The Doomsday Clock is a metaphorical countdown maintained since 1947 by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a thought device used to display just how close we are to destroying ourselves with technology of our own making. Once the clock strikes “midnight,” we are doomed — full stop. Throughout history, the clock has ticked closer to midnight, and tocked farther away: two minutes to midnight in 1953, 12 minutes in 1963, three minutes in 1984, and 17 in 1991. Watching the clock is a great way to gauge the state of world wide nuclear affairs.
The Bulletin released an update in January. Their verdict: 100 seconds to midnight. This is the closest the Doomsday Clock has ever been — closer than at the height of the cold war and the disastrous, accident-prone growing pains of the nuclear arms race. The Bulletin updated the public again in March: still 100 seconds. When someone tells me that the threat of nuclear annihilation has been the same since January, I can’t help but start a little.
In January, the Bulletin cited climate change, rising political extremism, lackluster COVID-19 responses, and escalating nuclear construction worldwide as their reasoning for our prophesied proximity to doomsday. Extremism and nuclear proliferation are clearly growing threats, however, I am beginning to question their communication strategies with the climate.
Climate change is a dilemma with a mixed cast of contributors — average citizens, industrial overlords, and government officials are all at least a little bit coupable — and the frameworks we have for accountability haven’t caught up. We have trouble distributing responsibility effectively, and the average person often receives unjust blame. It’s for this reason that I think the clock should avoid using climate as extensively as they do — it makes moral accountability for doomsday unclear. The opposite is true with the use of nuclear weapons. We know exactly who to blame when the nukes start falling, and one cannot blame the populace who only suffers because of it. On top of this, compared to solving climate change, disarming nuclear nations is a cakewalk.
When the clock focuses on the nuclear threat, it more effectively rouses us to keep our fingers pointed at exactly who is threatening us. The Chinese point at President Xi Jinping, the Russians point at President Vladimir Putin, and Americans point at whatever clown is wearing the flag lapel this football season.
The doomsday clock is effective because of its simplicity: we reach midnight, the mushroom clouds blossom. The clock is meant to convey one, single, terrifying fact very effectively. By adding climate factors, the Bulletin is dipping its toes into increasingly complex ethical matters, and the scope of the clock as a concept has become too broad.
This much is clear through their verdicts this past January and in March. January found us in the depths of COVID-19 surges, political turmoil, and global tension, yes, but reasons to actively drop the bombs were relatively few. Fast-forward to March, when a war with active nuclear threats is taking place, and the clock reads the same? It’s clear that some bias has been introduced to the metaphor.
The accuracy and detail at which the Bulletin approaches the clock is admirable — I’ve never read such a comprehensive and well-rounded assessment of global political threats — but I’m a firm believer that the clock is most effective when it warns us of one, vast threat that we often seem to forget:
We live in a nuclear world, and we must doggedly chase disarmament — or die trying.
Justin Vorndran is from Osceola, Wisc.
His major is English and environmental studies.
