Midnight Dancing

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, creators of The Doomsday Clock, updated it January 14, 2013. Historically, they have used this as an evaluation tool for the risk of nuclear holocaust posed by the world situation. Weaponized biotechnology and climate change have been added as doomsday vectors. The clock's timeline, which maps the periodic risk revisions, has ranged from a low of two minutes to midnight in 1953 to a high of seventeen minutes to midnight in 1991. (The closer to midnight the greater the risk of Doomsday actually occurring.) Our current risk level has been assessed at five minutes to midnight.

Lawrence Krauss had an appropriate op-ed piece "Deafness at Doomsday" in the times last week. We all need to read this to nurture our eschatological bend.

Having grown up with air raid drills in school, during which we hid under desks large enough to cover the Levi sticker on our jeans, the nuclear threat elicits an "Oh yeah, that again!" response. Climate change was unheard of in my school days, as was weaponized biotechnology. I guess we should consider ourselves fortunate that we have a whole five minutes before self-destruction.