And The Clock Is Ticking...

(Joe Callan -- Milsoothe Media)

According to the keepers of the clock, we are two minutes closer to Midnight. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists--which started as a newsletter in the late forties as a means of communication between atomic scientists worldwide--started a feature called "The Doomsday Clock" in 1947. Typically illustrated with a minute hand and 5-minute marks for the last quater hour, the clock was instituted as a measure of political and social stability (read: sobriety) in terms of the likelihood of Nuclear War.

Obviously the atom-splitting organization is a bit concerned with the current state of affairs--many factors were considered in the two minute shift forward, including the growing influence of climate change and the genetic manipulation of food sources and pathogens alike. Nuclear tension didn't take a back seat, however: Last year's North Korean bomb test and Iran's engagement of a nuclear program were also key points in the decision.

On their official website, http://www.thebulletin.org/, the reasons for the two-minute advancement are as follows:

The world stands at the brink of a second nuclear age. The United States and Russia remain ready to stage a nuclear attack within minutes, North Korea conducts a nuclear test, and many in the international community worry that Iran plans to acquire the Bomb. Climate change also presents a dire challenge to humanity. Damage to ecosystems is already taking place; flooding, destructive storms, increased drought, and polar ice melt are causing loss of life and property.

The clock now reads 5 minutes to midnight. So what does that mean? Here are some historical examples:

• The last time the clock was changed was in 2002, moving from 9 minutes to 7 minutes after the United States withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty following the events of 9/11. The Bush administration announced the development of sleeker and more contained nukes to burrow into the ground and destroy protected or hardened subterranean targets.
• In 1998, the clock was moved forward from 14 minutes to 9 minutes. Pakistan and India fired test nukes within three weeks of each other, and despite the cold war ending nearly a decade before, Russia and The United States still had 7,000 warheads in a ready-to-launch state.
  

The last time The Bulletin placed us so close to midnight was over 20 years ago. In 1984, at what could be called the last icy peak of the Cold War, discussions between the two superpowers were at a minimum, and President Reagan made his intentions of pursuing a space-based missile defense system clear. At that time, the clock read three minutes to midnight.

The doomsday clock shouldn't be taken as a fear-mongering device, but rather an alarm clock that—under ideal circumstances—would blare louder than any single political or religious squabble anywhere on earth. For instance, the 1991 reading of 17 minutes to midnight (the "safest" reading published in the clock's sixty-year history) didn't necessarily mean that the world was totally safe from nuclear destruction, but rather that the collapse in the former Soviet Union released many political tensions and created new opportunities for decline in the arms race. Just as that's so, our present reading of 5 minutes doesn't mean that we're doomed; it's a reminder that we're not moving forward to secure the longevity—not of a race or a nation—but of the entire human species and our planet.

We've passed many tests in the last half-century regarding our tendency to fire instead of cooperation. Up to this point, with the power to devastatingly alter civilization and the future of the human family, our leaders have come to their senses—however closely to the last minute—and decided that it's not worth covering the world in radioactive ash and heavy water.

Let's hope that they continue to do so. As technology opens ever more doors to us, it will continue to be paired with a series of spiritual tests that gauge our responsibility under the following scoring possibilities:

Cooperate and live, or fight and die.

Though we continue to kill man to man, army to army—we have yet to press the big red button and begin killing warhead to warhead, continent to continent. The possibility is there, but it is this author's hope that there's something that matters more to the majority of my brothers and sisters than a flag, an ideology, or a religion—the survival of the human species itself.

©2007, Joe Callan for Milsoothe Media