The Doomsday Clock, the fictitious clock that symbolizes global annihilation of everything in the world, has just moved 30 seconds closer because President Donald Trump and his administration continue playing nuclear freeze tag with North Korea.
According to the Daily Telegraph, back in 1947, scientists working on the first atomic bomb started the countdown as a simple way to show how close humanity was to blowing itself up.
The Telegraph reports how the jump forward to two minutes to midnight was decided:
Last year the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved it forward by 30 seconds, to two and a half minutes to midnight, claiming the global security landscape had “darkened.” But tensions between the US and North Korea have caused the hands to be moved forward again by 30 seconds.
The clock is now set at two minutes to midnight, the closest since 1953, when the US took the decision to upgrade its nuclear arsenal with the hydrogen bomb.
Who knew we even still had a Doomsday Clock? Because the scientists in charge of watching it were asleep for eight years as the president for life, Barack Obama, held America down. But with the white supremacist in chief in office, things have changed drastically.
According to the organization, “The world is not only more dangerous now than it was a year ago. It is as threatening as it has been since World War II,” the Telegraph reports.
Let’s not forget that just earlier this month, the president of the 1 percent used his KFC-stained fingers to taunt the unstable leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Un, on Twitter. That’s right; the president was literally engaging in a nuclear Twitter beef and button-measuring contest, claiming that America’s nuclear “button” is “much bigger and more powerful” than that of the North Korean president.
And the Telegraph notes that the president of the handmaids lightweight-threatened the North Korean president when he tweeted, “Kim won’t be around much longer.” They literally saw this as a declaration of war and, shortly after, began missile testing.
“2017 was a year of mounting insecurity across multiple nuclear flashpoints from Europe to Asia,” Bruce Blair, co-founder of Global Zero, an organization aiming to end the production of nuclear weapons, told the Telegraph. He explained:
The United States and Russia have worsened their already tense relationship with mutual allegations of cheating on the INF treaty. If this treaty falls apart it will stimulate nuclear arms racing in Europe.
The gravest risk of all is the flashpoint on the Korean peninsula, which worsened considerably over Kim’s long-rang missile and thermonuclear bomb test successes and Trump’s response to launch a preventive conventional strike.
We are on a collision course that could explode in early to mid 2018 and escalate quickly to nuclear conflict, and possibly draw China into the conflict.
President Trump has been unable to provide the stable and solid leadership the world desperately needs to avoid conflict, and instead indulges in petulant nuclear brinksmanship. He also bombed the Paris accords devoted to reducing carbon emissions.
In short, Trump has us out here butt naked in a nuclear sandstorm because he can’t not be crazy. I don’t mean this lightly, but I hope we make it because when the hands on a fictional clock move closer to midnight, well, they could mean the end of life as we know it.
