the beginning of the bulletin of atomic
Speaker 1: scientists calculated that we're even closer to doomsday and they
Speaker 1: adjusted the doomsday clock to two point five minutes to midnight.
Speaker 1: Midnight being doomsday, meaning the human population will be completely
Speaker 1: wiped out by something usually nuclear annihilation. Uh And by
Speaker 1: their prediction, we're that much closer to the end of humanity.
Speaker 1: This is the closest the clock has been to doomsday
Speaker 1: since nineteen fifty three, after the US tested its first
Speaker 1: thermonuclear device. Now, why why, why why did they push
Speaker 1: it forward? Well, certainly, if you've if you've been following
Speaker 1: the news enough to pick up on the doomsday story,
Speaker 1: then you've probably been following the news enough to pick
Speaker 1: up on all these various other stories. We can basically
Speaker 1: reduce a lot of it to sort of to saber rattling,
Speaker 1: to the testing of new regimes, to new regimes, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, rolling out their stance on the issues of
Speaker 1: of nuclear armaments, uh, warfare in general, and international relations. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know this is going to get a little
Speaker 1: bit political here only for the purposes of us describing
Speaker 1: why they made this decision. So they cited specifically that
Speaker 1: the global security landscape darkened. This is a direct quote,
Speaker 1: as the international community failed to come effectively to grips
Speaker 1: with humanity's most pressing existential threats, and by that they
Speaker 1: mean nuclear weapons and climate change. Now, this was announced
Speaker 1: in an op ed to the New York Times. There
Speaker 1: are two people, theoretical physicist Lawrence M. Krauss and retired
Speaker 1: Navy Rear Admiral David Titley, And they wrote on behalf
Speaker 1: of the Bulletin of of Atomic Scientists, and this was
Speaker 1: their quote. They said, making matters worse, the United States
Speaker 1: now has a president who has promised to impede progress
Speaker 1: on both of those fronts. Never before has the Bulletin
Speaker 1: decided to advance the clock, largely because of the statements
Speaker 1: of a single person. But when that person is the
Speaker 1: new President of the United States, his words matter. Now. Specifically,
Speaker 1: I believe they're referring to some comments that that the
Speaker 1: President has made regarding the arms race. I think he
Speaker 1: said something to the fact of let there be an
Speaker 1: arms race or you know, will outproduce uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the competition in terms of nuclear armaments and if the
Speaker 1: if you've been following the news, you know that the
Speaker 1: president will say one thing and then he may restate
Speaker 1: it later. Yeah, but this response was was coming to
Speaker 1: some of the spikes in the rhetoric. Yeah. And this
Speaker 1: is stuff that he said on the campaign trail before
Speaker 1: he was elected too, So you know, there's a there's
Speaker 1: a well documented record of his policy or at least
Speaker 1: stated policies on nuclear armament and on climate change. So
Speaker 1: these are things that concerned the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you know, even since they made this announcement, he's
Speaker 1: continued to say things for this effect. Um. Now, I
Speaker 1: would be remiss if I did not mention the Iron
Speaker 1: Maidens song two minutes to Midnight, because I believe, looking
Speaker 1: back at the time, wine two minutes is the is
Speaker 1: as close as we've come. It is, Yeah, and we
Speaker 1: are currently two and a half minutes to midnight now.
Speaker 1: I there was a listener out there who pointed this
Speaker 1: out to me. Actually, when we posted the original story,
Speaker 1: he shared the video for Iron Maidens two Minutes to
Speaker 1: been Night, and oh of course, And man, this is
Speaker 1: one of those instances where I wish we could get
Speaker 1: away with playing music on the show because that song
Speaker 1: is pretty great and it's perfect as like a as
Speaker 1: a theme song for this episode. But go check it
Speaker 1: out if you're unfamiliar with it and you love metal. Uh.
Speaker 1: And there's all kinds of other popular culture things that
Speaker 1: would resonate with this. Uh. One of my favorite songs
Speaker 1: that isn't necessarily a big one is the SKA band
Speaker 1: Mephis Scopolise has a song called Doomsday that is about
Speaker 1: this as well. Oh yeah, I'm not familiar with the
Speaker 1: Mephis scoff. Uh. They're silly nineteen nineties ska band. Okay, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: you know I already mentioned that. You know that I'm
Speaker 1: a big fan of so many things that came out
Speaker 1: of the late seventies and nineteen eighties, early nineties as well.
Speaker 1: But but some of the big ones that of course
Speaker 1: come to I think come to people's mind in addition
Speaker 1: to all the post nuke fiction out there. War Games,
Speaker 1: of course, Yeah, that's the classic example. Well, the only
Speaker 1: way to win the game is not to play. See
Speaker 1: this is why I think it was it had such
Speaker 1: so much impact on me. War Games is the first
Speaker 1: movie I ever saw on videotape really, yeah, Beta Max.
Speaker 1: My parents rented a Beta Max machine when I was
Speaker 1: a little kid. In the two movies they got for
Speaker 1: me were War Games and Star Wars, both movies with
Speaker 1: war in the title. But I think with war games
Speaker 1: like this probably didn't have that big an impact on
Speaker 1: me personally, because I don't think I ever I may
Speaker 1: have never seen it in its entirety. I think it's
Speaker 1: all of those films that I just later saw parts
Speaker 1: of on TV and got the general you know, just
Speaker 1: of it. But but it never had the opportunity to
Speaker 1: really get its hooks into me like it did for
Speaker 1: for other people. Yeah. I mean, as I've said on
Speaker 1: the show before, I watched a lot of stuff when
Speaker 1: I was five years old that I probably shouldn't have.
Speaker 1: This was one of the three that was right when
Speaker 1: I was five years old, I saw war games. I
Speaker 1: also watched The Shining when I was five years old.
