It was always little more than a political statement made by scientists using their scientific respect in non-scientific contexts, a major negative. But they had some justification; the Cold War threat was that the two major superpowers would fling thousands upon thousands of highly-destructive warheads at each other, and anything that might conceivably be valuable in one of their proxies, which meant every major city in the world, quite a chunk of the merely medium-sized ones, and a whole whackload of "militarily-valuable targets" all over the place.
Let's be frank; if North Korea simply goes insane and launches everything it could conceivably have 5 years from now, it wouldn't even remotely resemble that outcome. At a civilizational scale, the millions of deaths, the square miles of uninhabitable land, the major disruption to international trade and unknowable potential changes in the international political landscape would still be a civilizational inconvenience, not the end of civilization. Even if it literally precipitated World War Three somehow, it would very likely still not even remotely reach the outcome that the doomsday clock was originally created to warn against. The Cold War legitimately threatened civilization as a whole, with a distinct possibility of human extinction.
To advance the clock in 2018 "because North Korea" is, in a sort of ironic backfiring way, an admission of just how far we have in fact come since the clock was started, because back in the 60s or 70s, the thought of advancing the clock because of this level of sabre rattling wouldn't have even crossed anyone's mind. This would just be Tuesday in the Cold War world.
(Similarly, advancing the clock because of "climate change" is another admission that the world has gotten much safer since the Cold War. "In 50-100 years, things might get civilizationally-inconvenient" is not the same threat as "Tomorrow, the human race may be on an irreversible course to extinction.")
> if North Korea simply goes insane and launches everything it could conceivably have 5 years from now, it wouldn't even remotely resemble that outcome
As it turned out, the First World War was not fought between Serbia and the Austro-Hungarian royalty, nor was the Second World War fought between Germany and Poland.
> Even if it literally precipitated World War Three somehow, it would very likely still not even remotely reach the outcome
There are things happening today that are more dangerous than the Cold War. You just don't know about them yet.
"There are things happening today that are more dangerous than the Cold War. You just don't know about them yet."
That is not a defense for the scientists moving the clock. That's not what the scientists were claiming. They claim they're moving the clock for North Korea and Climate Change, not biological warfare (with or without a soupcon of genetic engineering), the immanent victory of the New World Order, the immantization of the eschaton, or whatever else you're referring to. The stated reasons are showboating, compared even to the known dangers of the Cold War.
Arthur C Clarke's short story "The Last Command" is a fun, relevant read (it's like 3 pages long, but DON'T google it because you'll have the ending spoiled and there are no free copies online).
Yep, reading the HN comments on this one is surreal. I'd like to believe people are posturing and trying to convince themselves there's nothing to worry about, but I'm afraid that they're actually not worried. Reminds me of a comment [1] that I read the other day:
My generation has not grown to fear the bombs as the previous generation did. When someone of my generation is behind the buttons, I wonder if somewhere in the back of their minds there isn't a part of them that says 'perhaps in this and this situation it'd be okay to press the big red button?'.
I think the horror that war/these weapons cause will slowly drift from collective memory in mainstream western society. The warnings of the previous generation will be an endorsement of the destructive power of these weapons, instead of a deterrent of their usage.
There's some of that, but there's also what I think are very valid points about this being almost entirely an appeal to emotion with very little information imparted. Are we actually 20% more likely to have a nuclear war? Who decides this, and is it based on data, or their own emotional state?
Is this just a way for some people to broadcast their current level of fear that's caught on with the wider public?