We are now 90 seconds to our doom • Hacker News Board

Re: We are now 90 seconds to our doom

#31

Post by Turing_Machine » Tue, Jan 24, 2023, 8:52 PM UTC

fallingknife wrote: post #25

zingplex wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Problem is they have to keep moving it closer to midnight or they won't get any media attention. It was last moved in 2020 and doesn't appear to move every year. Moreover, it has been moved back in the past. I don't get the impression this is some cynical media ploy but instead an educational effort from some well meaning experts in their respective fields trying to raise awareness and provoke action towards remedy…

They are atomic scientists, so they actually aren't even experts in any of those fields. The risk of nuclear war is a geopolitical question which has nothing to do with the science behind the weapons.

> They are atomic scientists

"Atomic scientist" isn't even really a thing. This is a political advocacy magazine, and always has been.

Re: We are now 90 seconds to our doom

#32

Post by namaria » Tue, Jan 24, 2023, 9:05 PM UTC

jxramos wrote: post #28

jerlam wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to nuke every literal single square inch of the world to kill a majority of the population. Remove enough governments and the world will become anarchy. Destroy a lot of infrastructure and suddenly no goods, food, or water gets transported. Contaminate the sky and ground enough, and agriculture won't grow. If you live in some tiny corner of the world, off the grid, grow your own food, without any depen…

Very true. I think I'm hung up on the discrepancy with animations around this topic I eventually came to realize were extremely exaggerated. Like I think I saw a cartoon where like a chunk of the earth was removed like a lobotomy sort of thing, a huge sector of mass. I realized much later that these bombs simply do not have that kind of power as terrible as they are. I also later realized that asteroids can do some m…

The global effects of a nuclear war would be truly horrible. It's not just about the force of impact or blast radius or even how much land gets directly scorched.

It's akin to a major chain volcanic eruption... A huge amount of particulate blocks the sun for decades and everything withers. There will be no post apocalyptic society. This is a major extinction event, an ecosystem wipe.

Re: We are now 90 seconds to our doom

#33

Post by The_Colonel » Tue, Jan 24, 2023, 9:06 PM UTC

pavlov wrote: post #8

fallingknife wrote: post #5

Problem is they have to keep moving it closer to midnight or they won't get any media attention. This leads to ridiculous outcomes like showing we are currently 5x closer to nuclear war than during the Cuban missile crisis when it was at 7 mins. Not sure why anybody takes this seriously.

Honestly it seems to me that Putin is mentally much closer to using nuclear weapons in his offensive war than Krushchev was in his perceived defense of Cuba in 1962. The likelihood of an accidental nuclear launch was definitely higher then (e.g. by a submarine commander misinterpreting the situation). But I do think the likelihood of an intentional nuclear strike is substantially higher today. Some Russian decision m…

> Honestly it seems to me that Putin is mentally much closer to using nuclear weapons in his offensive war than Krushchev was in his perceived defense of Cuba in 1962.

That's because it wouldn't be Krushchev who would start nuclear war in 1962.

Re: We are now 90 seconds to our doom

#34

Post by ASalazarMX » Tue, Jan 24, 2023, 9:40 PM UTC

dmarchand90 wrote: post #24

partiallypro wrote: post #3

I have no idea why anyone pays attention to this thing anymore. It's just become a cheap tool that journalists get a free pass to hit their budget.

Agreed. As if we're 4 times closer now than during the Cuban missle crisis...

Also, it's kind of useless to have a whole clock metaphor if you're only using the last hour. It's never been greater than 17 minutes. It feels closer to the orange alert of 2001 than an effective communication tool.

Re: We are now 90 seconds to our doom

#35

Post by jfengel » Tue, Jan 24, 2023, 10:44 PM UTC

fallingknife wrote: post #5

Problem is they have to keep moving it closer to midnight or they won't get any media attention. This leads to ridiculous outcomes like showing we are currently 5x closer to nuclear war than during the Cuban missile crisis when it was at 7 mins. Not sure why anybody takes this seriously.

The Cuban Missile Crisis only lasted 13 days. They operate this clock on a longer time scale. It's often years between updates.