The Doomsday Clock Fraud And The Boy Who Cried Wolf
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was founded in 1945 by a group of Manhattan Project scientists who helped to develop the nuclear weapons that destroyed Hiroshima and Nakasaki, ending the Second World War. The founders of Bulletin included University of Chicago biophysicist Eugene Rabinowitz and physicist Hyman Goldsmith, who recruited a founding board of directors that included, among others, Max Born, Albert Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Bertrand Russell, a group that included seven Nobel Laureates. The Bulletin’s current board of sponsors now includes 14 Nobel Prize winners.
Originally called The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists of Chicago, the non-profit organization publishes a bi-monthly nontechnical academic journal. The Atomic Scientists journal was the 1,368th most influential publication in 2018, and it’s world-famous Doomsday Clock has been ticking down to “the apocalypse” since 1947.
When it started publishing press releases about its Doomsday Clock, the rationale for the clock was that it was predicting how close the world was to a specifically NUCLEAR holocaust.
After the Soviet Union finally collapsed on December 26, 1991, the prospect for a world-wide nuclear war faded, a fading accelerated by nuclear arms reduction treaties, so the Bulletin now also takes into account economic and environmental issues.
In 2020, the Bulletin adjusted its Doomsday Clock to 100 seconds before midnight, with midnight representing the apocalypse, indicating that we are closer than ever before to “the end of all things,” to steal a phrase from Lord of the Rings.
Yesterday, apparently, the Bulletin sent out a press release to the effect that they were not going to change the setting on the clock, keeping the second hand at 1oo seconds to midnight.
Let take a breath. Count to 100. Look around. Has the Apocalypse happened yet?
No, it hasn’t.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists may be an admirable effort toward raising our collective consciousness about the threats around us, but the Doomsday Clock is a fraud because it keeps predicting things that have never happened.
In a sense, the Doomsday Clock is like the boy who cried wolf falsely so many times that when, when the wolf was finally in evidence, no one believed the boy’s warning, resulting in the inevitable consequences that false warnings cause.
There is a logical incongruity in predicting an event that never happens and continuing to predict that event is about to happen.
It’s fear-mongering. It’s also click-bait, just like the title of this article.
It is irrational to warn people about an impending event that they can do nothing to avert, but such warnings increase our unease about the world around us and the threats that disturb or sleep at night.
We have been living in a crisis-culture environment since September 11, 2001, which marks the point where our collective national confidence shifted from an overall optimistic belief in our individual and collective safety to a deep-seated fear of various forces and conditions beyond our individual control.
The 9/11 attack followed right after the collapse of the Dot.Com bubble which, in turn, fueled the real estate meltdown in 2008, which collapsed a significant percentage of the economy and bankrupted millions of American families.
In the aftermath of the real estate meltdown, we have been living what might be termed a hand-to-mouth economy, in which millions of Americans have found themselves hard-pressed to keep up with their bills, to say nothing of getting ahead of them.
That takes a toll on the emotional health of the people in a society afflicted with economic instability. As increasing numbers of people have lost higher-paying jobs and been forced to take lower-paying gigs, those who haven’t felt the bite yet feel increasingly insecure, wondering whether they will weather the storm or not.
We have enough sources of angst-driven anxiety. We don’t need any more.
The Doomsday Clock was a clever device for raising the collective consciousness of the American people to the dangers of the nuclear age but the Doomsday Clock has been predicting an imminent doomsday for 74 years without that doomsday ever becoming real.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m as pleased as punch (whatever that means) that they have been wrong for the past 74 years, but it is also way past time for them to stop beating the dead horse.
We have learned to live with the threat of nuclear annihilation, just as we have learned to live with the “communist threat,” runaway inflation, and the national debt, and we are now learning to cope with the changes that the environmental crisis, the Chinese menace, and increasingly tense race relations are forcing upon us.
