Is the Doomsday Clock Moving the Wrong Way?

It is six minutes to midnight. Some would believe we are only a minute or two away.

THIS PAGE WAS LAST UPDATED 01/21/2012 04:42 AM COORDINATED UNIVERSAL TIME

(STARpod.org) -- The Doomsday Clock has moved one minute further away from midnight.

According to The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, who maintain the clock's website, "The Doomsday Clock conveys how close humanity is to catastrophic destruction -- the figurative midnight -- and monitors the means humankind could use to obliterate itself. First and foremost, these include nuclear weapons, but they also encompass climate-changing technologies and new developments in the life sciences that could inflict irrevocable harm."

This optimistic indicators identified by The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists are found in "unprecedented steps ... signs of a growing political will to tackle the two gravest threats to civilization--the terror of nuclear weapons and runaway climate change."

"This hopeful state of world affairs leads the boards of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists -- which include 19 Nobel laureates -- to move the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock back from five to six minutes to midnight," according to the Doomsday Clock website.

Citing improving relations between the United States and Russia, the boards see positive signs in "a growing partnership between the United States and Russia is resulting in nuclear arms negotiations that could bring down our deployed strategic warheads from more than 2,000 to about 1,500 warheads each" and a "joint agreement by China and the United States to reduce carbon emissions."

Many might wonder if the above comes from "cold war mentality" painted with a "new age idealism" in on-going progress in human civilization.

All around the world, many see signs of the decay of civilization.

At the same time, real progress in developing new technologies is increasing the danger from powerful new biological and cybernetic weapons capabilities.

Eschatologists, doomsday philosophers of the last days of mankind, warn of an imminent transition from the current world order.

The popular eschatological front is clothed by the mythology of 2012.

The on-going pursuit of nuclear weapons by Iran and other nations in the Mideast, the developing nuclear arsenal and missile capability in North Korea, as well as the threat posed by numerous terrorist organizations around the globe point to cracks in the stability of the world.

The lessons of September 11, 2001, are clear: small numbers of determined individuals are capable of inflicting massive damage to the status quo.

The spreading global arsenals of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, and new means of inflicting  damage from an ever-growing cyber threat, are signs that the clock, to quote the Bulletin, "is ticking."

For more information about eschatology, please visit STARpod.org.

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