Speaker 1: Uh so, you know, well that explains a lot. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I think we were games. I think makes
Speaker 1: sense for for some younger viewers. But we in a
Speaker 1: previous episode, the Butter episode, we talked about the Butter
Speaker 1: Battle Book, Pursus Book and subsequent Turner TV special that
Speaker 1: deals with the arms race and deals with the idea
Speaker 1: of mutually sure destruction. So really, no matter what your
Speaker 1: age was during during this era, there was the potential
Speaker 1: to be introduced to the larger cultural anxiety regarding this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a period that was rife with popular culture
Speaker 1: surrounded by this. And now that we're inching closer to
Speaker 1: midnight on the doomsday clock, I kind of wonder if
Speaker 1: we're going to see more stuff like this again. Uh,
Speaker 1: time will tell. Now you're probably wondering who are the
Speaker 1: Bulletin of Atomic Scientists or what is this thing? Well,
Speaker 1: the Bulletin was actually founded by some of the people
Speaker 1: who worked on the Manhattan Project. These were people who
Speaker 1: felt that they could not remain aloof to the consequences
Speaker 1: of their work creating atomic weapons. Uh. And they were
Speaker 1: the people who the atomic bomb, but then they also
Speaker 1: lobbied for its abolition. Now today it's a nonprofit organization
Speaker 1: and it has an international board of experts who assess
Speaker 1: scientific advancements, then the benefits and risks that they give
Speaker 1: to humanity. Now, their stated goal is to influence public policy.
Speaker 1: So let's be very clear here, Like they state, and
Speaker 1: they say very plainly on all their literature, like, yes,
Speaker 1: this is our goal is to communicate and to change policy. Uh.
Speaker 1: They describe the bulletin as such. They say, it's like
Speaker 1: a doctor making a diagnosis by looking at data, considering symptoms, measurements,
Speaker 1: and circumstances, and then coming up with a judgment on
Speaker 1: how to treat a condition. And I do have to
Speaker 1: throw in here that I I don't think anyone out
Speaker 1: there saying in the world is arguing that nuclear war
Speaker 1: is a desired outcome or you know, even you know,
Speaker 1: we've mentioned in the comments that the President has made
Speaker 1: and when pressed on the matter, he has said, oh, well,
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons are horrible. You know that this is this
Speaker 1: is you know, bad, not good. That he very specifically
Speaker 1: uses the term these are bad things. So I don't
Speaker 1: think anybody is arguing that that, yeah, let's have a
Speaker 1: nuclear war. That sounds like a great idea. The the
Speaker 1: arguments come into the balance, and then how do you
Speaker 1: reduce etcetera, and then into the political, uh, situations that
Speaker 1: increase the likelihood of one of these weapons being used,
Speaker 1: because really, we've we've we've been very lucky in the
Speaker 1: in the in the regard that there have only been uh,
Speaker 1: you know too military uses of nuclear weapons, and of
Speaker 1: course they were both both deployed by the United States
Speaker 1: the close of the Second World War in Japan. Uh.
Speaker 1: Outside of that, we've had, you know, plenty of tests.
Speaker 1: We have had some testy situations regarding the are their
Speaker 1: their positioning, and their potential use, but we have not
Speaker 1: had to suffer any any subsequent users, and we haven't
Speaker 1: had to see actual nuclear warfare between or any war
Speaker 1: warfare between two nuclear arm nations. Right. Yeah. The idea
Speaker 1: here being that the build the up of these armaments
Speaker 1: will be a deterrent to various powers to to either
Speaker 1: either in the course of their militaristic actions or in
Speaker 1: their own armament of nuclear weapons. Right, and it's not
Speaker 1: just the United States and Russia anymore. And we'll get
Speaker 1: into that. There's all kinds of factors that come into play. UH.
Speaker 1: Now The Bulletin is also an award winning journal, and
Speaker 1: it puts issues and events into context UH and provides
Speaker 1: fact based debates and assessments about you know that, basically
Speaker 1: the end of humanity UH. And they have been around
Speaker 1: for seventy years. There's lots of other reports and analysis
Speaker 1: on their site. Their site is is pretty fantastic in
Speaker 1: terms of like layout and all the contents available. UH.
Speaker 1: Infographics to their infographics are really good. UM. But there's
Speaker 1: also a bi monthly magazine. Now today we're talking about
Speaker 1: in terms of like the people who make the decision
Speaker 1: about the doomsday clock. We're talking about ten to twenty
Speaker 1: people who literally sit in a room for a day
Speaker 1: and do the best they can to communicate disaster to
Speaker 1: the rest of us. Now, it's it's either once or
Speaker 1: twice a year, the board's members get together and they
Speaker 1: gather for a one day discussion where they review what
Speaker 1: worried them the following year and what they anticipate as
Speaker 1: new concerns. They don't use devices or computers to calculate this.
Speaker 1: This is just experienced, expert adults trying to come to
Speaker 1: a consensus. There's no algorithm that is deployed here exactly.
Speaker 1: So you may be wondering, well, who are these people,
Speaker 1: what are they so expert at? And that this is
Speaker 1: you know, maybe going to be a little dry. But
Speaker 1: I want to go through the list of the current
Speaker 1: people so you have an idea of who who's making
Speaker 1: this decision now. The current membership of the board. It
Speaker 1: is the Science and Security Board for the Bulletin of
Speaker 1: Atomic Scientists UH, and they're said to also consult widely
Speaker 1: with their colleagues across a wide variety of disciplines before
Speaker 1: they get together to make decisions about the doomsday clock.
Speaker 1: So let's go through these here. Okay, So the first
Speaker 1: is Lynn Eden, she's one of the co chairs UH
Speaker 1: and she's a research scholar at Stanford University who studies
Speaker 1: military and society, science, technology and organizations, as well as
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons history and policy. Of Next, we have Robert Rosner,
Speaker 1: co chair, Professor of of of Astronomy, Astrophysics and Physics
Speaker 1: at the University of Chicago. There's rod Ewing he's a
Speaker 1: professor of Nuclear Security and Earth Sciences at Stanford University.
Speaker 1: Then there's a Steven kartha senior scientist at Stockholm Environmental Institute.
Speaker 1: Focuses on technological and policy options for addressing climate change.
Speaker 1: Their herb Lynn uh this is a senior research scholar
Speaker 1: for cyber policy and security at Stanford University. You're seeing
Speaker 1: a trend here. There's a lot of people from Stanford there.
Speaker 1: Next is a Suzette McKinney, former Deputy Commissioner of the
Speaker 1: Bureau of Public Health Preparedness and Emergency Response at the
Speaker 1: Chicago Department of Public Health. She's an expert in emergency
Speaker 1: preparedness efforts. Steve Miller is the director of the International
Speaker 1: Security Program at Harvard University. Now, next we have Raymond T.
Speaker 1: Peter Humbert. This is professor of physics at the University
Speaker 1: of Oxford. Specializes in how climate works. Rama murte Raja Rahman.
