Anyone else kinda relieved we still got more than 15 seconds?

I was thinking the same. Next year it'll be measured in milliseconds

Now with how the world has turned out, that 3rd man is now the villain of the story.

come on, he's a hero! imagine a world post nuclear war... can't be better than what we have now

Well, see, what I'm imagining is that there IS no world post war. And that's better.

Boo him! Boo that man!

you dun lost yer mind!

.......now see, that's unfair. I want to do something fun with your name, as a fun little back and forth ping pong exchange. But if I did that, it would be like I'm inciting violence..... plus it would leave a hand mark on your butt.

Wait when did nuclear war come back?

Sorry, why is that 3rd man the villain of the story, and what do you mean humans fumbled the ball?

The basically changed the scale in the 90's when everyone thought history was over. This is like maybe nine minutes on the old scale.

It never left. We just used to be confident that nobody in power was stupid or suicidal enough to use one given the mutually assured destruction, and that confidence has since gone up in smoke.

By definition if it was at 12am it would have been vaporized

They're definitely being conservative

Just end me already. All of this stress and bad news constantly is killing me anyway.

The doomsday clock is goofy. What benefit is there to setting an arbitrary value on a bad-o-meter?

To try and get people to do something. Anything. Nothing else is working.

Publishers of the doomsday clock should understand that Americans cant understand any number greater than 7. Its all just "a lot". They might as well have said "5000" seconds as 89. Those numbers look the same to me.

You say that as if the doomsday clock is working.

It's especially stupid as a clock whose time is continually stopped, and whose time is either adjusted forward a few seconds or backward a few seconds every few years. That metaphor just makes no sense.

Some arbitrary score out of 100 would make as little sense, but at least it wouldn't involve a strange nonsensical metaphor.

The concept they're really trying to communicate is better illustrated by the Sword of Damocles. It's a danger that's always looming that could turn into disaster at any time. But, nobody knows exactly when. If they switched to using a Sword of Damocles metaphor, they could talk about strands in the rope holding the sword getting frayed or breaking. Like, one strand represents the environment. One represents the possibility of nuclear war. One represents global health and pandemics. When something good happens, like an environmental treaty, they could talk about how that strand was being repaired.