When World War 2 ended with a bang, the atomic scientists who invented that big bomb suddenly felt a twinge of guilt. Perhaps what they had done wasn't such a marvelous thing after all. Their newsletter, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists was also getting enough readership to become a magazine and needed something catchy for the cover so in 1947 the publishers came up with a doomsday clock, something to represent the amount of time mankind had before it destroyed itself in a nuclear conflagration. Pretty nifty, eh?
They set the hands to show 7 minutes to midnight; not a lot of time left!
By 1953 that clock had advanced to 2 minutes to midnight. The US and Russia were now popping off Hydrogen bombs 1000 times more powerful than the firecrackers dropped on the Japanese civilians of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. I guess those atomic scientists didn't feel that guilty.
Let's do some analysis. If it was 7 minutes to midnight in 1947 and 2 minutes to midnight six years later in 1953, then these atomic scientists must have been shooting for one minute to equal one year. If that is so, then the clock was running a bit slow.
As I understand it, the atomic scientists who monitor the clock meet every six months to fine-tune it. Obviously, they don't know the dictum, "If it works, don't fix it." I think they might have broken it because it's only gotten less accurate over time. 65 years after it reached 2 minutes to midnight, it's still there.
In fact, there are times when this clock has gone retrograde. In 1991 it was 17 minutes to midnight.
It also doesn't seem to function when there is a real doomsday threat. In 1960 it was at 7. It didn't change at all in 1962 when JFK told Khrushchev to get his missiles out of Cuba or he'd shroom Moscow, an "incident" that supposedly brought us the closest to doomsday the world has ever been. In fact, the clock fell back to 12 minutes to midnight in 1963.
So broken is that clock, it indicated we were farther from doomsday During the height of the Cold War when the US, Russia and China had enough nuclear weapons to sterilize planet Earth 1000 times over. Pretty stupid, eh?
Here's a timline of the clock's operation. You be the judge.
Of course, the atomic scientists have all kinds of excuses for why that clock hasn't struck midnight yet. Maybe they should stick to building bombs and leave clock building to the Swiss. Even Poe's pendulum in that pit worked better than the doomsday clock and he was a opium addict for crying out loud.
Today, it's not even about A-bombs any longer. It includes other scientific dogma including climate change and genetically modified organisms. Oops. Not GMOs. GMOs good, climate change, baaaaad.
Here's a little conspiracy theory about that clock. I just made it up. I think they are using that dysfunctional doomsday clock simply to keep everyone afraid, so those in power can offer up solutions to non-existent dilemma, to keep us on the treadmill and funding the very people making this shit up.
It reminds me of going to my Aunt Selma's house when I was little. She told me and the neighbor girl to go through her garden and get as many snails as we could and put them in a bucket. She told us that if you added salt to the bucket the snails would foam up and produce "giant poison." She told us she did this quite often to keep giants away from her garden. I asked her if it worked. "Do you see any giants around here?" she replied. How can a kid argue with logic like that?
What do you think? Is the Doomsday clock a scam? Exactly what happens if it strikes midnight? Does the Earth turn into a pumpkin? Does anyone really know?
Now I'm not sure of the time any longer. Isn't the official time signal set with an atomic clock?
Wait, I do know what time it is. It's time for breakfast.