Remember the Doomsday Clock? It’s still around, published as part of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists; it is currently set at 5 minutes to midnight – twelve midnight on doomsday, the hour when the human race annihilates itself.
For most of the Cold War, overt hostility between the United States and Soviet Union, coupled with their enormous nuclear arsenals, defined the nuclear threat. The U.S. arsenal peaked at about 30,000 warheads in the mid-1960s and the Soviet arsenal at 40,000 warheads in the 1980s, dwarfing all other nuclear weapon states. The scenario for nuclear holocaust was simple: Heightened tensions between the two jittery superpowers would lead to an all-out nuclear exchange. Today, the potential for an accidental or inadvertent nuclear exchange between the United States and Russia remains, with both countries anachronistically maintaining more than 1,000 warheads on high alert, ready to launch within tens of minutes, even though a deliberate attack by Russia or the United States on the other seems improbable.
Unfortunately, however, in a globalized world with porous national borders, rapid communications, and expanded commerce in dual-use technologies, nuclear know-how and materials travel more widely and easily than before–raising the possibility that terrorists could obtain such materials and crudely construct a nuclear device of their own. The materials necessary to construct a bomb pervade the world–in part due to programs initiated by the United States and Soviet Union to spread civilian nuclear power technology and research reactors during the Cold War.
As a result, according to the International Panel on Fissile Materials, substantial quantities of highly enriched uranium, one of the materials necessary for a bomb, remain in more than 40 non-weapon states. Save for Antarctica, every continent contains at least one country with civilian highly enriched uranium. Even with the improvement of nuclear reactor design and international controls provided by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), proliferation concerns persist, as the components and infrastructure for a civilian nuclear power program can also be used to construct nuclear weapons.
Much of the recent discussions focuses on Iran and its pursuit of a civilian nuclear power capability, but Mohammed ElBaradei, the IAEA director general, estimates that another 20 to 30 countries possess the capabilities, if not the intent, to pursue the bomb. Meanwhile, the original nuclear weapon states (in particular, Britain, France, Russia, and the United States) continue to modernize their nuclear arsenals, with little effort to relinquish these weapons. All of which leads many to believe that the world is embarking on a second nuclear age.
I’m convinced humans are collectively idiots. The Bulletin doesn’t leave off with atomic weapons, it adds biological threats along with climate change.
Researchers with the best intentions could inadvertently create novel pathogens that could harm humans or other species. For example, in 2001, researchers in Australia reported that they had accidentally created a new, virulent strain of the mousepox virus while attempting to genetically engineer a more effective rodent control method.
Unlike the biological weapons of the last century, these new tools could create a limitless variety of threats, from new types of “nonlethal” agents, to viruses that sterilize their hosts, to others that incapacitate whole systems within an organism. The wide availability of bioengineering knowledge and tools, along with the ease with which individuals can obtain specific fragments of genetic material (some can be ordered through the mail or over the internet), could allow these capabilities to find their way into unspecified hands or even those of backyard hobbyists.
Hobbyists, indeed:
K. planticola (SDF 15) is the parent cell line for another strain, which is called K. planticola (SDF 20). K. planticola (SDF 20) is a genetically engineered version from Germany which was designed to increase the production of lactose fermentation of agricultural wastes .
Careless testing of this strain of K. planticola allowed it to almost enter the public domain, before research by independent scientists (Dr. Elaine Ingham, et al.; Oregon State University) showed that this GM-strain actually killed any wheat planted into the soil where the GM-strain was dispersed. Plant matter was to be collected along with GM K. planticola in large containers for ethanol production. After the plant matter was decomposed, there would be a deposit left over that would be rich in nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, and sulfur-basically a good fertilizer. It was after this residue was redistributed on the fields that it would do its damaging deed. K. planticola actually sticks to the root system of plants by creating a slime-like layer. The GM- K. planticola would then be connected to the plants root system and while it is there it would produce ethanol in levels of 17 ppm (~1-2 ppm ethanol is deadly for plants) , . K. planticola can attach to any plants, not just wheat, so essentially all global plant life could have been put into jeopardy because of a genetically altered bacteria.
Our current set of difficulties calls for a different kind of clock, one that does not measure instant annihilation but instead measures the time remaining to our social and economic ecosphere. What I propose is an Economic Armageddon Clock. At midnight, the wheels come off. USA and other developed societies disintegrate. There is insurrection and governments collapse. People starve in the freezing, darkened streets of Washington, DC, London, Moscow or Beijing … like they do today in Mogadishu, Darfur or Lagos.
The party is truly over. There is no upside potential because tomorrow’s upside has been collected already, probably twenty years ago. Not only did people borrow from the future, but costs have been pushed into the future as well.
The future began in Feburary, 2007.
People in charge cannot agree about what the problems are or solutions. They do nothing but shovel money at the finance industry, which is like shoveling money at a tax collector! Finance is simply a tariff against the productive economy.
Here is a good example of the level of disagreement; the inventor of the ‘Taylor Rule’, Stanford economist and former Treasury Undersecretary John Taylor suggests his rule indicates an increase in the Funds rate:
“My calculation implies we may not have as much time before the Fed has to remove excess reserves and raise the rate,” Taylor, a Treasury undersecretary under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005, said today at an Atlanta Fed conference in Jekyll Island, Georgia.
At the same time:
Laurence Meyer, vice chairman of Macroeconomic Advisers, said in March the rule might suggest the need to reduce the funds rate to minus 7.5 percent by the end of 2009.
Inflation/deflation. Nobody knows for sure but one thing that IS certain is whatever is most damaging to the most people is most likely to happen.
Clocks are easy to understand, even by young children Clocls tend to focus the mind. If anyone looks at this clock they can tell that time is running out. I’ve set this at twelve minutes to midnight. That isn’t very much time considering that nobody in charge admits what the real problems are and nothing positive is even being planned to address these problems. Instead of action there is only fierce lobbying by special interests … to keep the status quo operating.
– Nobody can predict where petroleum prices will go as contago suggests future prices might be much lower. Right now, relative to the level of output, oil prices are very high. certainly high enough to destabilize the weakened economy.
– While the attention of the central banks and governments around the world has generally been to support finance, the real economy continues to steadily melt away. Banks are continuing to fail, commercial real estate and revolving credit is poised to collapse, state governments wobble toward insolvency as do national governments in Eastern Europe. Fertilizer shortages and droughts threaten higher food prices for those least able to afford them. At every turn the government and financial elites lie and lie some more.
Some others might have some different ideas about what time it is. What’s yours?