Speaker 1: He's a professor of physics at Joel Harlal Nehru University.
Speaker 1: Next we have Jennifer Sims. She's senior fellow at the
Speaker 1: Chicago Council on Global Affairs and a consultant on intelligence
Speaker 1: at Homeland security. Susan Solomon is a professor of environmental
Speaker 1: studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Techno Oology. She's actually
Speaker 1: one of the pioneers in the work that explains why
Speaker 1: there's a hole in the Antarctic ozone layer, and she
Speaker 1: specifically specializes in climate science. Next, we have Richard Somerville,
Speaker 1: Professor of oceanography at the University of California, and his
Speaker 1: focus his climate systems. Sharon Squassani. She's the director of
Speaker 1: the Proliferation Prevention Program at the Center for Strategic and
Speaker 1: International Studies at Washington d C. She specializes in nuclear
Speaker 1: non proliferation, arms control, and security policy. And then we
Speaker 1: have David Titley, Professor of Meteorology and International Affairs at
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania State University, a former naval officer with the rank
Speaker 1: of your admiral who used to work in the Pentagon. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we've gone through that list. That is clearly a
Speaker 1: list of people who have a lot of credentials under
Speaker 1: their belt. Right It's it does not seem like a
Speaker 1: list of I mean, I think we've got like a
Speaker 1: little of her ten people. There's probably twelve or thirteen
Speaker 1: of them here. They're not just whimsically going to say
Speaker 1: something like we're two minutes away from the world ending. Right,
Speaker 1: it seems like, uh, yeah, maybe they have rhetorical agendas,
Speaker 1: but they are all experts in fields like uh, nuclear
Speaker 1: non proliferation, military, uh, climate change, and and a growing
Speaker 1: thing that they're looking at his cyber security. Right. And
Speaker 1: then yeah, there's not a single celebrity or or you know,
Speaker 1: isn't on the doomsday clok committee. Okay, let's take a
Speaker 1: break and when we get back, let's really dive into
Speaker 1: what the doomsday clock actually is. All right, we're back.
Speaker 1: So everyone has probably seen a picture of the doomsday
Speaker 1: clock thus far, if nothing else, it should be the
Speaker 1: lead art for this episode on the website Stuff to
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. But but beyond that, beyond just
Speaker 1: what it looks like, what is the doomsday clock? Okay?
Speaker 1: So it was originally funded by, as I mentioned before,
Speaker 1: people who were involved with the Manhattan Project, and one
Speaker 1: of the Bulletin's members was a nuclear physicist named Alexander
Speaker 1: Langsdorff and his wife, Martl. She was an artist, and
Speaker 1: when they were coming up with this journal for the
Speaker 1: Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, she created a clock symbol, and
Speaker 1: she said it to eleven fifty three for the cover
Speaker 1: of the group's magazine. Now, she did this, she said,
Speaker 1: because quote, it looked good to her eye. So there
Speaker 1: was no there was no reasoning behind why it was
Speaker 1: at eleven fifty three on the very first issue, which
Speaker 1: just more like, yeah, this, this feels about right exactly
Speaker 1: in nineteen nine, however, her husband reset it four minutes later.
Speaker 1: Since then, this group has been around for seventy years
Speaker 1: and they've used the clock to draw attention to worldwide
Speaker 1: crises that they believe threatened the survival of the human species.
Speaker 1: And their focus is almost entirely on the availability of
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons and the world powers that are willing to
Speaker 1: use them. So they kind of they describe it as
Speaker 1: such as they say, it's a symbol obviously, but it's
Speaker 1: a symbolic intersection of art and science, and its goal
Speaker 1: is to get people to talk more about nuclear weapons. Basically,
Speaker 1: you know, I think I think it's easy to say
Speaker 1: this now, like especially since like what we were saying
Speaker 1: with the nineties, it kind of was like, oh, the
Speaker 1: Cold War is over. Who I don't have to worry
Speaker 1: about that? Being a think the clock itself went to
Speaker 1: something like seventeen minutes. Yeah. Yeah, nineteen one was the
Speaker 1: most optimistic position it ever was at, and it was
Speaker 1: seventeen minutes to midnight. Uh. Now the clock itself is
Speaker 1: wavered between that seventeen minutes and two minutes. Uh. Since
Speaker 1: its inception in seven The time itself, like we described,
Speaker 1: as determined by this board of scientists and nuclear experts
Speaker 1: who meet regularly. But ultimately, yes, this is a political
Speaker 1: tool for communication. But here's the thing. It works. The
Speaker 1: last few times they've announced a change of the clock,
Speaker 1: it has been not only international news and that it's made,
Speaker 1: you know, headlines and every major news outlet, but it
Speaker 1: is also trended on Facebook and Twitter, so people talk
Speaker 1: about it. It works. It gets people to think about
Speaker 1: what's going on with nuclear weapons. Now the hand itself
Speaker 1: has been reset twenty two times. It used to be
Speaker 1: that the bulletins editor decided when the hand should be moved.
Speaker 1: And his name was Eugene Rabinovich and he was a scientist.