The environment of fear isn’t solely due to 9/11. The media is now beating drums over the “first” domestic terror incident at the U.S. Capitol, ignoring the long history of domestic terrorist attacks from both right and left-wing organizations. (The ones in red were attacks from the left. The ones in blue were attacks from the right, including racist attacks.) These include:
- Haymarket Square (Chicago) bombing of 1886
- Los Angeles Times Building bombing in 1910
- San Francisco Parade bombing of 1916
- 1917 Police Station bombing in Milwaukee
- 1920 Wall Street bombing
- Tulsa Race Riot of 1921
- 1927 Bath Township (MI) School bombing
- Bombing of the British Pavilion at the 1940 World’s Fair in New York
- Mad Bomber (George Metesky) who planted over 30 bombs in NYC from 1940 to 1956
- Florida Lynching Rampage of 1951
- 1954 Attack on the House of Representatives by Puerto Rican nationalists
- 1957 School bombing in Nashville, TN
- 1958 bombing of the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation Temple in Atlanta Georgia
- 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church
- 1964 burning of Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Mississippi
- 1964 murders of Chaney, Goodwin, and Schwerner
- 1965 murder of Viola Liuzzo
- 1975 La Guardia Airport bombing
- 1979 Greensboro (NC) Massacre
- 1992 Ruby Ridge shooting
- 1993 Branch Davidian Massacre in Waco, Texas
- 1995 Oklahoma City bombing
- 2017 Charlottesville car attack
- 2021 Assault on the Capital
From this impartial listing, it immediately becomes clear that domestic terrorism is very deeply connected to right-wing, racist, and anti-Semitic belief systems that have been encouraged and exacerbated by a widespread propaganda campaign involving both fiction and non-fiction books, films (anything with Steve Bannon’s name attached to it, for starters), periodicals including daily newspapers around the United States, talk radio, cable television, and the Internet.
Personally, I am already too busy worrying about the Proud Boys, the Oath Takers, the razor-thin Democratic majority in the House, gun-toting members of the House who have literally written about wanting to put a bullet in Nancy Pelosi’s head. I’m busy worrying about the fact that the Democratic party has two leaders, Nancy Pelosi in the House, and Patrick Leahy in the Senate, who are 80 years 0ld and not in the best of health. Hell, I’m worried about the fact that the loss of any member of the Democratic caucus in the Senate could derail President Biden’s efforts to undo the damage The Donald wrought during his tenure in the White House, not to mention my own health and the fact that I can’t seem to get the vaccine.
No, I’m full up. I really can’t worry about the Doomsday Clock.
jpHart
01/28/2021 @ 6:00 pm
Which prompts me to comb my files for that freaky old Bugle American News (MKE) cover (free alt curbside tabloid) where upon I was granted cover: perhaps replicate it herewith~~~
[t]HA(t)
M-16 and SLING WITH A SUNFLOWER IN ITS BARREL
post city distribution of the newspaper (the HQ was a free standing hand-wrought log cabin katy-corner across the tracks from Ma Baensch Marinated Herring…Milwaukee, WI) the bold humble press was FIREBOMBED the following really dark night. Hey many years ago. Never resolved…cold cold case. Also I’d a really fine collage of glossy zines clip-art 3 x 4 Masonite hardboard at my BUGLE AMERICAN desk…well on my way…the wall hanging focal PT was John Filo’s indelible Mary Ann Vecchio image: her wail holding Jeffrey Miller.
Kent State.
Yet my guess is that most kids don’t know that a 21 gun salute is three soldiers firing 7 times.
At the moment I can only recommend David Maraniss’ They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967…you know the whole blue-gray-bright sunny day of it…WHEN WILL THEY EVER LEARN {.*.*.}
(t)ha(t) DOOMSDAY CLOCK red?/\blue nowadays green?/\blue AT LAST!
jpHart
01/28/2021 @ 8:06 pm
Clap for the Wolfman?
Al, haven’t you just plot-outlined War Games and Dr. Strangelove…good golly what of the smell of gun grease—On the Beach? The Road?
