Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Tick tock goes the Doomsday Clock

Episode Date: April 16, 2025

The Doomsday Clock is closer too midnight than it's ever been, which is not awesome. But what does this metaphorical clock even indicate?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This season of Revisionist History, we're investigating everything from the secret behind the perfect nooks and crannies in Thomas's English Muffins to the merits of Paw Patrol against its critics. There's some things that really piss me off when it comes to Paw Patrol. It's pretty simple. It sucks. If my son watches Paw Patrol, I hate it. Everyone hates it, except for me.

Listen to Revisionist History on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, and welcome to The Short Step. I'm Josh, there's Chuck, and we're sitting in for Jerry, who usually sits in for Dave. So yeah, let's go. Let's go. Uh, this is, uh, well, it's a follow-up

to our Doomsday Clock episode, but it turns out we didn't do a Doomsday Clock episode. I know we've talked about this, so it might have been in one of, when we were doing videos years ago. I think it was probably in one of those, but I know for a fact, the only reason I would have known about this

is because of this job and you. That makes me feel good that I wasn't completely unaware that we had done an episode on Doomsday Clocks. Yeah, it popped up in some place, but what's the Doomsday Clock, Josh? So the Doomsday Clock is a metaphorical clock that is operated or overseen by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which was a group of scientists

who had worked on the Manhattan Project. They got together and they said, we need to create a group that is going to basically keep an eye on this nuclear proliferation that's starting up. And one of the things they did in 1947 was create the Doomsday Clock. And it essentially is this,

I guess it's a graphic representation of how close humanity is to self-inflicted disaster, like a nuclear war. Perfectly said, elegantly said. Thank you. Yeah, so like you said, been around since 1947. They set the time every year. It's sort of a thing where they say like, all right, the time for this year is going

to be this. Would they move it forward if something really went down within a year? I think they do it every year. So like in January, they set it and if like four months later, like the S goes down, they wouldn't be like, they'd be like, no, got to wait until next year. Well, I think two things would happen. Either it would be something that they would take into account the next year, yes, or the world would end and they wouldn't have anything to do anyway.

Okay. But again, we're talking about it this year because there was, and you know, we'll talk about a little bit how it's fluctuated over the years, but the reason we bring it up is because this year, January 28th, 2025, is when they moved the second hand on the clock forward to 89 seconds to midnight, which means it's the closest that clock has ever been to midnight since they started. Yeah, since they started, or when they started, in 1947, when the US and Russia were starting the Cold War, creating nukes, testing nukes out in the open, underground, in space, there was seven minutes

to midnight. We're now less than two minutes away from midnight because stuff is just so close to hitting the fan. And we should say that they've actually moved the clock backward. They've moved the second hand backwards further away from midnight in the past. And the furthest away it was from midnight was 1991, after the Soviet Union dissolved. It was all the way back from 17 minutes to midnight, which is, I think, I think that's called Tiki time. Yeah, it's like bust out the rum everybody. Exactly, we're all good. We got 17 minutes.

Yeah. The closest pre this time in 2025 was in 1953. It was two minutes before midnight. So we were 89 seconds till midnight and the closest previous was two minutes. So that's, you know, it's pretty drastic. And again, you know, I guess we can go ahead and mention one of the criticisms of this

is that it's something that just gens up. The critics will say it's something that just gens up. Paranoia in people and like pushes the panic button and what is it even doing? But what it's doing, I think it's a valuable thing because it just raises awareness every year with people. It's just another thing to kind of say, hey, like we're not headed in the right direction as humanity goes. Yeah. So the first editor of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists was Eugene Rabinowich.

And Eugene Rabinowich said that the purpose of the doomsday clock is to, quote, frighten men into rationality. Yeah. And to basically say like, hey, you know, this is where, this stuff's out of control, people. You need to be paying attention to these things. Because they don't just say, we're 89 seconds from midnight. See you next year.

They explain what the, what the reasoning is for moving or even not moving or moving back the second hand. And this year, being 89 seconds the closest we've ever been, they had a whole crop of issues that go well beyond the nuclear risk that was originally, the clock was originally designed to track. And I say we take a break and we come back and talk about why we're so close to midnight right now, according to the Bolton of Atomic Scientists. top business leaders? My podcast, This Is Working, can help with that. Here's some advice from Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase on standing out from the leadership crowd.

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great movie. What was it called? 10 minutes to midnight? Yeah. You didn't see that one? No. You should check that out. It's got a couple of choice scenes.

It's about a creepy serial killer that he's chasing. Though Bronson's not the creepy serial killer. He's being chased by a creepy dude. Charles Bronson is always the guy on the hunt for the bad guy. Have you ever seen Death Wish 3, where the group of police is taken over the neighborhood? Yeah, all the Death Wish movies.

I mean, the first one was genuinely pretty good, but they got really sort of over the top after a while. Yeah, it was good though. It's good. You got the Death Wish, pal. This is my favorite impression to do, by the way. I can't wait till you get your Morgan Freeman down. Oh no, I don't think so.