Speaker 1: But when he died in nineteen seventy three, that Science
Speaker 1: and Security board that Robert and I just went through
Speaker 1: with you, they took over, and like I said, they
Speaker 1: meet twice a year to discuss world events relating to
Speaker 1: the clock, and the last time it was moved before
Speaker 1: this most recent one was in uh. Two minutes were
Speaker 1: taken away to express the bulletin's dissatisfaction with world progress
Speaker 1: on climate change and nuclear weapons. So they have four
Speaker 1: criteria that they currently used to determine the status of
Speaker 1: the clock. The first is obviously the possibility of major
Speaker 1: conflict between nuclear states. Then there is and this is
Speaker 1: relatively new, out of control climate change. The third is
Speaker 1: risks of civilian nuclear powered disaster, especially when it relates
Speaker 1: to waste storage. Okay, this this tying in of course
Speaker 1: to accidents such as that at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly, yeah uh. And then the fourth and final
Speaker 1: one is they're looking at emerging technologies like genetically modified
Speaker 1: pandemics or destructive artificial intelligence. So ultimately their focus here
Speaker 1: is about any kind of species wide catastrophe, no matter
Speaker 1: what its origin might be. Now in their site, they
Speaker 1: have this thing that's called the doomsday dashboard that I
Speaker 1: have to say, like, I think that there's like a
Speaker 1: certain amount of cheekiness to this too, write like maybe
Speaker 1: that's just me, but I like the idea of like
Speaker 1: the doomsday dashboard. You know, it's just kind of it
Speaker 1: feels jokey, but at the same time as obviously the
Speaker 1: most serious you can be about a possible topic. Right,
Speaker 1: I mean, they're they're simplifying all of this into this
Speaker 1: one simple and in doing doing that, there you know,
Speaker 1: there's the value of some of simplistic and direct communication
Speaker 1: via symbolism. But in doing so, I mean they are
Speaker 1: realizing that they're boiling it down. Yeah. So this dashboard
Speaker 1: is a little different from the clock and that it
Speaker 1: accounts for the amount of global nuclear weapons, the security
Speaker 1: of nuclear materials around the world, the amount of nuclear
Speaker 1: materials that are stored, the rise in the sea level
Speaker 1: and the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide, as well as
Speaker 1: the difference in global temperatures in the minimum amount of
Speaker 1: Arctic sea ice that we currently have. So it's this
Speaker 1: big interface that shows you all those things, basically keeping
Speaker 1: track of all of the modern woes, especially that came
Speaker 1: out of indoors box, right and kind of and and
Speaker 1: cared for or at least of, you know, by an
Speaker 1: organization that it will at least founded by individuals who
Speaker 1: played and arguably played a role. So the thing here
Speaker 1: basically is they study events and trends, They tracked numbers
Speaker 1: and statistics. They also account for world leaders and citizen
Speaker 1: efforts to reduce these potential dangers. They also recognize that
Speaker 1: nuclear energy and climate change are intertwined, so they say, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course some people advocate for nuclear power to reduce
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide emissions. So they recognize that there's kind of
Speaker 1: like a given take there, and then you need to
Speaker 1: pay attention to that. So why are we currently at
Speaker 1: two point five minutes to midnight. Well, we gave you
Speaker 1: their their stated answer, you know, in their op ed
Speaker 1: piece earlier. But here's a couple of listed items, basically
Speaker 1: bullet items that are of concern to them and I
Speaker 1: would imagine to all of us. So the United States
Speaker 1: in Russia together possess more than nine of the world's
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons, and we remain at odds in a variety
Speaker 1: of theaters. Now, obviously the US and Russia aren't facing
Speaker 1: off one to one, but examples include Syria, the Ukraine,
Speaker 1: and the borders of NATO. Uh, there's also you know,
Speaker 1: both of these countries continuing to modernize their forces with
Speaker 1: little arms control negotiations. So as of this recording, what
Speaker 1: was it last week? President Trump announced that there was
Speaker 1: he was going to increase a massive amount of spending
Speaker 1: to the defense budget, So you know that that's in
Speaker 1: line with this. Now North Korea is another factor. They
Speaker 1: continue to conduct underground nuclear tests. They're giving indications that
Speaker 1: it would keep trying to develop a nuclear weapon, one
Speaker 1: that has delivery capabilities. So we're talking about I C
Speaker 1: B M S here. I believe Pakistan and India continue
Speaker 1: to threaten each other with nuclear warfare. Now they're facing
Speaker 1: off over the line of controlling Kashmir. Now. The Bulletin
Speaker 1: of Atomic Scientists also adds that climate changes outlook looks
Speaker 1: somewhat less dismal than it used to, but only somewhat.
Speaker 1: They say that's a direct quote, uh so steen warmest
Speaker 1: year on record, and sixteen of the seventeen warmest years
Speaker 1: on record have been recorded since two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: so that's of concern to them. They say climate change
Speaker 1: is a risk to human health and has adverse effects
Speaker 1: on our food availability. They also include within all of
Speaker 1: this the rise of nationalism worldwide, as well as both
Speaker 1: President Trump and Vladimir Putin's comments about the use and
Speaker 1: proliferation of nuclear weapons, as well as uh. President Trump's
Speaker 1: disbelief in the scientific consensus on climate change. In fact,
Speaker 1: the US is scheduled to spend between one hundred billion
Speaker 1: and one trillion dollars on retrofitting nuclear weapons for another
Speaker 1: four decades of service. Uh. I was just watching the Expanse,
Speaker 1: the show that we've talked about on on Stuff to
Speaker 1: blow your mind many times. They fire a bunch of
Speaker 1: nuclear missiles into outer space at one point, and I
Speaker 1: believe that it is supposed to represent the if not
Speaker 1: the entirety, then at least the vast majority of Earth's
Speaker 1: and nuclear arsenal is launched in that in that scenario. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it really made me think on this. Okay, So the
Speaker 1: bulletin also see, you know, Trump's rhetoric as a disregard
Speaker 1: for scientific expertise, and they say this is a growing problem.
Speaker 1: Here's some additional factors as well. They say, the Russian
Speaker 1: cyber attack on the United States political system, the gene
Speaker 1: editing tool Crisper. Uh. So we've talked about this on
Speaker 1: this show and in other How Stuff Works media. Basically,
Speaker 1: the idea here is that CRISP, Crisper could possibly make
Speaker 1: it easier to produce biological weapons. And then they also
Speaker 1: listed the rise of quote fake news. Now, when they
Speaker 1: probably released this thing, they weren't as sick of the
Speaker 1: term fake news as the rest of us, and honestly
Speaker 1: me personally, I'd prefer to use other terms like disinformation.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the the term has become muddy, even muddy
Speaker 1: or since we first talked about it in our episode,
Speaker 1: is social media driving me crazy? Because it's kind of
Speaker 1: been it's it's it's kind of been co opted, so
Speaker 1: now it is uh, it's um, it's an insult that
Speaker 1: is leveled at reputable news sources as well as intentionally
Speaker 1: confusing or inaccurate reports. Yeah, so some of you are
Speaker 1: probably listening and you're going, wow, this is really heavily
Speaker 1: waited on the climate change thing. I'm not necessarily a
Speaker 1: believer in that, or maybe you are, but um, but
Speaker 1: what does it have to do, you know with nuclear annihilation.
