What should this actually look like

What should this actually look like

how are we closer to doomsday than we were in 1968

More states have nuclear weapons and the political stability of the Post-WW2 order has never been shakier

The clock now takes in factors other than thermonuclear war such as climate change and shifts in political trends.

Don't know why they don't take the Cuban missile crisis as a valid reason for the world almost ending.

The planet getting 3 degrees warmer isn't going to kill us off, even if it's going to introduce some serious problems for particular parts of the world

how feeble as a species do they think we are? Ancient people with a bare knowledge of how to make a fire or hunt managed to carve out existence in a bare desert and arctic

the 70s should be further away from midnight

the 60s should be closer, especially 1960-1963

1980-1985 should be closer to midnight

late 90s should be further away

late 2000s/2010s should be closer

Nah my nigga we ain't gonna all die out

It's just that modern globalized society is heavily integrated across borders and specialization of workers has reached astounding new heights. It's very delicate and any major upheavals threaten to destroy it entirely.

This was a major problem with nuclear war, too, where you might have major sections of the population dying all at once. Who dies? What did they do? Was it a substantial portion of the 1% of the population that feeds all the rest of us? Was it most of the people who knew how to operate a steel plant, or build machine tools, or synthesize plastics? How many of the things that you are surrounded by and take for granted would you have the first idea how to construct from scratch?

So climate change would move a lot slower than a nuclear exchange, but any major upheaval that goes on for a long time is going to create instability and civil wars. Maybe your country is pretty okay, but what about your major trading partners? What if you live in a country that can't provide most of it's own natural resources, and you rely on imports for critical supplies, and that country collapses into chaos? How might all this affect international trade?

There's not really any gentle going back from this level of development to an earlier one. Everything is too heavily interconnected and requires continual maintenance and an endless fleet of trucks and trains and ships to feed it.

So depending on how intense a climate catastrophe is (assuming it happens at all), sure, it won't kill us. But it might set us back centuries and cost the lives of billions.

So I guess it's your subjective interpretation of what a "doomsday" is. I don't consider gradual societal change and restructuring doomsday, I consider it natural human progression.

We've been through things like a plague which wiped out 1/3rd of the continental European population ffs. And today, people are even less valuable, it's knowledge that is capital and that isn't going to disappear due to heat.

People have the knowledge, you silly. The library doesn't get your steel made. People get some college for the basics and their real education happens on the job in a functioning plant or whatever. Recreating technical expertise from scratch, even with a plethora of manuals would be very hard. Just speaking about the general principle of the risks of hyperspecialization.

Anyway it isn't the heat that's going to get you. It'll be shifting zones of climate. So say your country has some really primo farm land, and so you have an abundance of food, plus stuff to export. Awesome. What happens if you have a permanent change to the weather patterns in the area such that your land becomes half as productive? Or entirely unproductive? That's gonna mean upheaval and if it's an important country like ... Germany or whatever, it's going to create trouble for EVERYone and can result in wars, civil wars, and God knows what else. The world can get by with Somalia starving to death but it couldn't cope with Europe collapsing into chaos (again). Not in a way that wouldn't be seriously bad news for common folk like us for a generation or more.

Rising sealevels threatens coastal cities (most of them, where most of the people on earth live), might fuck up marine populations making fishing much less viable in some areas... etc. You get the idea. It's a good deal more complex than just getting a bit warmer. The Earth is a giant, complex machine and changing inputs in the machine can produce results which might be small to the whole system but could be very, very big for us.

>The planet getting 3 degrees warmer isn't going to kill us off,

There would likely be survivors to a nuclear war, as well. "Doomsday" means civilization ending, not necessarily extinction.

I understand that. So people move more inland, move more south, move more north, as this situation progresses. I get it. You know that Earth didn't have ice caps 15,000 years ago, right? This is not a natural global state. We will gradually adapt as the planet does. This isn't "doom", it's significant, but gradual change. Who is the most adaptable species on this planet (outside of bacteria)? Humans.

It spells trouble for anyone living near the equator for sure but not doom as long as you know what's good for you and don't remain in a zone that may become uninhabitable. It's just fear propaganda.

Leave it to the hypothetical "global thermonuclear war" that could wipe most of us out in a fell swoop but leave climate change out of it.

See If this is all it takes to "end civilization" then we must not have created much of it

Humanity is no longer tied to the land in the developed world

C'mon man I know you're not this obtuse. Do you know why people can't just move this way or that, easy peasy? 'Cause every inch of it has got somebody's flag on it, and most of them don't take too kindly to floods of desperate immigrants trying to carve a piece of out their pie for themselves. A 10 minute survey of news and politics in the world any time in the last few years should acquaint you with how unsettling that is to the order of things, and the problems it can cause.