All right, so how do we get 89 seconds to midnight? This comes direct from the Bulletin website. Some we can kind of summarize. A few of these I'm just going to read outright because it's so like sort of expertly put. But the first thing is the ongoing war in Ukraine and not just that, but the nuclear risk they're involved in the third year of that conflict that, you know, hopefully it doesn't go that way. Maybe things are wrapping up, but at the peak of this thing, like any weird bad decision could have led to something like that happening. Yeah, same with the Middle East right now. That can spiral out of control and suck in nuclear

powers against one another. That's a nuclear risk for sure. And then we're back to increasing the size of our nuclear arsenals, which is a reverse of what we were doing in the 80s and 90s, where we were getting rid of them. That's not a good sign. And then one other thing too, and this is definitely new, countries that hadn't had nukes before were basically like, well, we're never gonna have nukes

because that's just not the way things are. It's changed geopolitically and now countries are starting to think about developing their own nuclear programs where if you have more countries with more nukes you have that much more risk. Yeah, for sure. Climate change is the next thing they have listed and you know this one kind of speaks for itself. We don't need to beat a dead horse. But their take basically is that global greenhouse gas emissions are still rising. No one is doing enough to combat this. This is bringing on extreme weather and climate change events and – or climate change influence

events. And it's affecting people all over the world. And even if we're growing things like solar and wind, it's just not fast enough and not nearly enough to make a dent in the damage that's being done. Right. Also, there's the biological arena, as they put it. Oh, boy, this one is very scary.

That's the most mucus-y arena. Yeah, but obviously coming out of COVID and with the avian flu now expanding to farm animals, to dairy products, human cases, all this stuff is very scary. And the point of this episode isn't to scare the crud out of everybody. But it's hard to read the stuff and not get the crud scared out of you sometimes.

Yeah, also don't leave AI on the sidelines in their disruptive technology part. They were like, yes, AI. They didn't get into the existential threat that AI itself posed. They more looked at it like, hey, some militaries are starting to incorporate AI in their battlefield decision-making. We're a step away from AIs deciding whether to kill or not kill, and then eventually giving AIs control over our nuclear arsenals. That's not a direction we want to be going. And then the whole thing, this is the reason why all these things that have been around for a while or have been developing for a while have been accelerated

to 89 seconds for midnight because of the threat multiplier of misinformation and disinformation and conspiracy theories. Yeah, and this is the one I wanted to read a part or two from this because it just kind of speaks volumes of things. They really put it very succinctly. Spread of misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theories that degrade the communication ecosystem increasingly blur the lines between truth and falsehood. And then they talk about AI making it even, you know, we've talked about deep fake video

and stuff like that, like making all that stuff just so much easier. And then this final line is really, really good. The battered information landscape is also producing leaders who discount science and endeavor to suppress free speech and human rights, compromising the fact-based public discussions that are required to combat the enormous threats facing the world. So like all of the problems that we've been listing are bad enough. And then when you've got disinformation and conspiracy theories and misinformation thrown on top of that, and AI exacerbating all that,

that's when it's like they're moving that clock as close to midnight as they've ever been. Yeah, and the reason why is because people would be, under that circumstance, they're being led away from paying attention to the stuff the doomsday clock is warring against, and that just makes it that much riskier too, because we have to be paying attention to the stuff the doomsday clock is warring against. And that just makes it that much riskier too, because we have to be paying attention to it,

whether you like it or not. For some reason, when I was researching this today, I was like, this is striking me as a little ridiculous. And like, I get the point of it, and I think it is noble and worthy, but there's also some like real, I don't know, real point of it and I think it is noble and worthy, but there's also some like real, I don't know, real criticisms of it. And I found one piece by a guy named Steven Johnson

on Lifehacker and he interviewed Lawrence Krause, who's a physicist and a member of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, sorry, the New Republic interviewed Krause, and he said, it's not scientific. It's a number that's arrived at by a group of people who are exploring each of the questions and having a huge amount of discussion

and ultimately convergence on a number. That number is frankly arbitrary. And that's true. You have to remember it's a metaphor. There's no way to measure it. Okay, if we're 89 seconds from midnight right now, how much longer is the world going to last? And the big problem with it, I think, is National Geographic put it, if everything's a crisis, nothing's a crisis. So before the whole thing

was created to say this one thing, nuclear proliferation, this is what we're warning about. Now you've got climate change, AI, avian flu, disinformation. It's just like being piled on. And I think it's really diluted the point in the pointedness of the whole thing. Yeah, maybe, but that's also the world we're living in right now. Yeah, but it makes it so easy to just be like,

oh, well, I give up. I'm gonna just go pay attention to, I don't know, flowers versus zombies. Do people play that still? I didn't know that was a thing. I think it was at some point, unless I had a fever dream. Well, you didn't have a fever dream. One thing, whether or not you agree with the doomsday clock

or not, one thing we can, I can recommend, because you're too humble to, is a little limited podcast series called The End of the World with Josh Clark. That way you can really learn something and take a deep dive into real existential threats that face humanity. Thanks, Chuck, I appreciate that.

Holds up, still great. I imagine, I haven't gone back and listened to it again. I bet it still holds up though. Yeah. Well, because one of the number one rules in show business is leave them wanting more. I say ShirtStuff is out. Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.