Speaker 1: Here's where I kind of fall on this thing, which
Speaker 1: is that even outside of scientific reason I've always thought
Speaker 1: about climate change is being similar to Pascal's wager. You
Speaker 1: know that Robert Pascal's wager um basically on the belief
Speaker 1: of God and the ideas. You know that as a
Speaker 1: rational person, I think if climate change does exist and
Speaker 1: we fight to stop it, well we're going to experience
Speaker 1: more gains and less loss. Right. But it's a probability gamble. However, I,
Speaker 1: as a science communicator, do believe in the science behind
Speaker 1: climate change. Don't get me wrong, But so to me,
Speaker 1: it's like it's similar to the belief in God, and
Speaker 1: that it's it's it's not about science or religion as
Speaker 1: much as like, you've got to think of it as
Speaker 1: like a rewards and risks game, right. Uh. And hey,
Speaker 1: you know what if I take up my recycling and
Speaker 1: I'm a little bit better about my carbon footprint. Uh,
Speaker 1: and it's a it's a little bit of a strain
Speaker 1: on my lifestyle. Sorry, you know what, I'd rather do
Speaker 1: that than boil alive. Yeah, and you know, and and
Speaker 1: just to drive home the important thing here too, there
Speaker 1: is a scientific consensus that yes, climate it is occurring,
Speaker 1: and that that humans um are are are the if
Speaker 1: not if are a major factor, if not the major factor,
Speaker 1: uh in its spinning out of control. Uh. Now, I'm
Speaker 1: sure there's of you out there who have your doubts you.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you have an expert or two that you
Speaker 1: whose opinions you turned to. I'm sure you have a
Speaker 1: list of pre prepared problems with with climate change, but
Speaker 1: you really can't argue with the fact that this is
Speaker 1: the scientific consensus. And if you were going to if
Speaker 1: you're if you're gonna work outside of scientific consensus, then
Speaker 1: that is that is ultimately an a logical choice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so look, like the reason why I'm addressing this
Speaker 1: here is I know that this is contentious. I know
Speaker 1: that we have some listeners who are probably going to
Speaker 1: write us in about this and say, I can't believe
Speaker 1: that you guys sided with this group that believes in
Speaker 1: climate change, right, And I know for a fact that
Speaker 1: when this episode goes up on Facebook that there will
Speaker 1: be dozens of comments, probably about how this is all
Speaker 1: a scam. But look, we have to address it. That's
Speaker 1: what I believe. This is where we are at with
Speaker 1: scientific consensus. This is a show about how science is
Speaker 1: used in our world, and the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists
Speaker 1: is a group of experts. Yeah, I mean, ultimately you
Speaker 1: have to if you, well, what am I gonna side
Speaker 1: with if it's not scientific consensus. Am I gonna side
Speaker 1: with political consensus and I'm not gonna side with religious consensus.
Speaker 1: I really haven't seen much in the way of I've
Speaker 1: seen religious arguments for combating climate change, but I haven't
Speaker 1: seen much in the way of religious arguments that that
Speaker 1: that human uh created climate change is not occurring. So
Speaker 1: I don't really think even have an option in that
Speaker 1: direction if I chose to go that way. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly so and and and again. We're gonna get back
Speaker 1: into this again in a later section because there is
Speaker 1: a strong argument against the bulletin of atomic scientists that
Speaker 1: will will relate to you later. I just wanted to
Speaker 1: set that up as we were talking about the climate
Speaker 1: change stuff. Now, historical events have edged us this close
Speaker 1: to the doomsday midnight before. In fact, in nineteen forty nine,
Speaker 1: when the Soviet Union tested an atomic bomb and the
Speaker 1: nuclear arms race began, that was one time. Then also
Speaker 1: in four when American Soviet relations deteriorated and deployed, they
Speaker 1: both deployed short range missiles around Europe, and that's again
Speaker 1: right around prime time for you and me as little kids. Uh.
Speaker 1: And in nineteen fifty two when they both tested thermonuclear
Speaker 1: hydrogen bombs. That's the only time it's ever been closer
Speaker 1: to midnight than right now. So here's some nightmare scenarios
Speaker 1: that they pitch the Bulletin of atomic scientists that could
Speaker 1: edge us even further. One is a NATO war with Russia. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be horrible. Two is an American conflict with China.
Speaker 1: That would be horrible. Three is an erratic launched by
Speaker 1: North Korea, meaning they're nuclear missiles. And we got it
Speaker 1: was like two or three days ago. Wasn't they do
Speaker 1: this all the time? North Korea like erratically has some
Speaker 1: missile fly off into the and well, you can, you
Speaker 1: can say erratic. But but also my understanding is that
Speaker 1: there are certain military operations that go on every year
Speaker 1: between with the US and South Korea and this they
Speaker 1: always do something to sort of speak out and to
Speaker 1: protest the events, and this is the latest version of this.
Speaker 1: In fact, I think I read this morning on my
Speaker 1: way into work something about you know, China basically said like, hey,
Speaker 1: North Korea, cool your jets. United States and South Korea,
Speaker 1: can you kind of slow your role with the military operations.
Speaker 1: You know, they're trying to be the logical ones in
Speaker 1: this well, at least on the face of it, all right,
Speaker 1: And another horrible scenario they predict as a war between
Speaker 1: India and Pakistan. And the final one would be if
Speaker 1: ISIS was somehow nuclear enabled. So all of these are
Speaker 1: things that they see as complete nightmare scenarios that could
Speaker 1: you know, push us even closer to midnight. The Bulletin
Speaker 1: themselves also called upon Trump and Putin to use their
Speaker 1: quote friendly relationship to reduce nuclear weapons stocks. So I
Speaker 1: think that was kind of funny. Actually, I mean, given
Speaker 1: all this, you know, we joke about it. S n
Speaker 1: LSO is doing some kind of gag one way or
Speaker 1: the other about Trump and Putin. But you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, to take a step back from all of it,
Speaker 1: it is a bit ridiculous that that we're in this
Speaker 1: scenario where there's so much talk about these two uh,
Speaker 1: these two uh governmental heads being in collusion with each other,
Speaker 1: and yet the the arms race rhetoric has has increased ramping.
Speaker 1: You think you think that we that we'd at least
Speaker 1: get the side effect of of of calm, calmer nuclear relations,
Speaker 1: but we can only hope. Thus this is the world
Speaker 1: we live in. Okay, let's take another break, and when
Speaker 1: we get back, we're going to introduce these arguments about
Speaker 1: whether or not we should believe in the doomsday clock
Speaker 1: or not. Alright, we're back. So you're you're scrolling through
Speaker 1: your Facebook feed and you you you make out the
Speaker 1: you know, the unmistakable symbol of the of the doomsday clock.