Contemporaneously the hush-hush arcane tech/spec is Nuclear & Biological Warfare and let’s not leave out Cyber ?what’s it? Cat Ballou, yeah that’s it CyberCatBallou as well as:
July 25, 1965: Dylan Goes ELECTRIC at the Newport Folk Festival
Optimistic Joy is the rose petaled path en route to UTOPIA. Right NOW.
WOW I am especially oxidized all day finally post-abject depression
for 30 hours+ after having had viewed that downtown Manilla beach
thickly strewn with garbage trash and dead fish with bedazzled wayward
tortoises like Ancient Mariner delayed /*\ humanity displayed protein filleted.
koshersalaami
01/29/2021 @ 6:53 pm
I can’t disagree with that.
jpHart
01/31/2021 @ 2:33 pm
seize the moment \occupandi temporis
right left arrows on Google translate display
occupandi temporis / pass the time (Joseph Conradian, no?)
[That] Camus’s title would have been of Being and Ecstasy
[noun 1. an overwhelming feeling of great happiness or joyful excitement.
“there was a look of ecstasy on his face”] vs. Being and Nothingness.
Please let’s put the argot definition aside. Like dew ewd aohw whoa! My doctrinaire guess: St. Peter shows you a film of your life {LO;}
Epically ecstatic ol’ uncle Albert Camus within my awed limitations with his illustrative triads
(try, try, try)
Elevated post Saturday Night Live asleep afore muted news screen still the snow kept falling
blessed is our REM (rapid eye movement) tranquility
awoke humble abode surrounded with asleep white buffalo
perceptible frosted nostrils…steep they dozed rolled too
bright for vapor shadow…elsewhere there was a 30 second prequel
toward 60 Minutes…how ‘they’ the Chinese have our medical
records…really alas the lawyers are pragmatic, thoughtful and wayfarers
might camp upon the Great Wall of China, my objective as a constant
writer spirals to this supposition: if the~~ white mouse can run backwards~~
why can’t the doomsday clock…can I get a tock+tick or have we become
seasick on that slow boat confusing my iPhone with flat screen’s remote control.
There’s the thought hush hush regarding’ territorial imperative (fade)
世界和平
Shìjiè hépíng […] PEACE ON EARTH
true: LEARNING
world sure, turning
jpHart
03/19/2021 @ 3:08 am
“In November 1954, five months before his death, Einstein summarized his feelings about his role in the creation of the atomic bomb: “I made one great mistake in my life… when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made; but there was some justification – the danger that the Germans would make them.” (Clark, pg. 752). A.E.
Life & Times
One learns and thinks a lot reading you, Al.
And this found googling Einstein and God:
‘I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts; the rest are details.'(from Simpletoremember.com) Judaism Online
I’ve often suspected that the murder of John Lennon was tangentially precipitous to the repetition of his iconic, counterculture anthem, Imagine. Wherein the ubiquitous ‘message’ was to imagine nothing to kill or die for. Obviously the psychosis of the assassin had other cruel aspirations, but my point is that the status quo only takes so much before it reacts. If we must have organized belief systems, they ought to be taught better, before the ironically named ‘golden rule’ melts to oblivion.
Tick tock goes the doomsday clock.
jpHart
04/14/2022 @ 2:27 am
Mark 7:6-9.
I am far from a Theologian! However I listened right now — this vibrant purple-hued: “Oh Happy Day” Edwin Hawkins – Anthony Brown w/ FBCG Combined Choir. Eclectically I searched Spiritually Devoid … unsurprisingly Alphabet’s (GOOG) venerability, is well, WHOA! Contemporaneous news/reflection is akin as descriptor of Dag Hammarskjold’s “… it never ceases to amaze me (how’s it written?) MAN’S INHUMANITY TO MAN ….’ Optimistically? Yeah sure: good grief! When-when do we get relief? Horrific events all Lents day x day acrimonious premeditated treacheries OK OK hold your ground … what’s that sound? So the Bible says!