Now imagine it's much worse, affecting many more people.

Also can we talk about "mutually assured destruction" and thermonuclear war really quick.

This is all based off of the premise that the 2 aggressor nations involved (like USA/China, USA/Russia) are totally and equally matched from a standpoint of technology and efficiency.

It isn't going to be an equal matchup. One country is going to fire first, one country is going to have superior offensive installations and capabilities, one country is going to have superior defensive installations and capabilities, one country is going to have superior rocketry, one country is going to have superior organization and strategy. This is all going to come together in tandem, over a period of minutes, in a highly sophisticated and distributed maneuver that has yet to be tested or witnessed.

I don't think it's going to be mutually assured destruction, I believe it will be heavily one-sided, if it ever comes to pass. Fools think it is about "how many" nukes you have, the real power is in your capability to project and defend against them.

Considerations like this is why nuclear capabilities are spread out to land, sea and air so that any potential first strike will still leave substantial portions of any nuclear arsenal free to retaliate.

Even just a few dozen missiles left unmolested could cause such enormous damage to discourage the first strike from ever taking place.

I'm not being obtuse, you're calling typical (from a historical standpoint) human struggle and upheaval "doomsday". From that definition we've had many doomsdays in the past and this conception of it isn't anything special.

The boxing day tsunami of 2004 killed 300,000 people in a week and heavily devastated the region and it barely registered elsewhere due to their decoupling from the larger player markets of the world.

Global warming will unfairly affect the warmer and poor regions of the world but it will only be a source of moderate discomfort for the others as they reorient their markets and structure. It isn't "doom". You want it to be doom because it's fun to play sci fi

I know they are, but what could a few nuclear subs do really, once your home country is neutered? Cause more destruction sure, but not crippling. Costly for both sides, but whoever begins with the upper hand will ensure total destruction of their opponent while their opponent will merely inflict damage.

Never did say doom, my dude. I actually said "civil wars, wars between nations, civil unrest". I'd add to that things like an advancement of tyranny, where shitty leaders get elected and republican ideals get eroded. Trump is a pretty great example (not knocking him) of someone who by no means should be president (under the order as we've understood it for decades), but the issue of immigration and the reaction it is generating in the natives was enough to upend the scales and lead to a wildcard president. Who now helms the most fearsome power in the world. Again I'm not knocking him, but his election has created a great deal of instability at home and abroad.

Anyway. I didn't say doom. I said severe problems for folks like us that might take a long, long time to unravel, and in the event of major warfare and/or a serious change to fertility somewhere very important, might knock on to correct the population substantially. Any major breakdown of the post-industrial world is gonna kill tens if not hundreds of millions. Maybe more. That isn't doom but it's fucking bad news for everyone of a kind we haven't seen in a long time.

What's so good about 1991

Come on man. What really important thing happened in 1991 that drastically altered the world's balance of power and saw the conclusion of a decades-long standoff between people with thousands of nuclear weapons between them.

So fuck the name "Doomsday Clock" call it a "Humans Getting Back to Fighting Each Other Again Clock Because This is the Episode We've Seen 1,000 Times Before Clock"

Soviet union fell apart and new russian economy was almost non existent. there was nobody to challenge usa in any kind of way (let alone in a nuclear war), so in the big picture, everything was peaceful

i was born :)

>If this is all it takes to "end civilization" then we must not have created much of it

I think you're greatly underestimating the effects of climate change. When the Earth was 2 degrees colder, what is now New York City was being formed by glaciers.

Veeky Forums everybody!

Climate change will destroy civilization as we know it. Yes, humans will survive but it will be in smaller groups who have to provide themselves with food, clothing, etc. No more huge cities with goods being transported in from all over the world.

>end of globalism and consumerism
fucking good

yeah fuck consumerism!

sent from my iphone

America won the cold war. The doomsday clock actually just measures how fucked people think America is.

And why the fuck not? Do cities not currently exist in extremely cold areas? Are you unaware of modern technology and capability?

We have cities in places with an average temp of 130 fucking degrees, you are all sensationalist morons

It will be gradual and we will adapt and move as need be, it's not going to be a shock wall of waves like the Day After Tomorrow

A smaller country like France could still unleash something like 200+ nuclear warheads with subs alone, that's hardly nothing.
Especially since second strike will likely target mainly large cities.
Would you consider entire destruction of the enemy at the cost of your 10 most populated cities an acceptable bargain? I bet most countries hopefully don't.