Speaker 1: Should you click on it? Should you not click on it?
Speaker 1: Should you give it a thumbs up or a smiley?
Speaker 1: Should you give it the frowny face, the angry face,
Speaker 1: or just the sad face? How should we react to it?
Speaker 1: So we've already presented to you how they come about
Speaker 1: their their decision making of of where the hands on
Speaker 1: this clock reside, right, Uh. And you can, you know,
Speaker 1: judge for yourself whether or not you think that's logical.
Speaker 1: But there is an argument against it presented by a
Speaker 1: guy named Tom Nichols. Uh. He is a professor of
Speaker 1: National security affairs at the U. S. Naval War College,
Speaker 1: and he says that, yes, the bulletin was right to
Speaker 1: remind us of the problems with nuclear weapons during the
Speaker 1: Cold War. He says, actually says, look, this is a
Speaker 1: great and venerable journal. Even though I don't necessarily agree
Speaker 1: with their politics, but he argues that the world today
Speaker 1: is much safer, and so he dismisses the addition of
Speaker 1: climate change to the doomsday clock, and he calls it notional.
Speaker 1: He says that scientists involved in this are catering to
Speaker 1: a liberal audience and that they have concerns such as
Speaker 1: quote being mean to each other, so he says the
Speaker 1: clock itself means nothing. He compares where the clock was
Speaker 1: set to historical events and he argues that we're safer
Speaker 1: now than we were in and that's when the clock
Speaker 1: was set at its best. So this is his argument.
Speaker 1: He also says the clock is quote simply theater, uh,
Speaker 1: and that it's designed to create a sense of urgent
Speaker 1: worry about these things that the scientists think we need
Speaker 1: to worry about. On this, I'm not going to argue
Speaker 1: with him that. I'm sure the Bolton would too, and
Speaker 1: they are pretty clear about saying like, yes, this is
Speaker 1: a communication proping and a tool for us to get
Speaker 1: people to start talking about these problems, and it's it's
Speaker 1: also yeah Worth pointing out that even even when when
Speaker 1: the clock was at its best, you still have nuclear
Speaker 1: states and there's a perceivable path to a potential nuclear
Speaker 1: conflict or nuclear detonation that's always there just by virtue
Speaker 1: of having armed states. UH. This would be content for
Speaker 1: a later episode, but I was I was reading recently
Speaker 1: about UH computing errors that have occurred here and there
Speaker 1: regarding the systems that manage uh the nuclear armaments on
Speaker 1: on both sides, and that is terrifying. Yeah. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: I left some of those notes out, but that's absolutely
Speaker 1: true that that there have been computing errors that basically said, oh,
Speaker 1: somebody just launched a bunch of missiles at US, and
Speaker 1: it was only because there was a human being there
Speaker 1: who who was able to recognize that there was a
Speaker 1: malfunction and say, no, that's not actually happening. Do not retaliate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: at all points, the technology is fallible and the humans
Speaker 1: involved are fallible, and you just gotta hope and pray
Speaker 1: that that they're not not both fallible at the same time,
Speaker 1: because that's when when when the clock starts moving again.
Speaker 1: But nichols argument is that scientists since the end of
Speaker 1: World War two have been trying to figure out how
Speaker 1: to translate their intelligence in things like chemistry and physics
Speaker 1: and earth sciences into political powers. So he's basically saying
Speaker 1: that they're trying things like the doomsday clock are an
Speaker 1: attempted as a power grab by science. Uh. He argues
Speaker 1: that there are good reasons for leaders to reject scientific advice.
Speaker 1: And this is his direct quote. It's easy to be
Speaker 1: a fan of scientists running things as long as your
Speaker 1: own guys doing the sciencing. But scientists can be wrong
Speaker 1: about politics in all kinds of ways. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: it all comes down to this. He has a particular
Speaker 1: bone to pick with Leon Cooper, who is a person
Speaker 1: that's involved with the bulletin. I think he used to
Speaker 1: be on the security UH membership team, and the two
Speaker 1: of them apparently had a nasty debate with each other
Speaker 1: at Brown University. So he wants the bulletin to change
Speaker 1: the clock back to being only about nuclear danger, and
Speaker 1: that they should take out climate change, artificial intelligence, and
Speaker 1: you know, genetic modification. Either that or he says they
Speaker 1: should just retire it in general. UM. Now, I would
Speaker 1: like to point something out here. The article in which
Speaker 1: he wrote this was published in January, and within it
Speaker 1: even then he said, God help us if Donald Trump
Speaker 1: is elected and controls our nuclear trigger, so he may
Speaker 1: you know, we don't have Nickels here in the room
Speaker 1: with us. But he may have a little bit of
Speaker 1: a different answer today because of you know, how they've
Speaker 1: adjusted the clock, and he whether or not climate changes
Speaker 1: on the board certainly were we've edged a little bit
Speaker 1: closer and turns of nuclear armament. So this is my
Speaker 1: counter argument on this, because he says things like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: they're concerned about things like being mean to each other. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, Joe and I just did this two part
Speaker 1: episode where we talked about animal intelligence and we compared
Speaker 1: it to humanity, and I'm far more concerned right now
Speaker 1: about humanity's recent lack of empathy and how that's going
Speaker 1: to contribute to our moral decision making progress. You tie
Speaker 1: that into technologies of death like nuclear weapons or genetic
Speaker 1: modification or artificial intelligence, all these things that the bulletin
Speaker 1: lists above. I'm not so dismissive of those things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I would agree all of these these aspects
Speaker 1: of humanity are interconnected. Our technology, the way we view
Speaker 1: each other, the way we treat each other, the politics,
Speaker 1: the science, and I think it it Uh, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's counterproductive to want to just say, like you to
Speaker 1: to fall back on some of the arguments here presented
Speaker 1: by Nichols, the idea that we should only look at
Speaker 1: at this in a political sphere only, yeah, or or
Speaker 1: that the scientists are saying they only want to run
Speaker 1: things from a scientific perspective. These are all interconnected. There's
Speaker 1: there's there's no avoiding that. Yeah. And the Bulletin themselves
Speaker 1: address this by saying, uh, you know, sometimes they're asked.
Speaker 1: They even have this on their f a Q page,
Speaker 1: what's worse nuclear energy or climate change? And their quote is,
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, trying to answer the
Speaker 1: question is like standing around in a burning house arguing
Speaker 1: about whether it's better to die of smoke inhalation or
Speaker 1: from a falling timber. And that kind of gets back
Speaker 1: to my Pascal's wager thing, is that it's like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a it's a cost benefit rewards risks thing.
