Doomsday Clock

Here is where the world view is now a days...

Doomsday In 3...2...1...

By Jimmy Mengel Written Tuesday, January 31, 2017

It’s two-and-a-half minutes to midnight… And by midnight, I mean total global calamity. Here’s how it looks on the actual “Doomsday Clock” A little too close for comfort, right? It may sound dramatic, but if you’ve been paying attention, the world has been on edge for years now. We’ve watched helplessly as terrorist attacks, stock market crashes, and global political turmoil have enveloped the world. You'd be forgiven if you think the world is in complete disaster mode right now. But it pales in comparison to what could happen if nuclear weapons reared their ugly head again... Many of you know about the effects of the atomic bomb on the civilian populations of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. At least 129,000 people were killed in short order in the only use of nuclear weapons in wartime history. Every second that brings us closer to Doomsday is another second that gives us plenty to be concerned about. Which brings us to this moment: a couple minutes until the complete destruction of the entire world. This is obviously not where we want to be. I thought about this issue a lot last week, when I took a tour of the National Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas. I was immediately struck by the modest size of the replicas of both Little Boy and Fat Man —  the two bombs responsible for the only major nuclear attack on humanity. There was a replica of “Little Boy” — which seemed quite small for the damage it did to Hiroshima… Little Boy weighed 9,700 pounds and was around 10 feet in length. It carried around 140 pounds of uranium and had an explosive force of 15,000 tons of TNT. Fat Man — dropped on Nagasaki — weighed in at 10,800 pounds and had an explosive force of 21,000 tons of TNT. These two small weapons were the warning shots that ushered in the Cold War — and the Doomsday Clock. The last time the Doomsday Clock was this close to midnight was 60 years ago. The point is, it doesn't take much to bring the world to the brink of annihilation.  And if push comes to shove, how would you survive?