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Get ready, Bros. The end of the world is nigh! And not in that stupid, religious, God’s reckoning kind of way that never actually comes to fruition. No, I’m talking in a totally legitimate, smart scientists think were gonna kill ourselves sort of way. Get pumped. Stockpile contact lenses and whiskey. Call your mother. The rest will sort itself out.
You need to be ready, for the Doomsday Clock is saying shit’s about to get mad fucked. What’s that? You’ve never even heard of the Doomsday Clock? How little do you care about the man-made apocalypse? You should be more excited.
Fine. A little background. Back in 1947, after the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, top scientists were like, HOLY FUCK WHAT HAVE WE DONE?? They formed the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and as a demonstration to show how worried they were about the fate of humankind, made a giant clock to let everyone know how close they thought we were to doomsday. Doomsday being midnight on the clock, which opened at 11:53 p.m., because shit was fucking scary then. They couldn’t even set it at 11:30.
The farthest we’ve moved away from midnight was only 17 minutes, because us people are bad at not trying to end the world. That was after the fall of Communism. Ho ho ho how stupidly optimistic those scientists were. Since then, we’ve been ticking closer back to midnight, and today, scientists made a big move. Clock’s now at 11:57. Three minutes to midnight. Closest it’s been since 1984.
Speaking of nuclear weapons modernization, climate change and the continued existence of nuclear weapons arsenals, the Bulletin writes that “world leaders have failed to act with the speed or on the scale required to protect citizens from potential catastrophe. These failures of political leadership endanger every person on Earth.”
Previously it was at five minutes. Two whole minutes. FUCK YEA WE GETTING CLOSE TO DYING.
Of course, all this amounts to nothing more than a publicity stunt to try and save the world, but hey, it’s better than doing nothing. In case you were wondering, the closest we’ve ever come to midnight was 1952, after the U.S. tested its first thermonuclear weapon, a bomb called Sausage that was 450 times stronger than Fat Man.
The world didn’t end then, but let’s be honest. This is the best shot we’ve had in a while. Let’s not squander it this time.