Speaker 1: So now the Bulletin themselves, they don't as far as
Speaker 1: I could find, they didn't, you know, counter argue Nickels.
Speaker 1: But they do have an argument in favor of why
Speaker 1: climate change is included in the Doomsday Clock, and this
Speaker 1: is written by Don Stover and it's available on their site.
Speaker 1: She says John Cook, who's a research fellow on climate
Speaker 1: communication at the University of Queensland's Global Change Institute, said, quote,
Speaker 1: our planet has been building up heat at the rate
Speaker 1: of about four Hiroshima bombs every second. Consider that going
Speaker 1: continuously for several decades. Then this was reformulated by a
Speaker 1: climate scientist, James Hansen, who is a member of the
Speaker 1: Science and Security Board, and in Hansen said that climate change,
Speaker 1: its excess energy build up in the Earth's ocean and
Speaker 1: other heat reservoirs, was equivalent to exploding four hundred thousand
Speaker 1: Hiroshima atomic bombs per day three hundred and sixty five
Speaker 1: days per year. Now that sounds crazy, right, Like we
Speaker 1: all go con now like this just the even like
Speaker 1: I can go all right, maybe I see where Nichols
Speaker 1: is at with like thinking that this is purely rhetorical.
Speaker 1: But Don Stover does a really good job in this
Speaker 1: article of breaking down why these are important arguments, Because yeah,
Speaker 1: on on the surface of things, I hear those stats
Speaker 1: and I think, well, you're talking about like global heat
Speaker 1: increases versus the very localized um heat output of a
Speaker 1: of a nuclear detonation. It's kind of disingenuous to compare
Speaker 1: those two things. Yeah, exactly, But Stover says, okay, is
Speaker 1: this comparison accurate. Well, she says Hanson, comparing the explosive
Speaker 1: yield and not instant maths of death of a bomb yield, Well,
Speaker 1: that's measured in keylow tons of T and T. You
Speaker 1: can take that and you can convert it into an
Speaker 1: equivalent number of calories for direct comparison with the Earth's
Speaker 1: rising heat content. The problem that Hanson argues is that
Speaker 1: greenhouse gases reduce the amount of Earth's heat radiation that's
Speaker 1: going out into space, So there's a temporary energy imbalance
Speaker 1: here on the planet. And they've done the math figuring
Speaker 1: out that that totals two point six watts per square
Speaker 1: meter of Earth's surface. Now, Anthony Watts dismissed this excess energy.
Speaker 1: This is another person who argued against this and said, look,
Speaker 1: that's hardly a blip. It only has the power of
Speaker 1: one one of a sixty what lightbulb. And that's true.
Speaker 1: But then Stover points out the numbers are still right
Speaker 1: when you consider the cumulative imbalance over time. So their
Speaker 1: example is if you lived in a house and it
Speaker 1: had a point six what per square meter of heat
Speaker 1: energy that never left the building. It would raise the
Speaker 1: heat by four point five degrees per day, eventually boiling
Speaker 1: you to death and under a month. That's a pretty
Speaker 1: big twinkie. Yes, it is, Dr Bankman. Uh Now, Stover says,
Speaker 1: is the comparison effective well. Cook argues that his pronouncement
Speaker 1: was effective since it made headlines around the world, meaning again, look,
Speaker 1: this is a communications device. Uh. Since misinformation about climate change,
Speaker 1: or what he calls sticky ideas, Cook wanted to fight
Speaker 1: them with stickier ideas rather than speaking in complex, abstract,
Speaker 1: dry language. He wanted to advocate for simple, concrete and
Speaker 1: basically emotional rhetoric. But that was also credible, So math's there,
Speaker 1: But he also wanted to sort of condense it into
Speaker 1: something that was I guess, as we say with in
Speaker 1: terms of social media, would go viral. Yeah. So the yeah,
Speaker 1: the idea of being here that if you have anti
Speaker 1: climate change statements that have to invoke Stephen Colbert's terminology
Speaker 1: truthiness to them, like they they they feel like they're
Speaker 1: they're accurate, and therefore people cling to them. He's trying
Speaker 1: to create things that that both feel truthy and our
Speaker 1: truth exactly. Yeah, I think that's his goal here. And
Speaker 1: then finally Stover says, well, is the comparison itself appropriate?
Speaker 1: And she argues, yes, it is. Climate change is a
Speaker 1: manmade phenomenon that is also catastrophic, and she says the
Speaker 1: atom bomb is a manmade phenomenon that is catastrophic. The
Speaker 1: goal of the bulletin is to spur people to action,
Speaker 1: and it seems to be working. Also, she says climate
Speaker 1: change does cause mass death by increasing the frequency of
Speaker 1: extreme weather events like heat waves and floods, while creating
Speaker 1: conditions that make it easier for disease to thrive and
Speaker 1: crops to fail. Uh. In fact, it is already estimated
Speaker 1: that climate change kills four hundred thousand people annually in
Speaker 1: that respect. So I didn't see how she broke those
Speaker 1: numbers down, but I'm guessing what she means is that heat,
Speaker 1: you know, accumulatively, heat waves, floods, increases in disease and
Speaker 1: uh uh, I would imagine starve ation due to crop
Speaker 1: failure amounts to that many deaths per year. So all right,
Speaker 1: we're Robert and I are going to leave it up
Speaker 1: to you audience. We're not gonna tell you one way
Speaker 1: what to think or the other about the doomsday clock.
Speaker 1: But we've broken it down for you. Now you know
Speaker 1: what the doomsday clock is, you know who the people
Speaker 1: are behind it, you know how they calculate what it is.
Speaker 1: Are we two and a half minutes to midnight? How's
Speaker 1: Iron maide In song sounding to us? Now? I mean,
Speaker 1: in the end here, regardless of how you think about it,
Speaker 1: the the clock is achieving its purpose, getting people to
Speaker 1: discuss it, to tease apart the issue, ask themselves, do
Speaker 1: are that is what's going on in the world today
Speaker 1: making us safer? Do we feel safer? Um? And how
Speaker 1: concerns should we be about nuclear weapons? About climate change
Speaker 1: and about some of these emerging threats that we discussed
Speaker 1: some of the you know, ways more science sci fi threats,
Speaker 1: but but as but the threats that are still part
Speaker 1: of this, uh, this human invention, things that we've introduced
Speaker 1: into the world by opening the technological Pandora's box, if
Speaker 1: you will. Yeah, speaking of sci fi threats, I saw
Speaker 1: this shirt when I was on the airplane on the
Speaker 1: way to Seattle last week. That made me think of
Speaker 1: all of this and and I did not realize it,
Speaker 1: but it is a quote from Aliens Uh, so I
Speaker 1: went and looked it up. This guy on the airplane
Speaker 1: that I was on, he was wearing a T shirt
Speaker 1: that said no maste piece through superior firepower, and the
Speaker 1: image was something like a somebody meditating in a lotus position,
Speaker 1: but the person was made up of two machine guns
Speaker 1: pointing upward. And so you know, apparently this is a
Speaker 1: slogan that one of the soldiers I believe it's Frost
Speaker 1: in Aliens has emblazoned on their uniform. Would Frost You're
Speaker 1: gonna have to think Frost is uh? Is Frost? The
Speaker 1: other guy with the giant machine gun? That's not Vasquez? Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: that one alright, a like gatling gun thing. Maybe I'm wrong.
Speaker 1: Aliens fans out there are probably screaming at us through
Speaker 1: the through the podcast headphones, but um, anyways, so it
Speaker 1: came from that. But then you know, this is a
Speaker 1: shirt that this guy was wearing basically saying advocating for
Speaker 1: the same you know, nuclear proliferation idea here that it's
Speaker 1: a deterrence. If we have superior firepower, then that will
Speaker 1: create peace because no one will want to attack us. Right,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I agree with that. Uh, and
Speaker 1: I'm an Aliens fan. Well, you know that that shirt
Speaker 1: design reminds me of the cover art for a p
Speaker 1: jo Or Rourke book that came out in called Give
Speaker 1: War a Chance, And the cover art was the peace symbol,
Speaker 1: but the center of the peace symbol was a B
Speaker 1: fifty two bomber. Uh yeah, it's ah, I feel like.
Speaker 1: But in both both of these cases, the symbol that
Speaker 1: the simplification of the message, which winds up with the
Speaker 1: symbolic simplification of the the doomsday clock. I mean, these
Speaker 1: raised questions about how are we to think about about
Speaker 1: nuclear arms? How are you think about about limiting and
Speaker 1: decreasing the number of nuclear weapons out there? Because it
Speaker 1: everything is interconnected. It's a it's it's a it's a
Speaker 1: it's a jinga game of a humanity survival. And yeah,
Speaker 1: you can say nuclear weapons are bad, but you can't
Speaker 1: just you know, you can't just pull out the jinga
Speaker 1: block for one nation's weapons and expect that to it
Speaker 1: all be a reasonable response unless everybody else is uh
Speaker 1: is is coordinating, coordinating their movements as well. Uh. It's
Speaker 1: and that's why we're treking scenario similar build ups in
Speaker 1: other countries, right, like, first it was the US and Russia,
Speaker 1: then it was India and Pakistan. Now it's North Korea
Speaker 1: and South Korea. Like we're going to keep seeing this
Speaker 1: kind of build up all around the world, If that's
Speaker 1: going to be the logic that we use for trying
Speaker 1: keep peace. Yeah, I mean, because ultimately there is a there,
Speaker 1: there's a special table you get to sit at. If
Speaker 1: you have access to these weapons, it gives you. It
Speaker 1: gives you a certain amount of power and in a
Speaker 1: certain voice that you didn't have previously. Um. And my
Speaker 1: argument would be, even if I did believe in peace
Speaker 1: through superior firepower, based on what we were talking about earlier,
Speaker 1: if there's either human miscalculation or technological miscalculation, having that
Speaker 1: much firepower possibly go wrong, it's not worth it to me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And in aliens it goes, It goes pretty wrong. It does, indeed, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it does. Indeed, although I guess we have to blame
Speaker 1: the engineers for that or we'll find out an alien
Speaker 1: covenant in the UM. So, if you're concerned about this,
Speaker 1: if you've heard this episode and you're you've got the
Speaker 1: doomsday clock fear, the bulletin says there's three things that
Speaker 1: you can do. The first is you can learn as
Speaker 1: much as you can about the powerful technology that can
Speaker 1: destroy our way of life. Yeah, that sounds like a
Speaker 1: fun homework assignment. Uh. Then you can share what you've learned,
Speaker 1: either tell people in real life or put it on
Speaker 1: social media or something. Uh. And then they say the
Speaker 1: third thing is tell your government representatives what your concerns are.
Speaker 1: So that's the doomsday clock, that's the bulletin of atomic scientists.
Speaker 1: Let us know. Do you believe this whole climate change
Speaker 1: is as bad as nuclear war things? Should climate change
Speaker 1: be included in the doomsday clock's calculations? And are we
Speaker 1: really two point five minutes close to midnight? Or where
Speaker 1: would you estimate us on the clock? Yeah? I'd also
Speaker 1: love to hear from listeners both younger and older than us,
Speaker 1: uh with with their personal take on what it was
Speaker 1: like to grow up in the shadow of the mushroom class.
Speaker 1: Some of our older audience members uh may have memories
Speaker 1: even from from before the advent of nuclear weapons, like
Speaker 1: and and our younger listen. We have listeners out there
Speaker 1: who came out of the nineties um or or even
Speaker 1: even later. Uh. Terrifyingly enough, uh so so I'd be
Speaker 1: interested to hear what how, what have you grown up in? What?
Speaker 1: What is what is the environment? Then what is the
Speaker 1: media been telling you? What have you been picking up from? Uh,
Speaker 1: from adults in your life as well as all of
Speaker 1: the various media you consume regarding the these threats to
Speaker 1: our way of life? Yeah, should we be panicked? All
Speaker 1: the ways you can get in touch with us. Then,
Speaker 1: there's so many social media channels these days were on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler,
Speaker 1: and Instagram. And you should visit stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. Man, that is a good website. Ah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm partial to it. That's where because that's where you
Speaker 1: find all the episodes of this podcast, as well as
Speaker 1: blog post videos and links hotell those social media accounts
Speaker 1: that we mentioned earlier. And then if you just want
Speaker 1: to write us directly, you can always find us at
Speaker 1: blow the Mind at how stuff Works dot com for
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics. Because it
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com. I think