The doomsday clock is a clock intended to show how close the human race is to annihilation by nuclear weapons. The way it works is that the closer it is to midnight, the closer we are to mutually assured destruction. It is affected by the worldwide political climate and so the closest it has been to midnight was in 1953, ten years into the cold war. At that stage it was set at 11:58, meaning that nuclear annihilation was probably just around the corner and it stayed at this level for roughly 7 years. The lowest it has been set was at 11:43 in 1991, the end of the cold war. It has now been set at 11:54 following an agreement to try and reduce numbers of nuclear weapons world wide.
I wonder if you can you figure out my problem with the doomsday clock. I have two.
The first is that it is a self fulfilling prophesy. The first thing that people do when they find out that they might be under threat is they try and find ways of reducing that threat. And what is the best defence? a good offence. Meaning that if a country thinks that another country means to attack them with nuclear weapons they will try and acquire more for themselves. If you set-up a worldwide threat meter like the doomsday clock, everyone looks at it and says, "wow, it's getting bad, time to get some/more of them ourselves and make sure we can all strike back." We saw this effect during the Cold War. Russia and the USA were at a standoff . This in turn would push the time up closer to midnight. This is just me saying it, but it's coming from my experience of human nature, take it or leave it as you will.
The second is a bit more complicated because it involves psychology and that always messes things up. To start with, yes, if nuclear war does eventuate, then it will be effectively mean the end of things on earth. And yes, if someone does start wholesale nuking other countries then everyone else will start nuking back. The rules of engagement for any type of weaponry or warfare are as follows: if you hit me, I'm allowed to hit you back and with nukes, I can start to hit you before you finish hitting me. Then all of my friends will get in on the act and start hitting you and all of your friends will help you out also and starting my friends; nuclear war. This will never happen. Call me an optimist, but I can't see this ever happening.
In the Art of War by SunTzu, the seminal work on anything military, we read "IV:I, The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy." You only fight unless you are assured of winning and in a situation like nuclear warfare, you can't assure your victory will be greater than the enemy's victory. This is the first reason that no leader of a country or military wants nuclear warfare.
Leaders of countries have another reason as well. Say you win, what do you get? a blasted wasteland who's surviving population will hate you until they die and global condemnation for the result. This is not a victory. Militarily you may have won, but in all other facets, you have lost.
The final, and perhaps most convincing reason that I have, is an effect that can be best described in terms of torture. Torture is always the last resort of interrogation because up until then your motivator is fear. During torture, the motivator is pain and the alleviation of it. People can survive pain, they can not survive fear. As soon as the pain starts, people can think, this will be over, and I can deal with it; fear means that they 'know' that they can't. How is this related? People won't start nuclear warfare for fear that it will start. Once it has started, people think, I have to see this to the end.Until then, people won't want to start anything because the certainty of them dying is playing on their minds. This is called a survival instinct and it is hard wired into our brains. People fear death, and will in most cases do anything to avoid it. This means that only someone who either doesn't care if they die (suicidal) or is convinced that they won't die (delusional and idiotic) or doesn't care about the lives of anyone else (psychotic and sociopathic) will be willing to start nuclear warfare.
So you see, I feel optimistic about nuclear warfare, not something that most people will actually do, but something that I think is fair. The doomsday clock is nothing more than a gimmick left over from a time when this was a new technology and people had itchy trigger fingers.
I wonder if you can you figure out my problem with the doomsday clock. I have two.
The first is that it is a self fulfilling prophesy. The first thing that people do when they find out that they might be under threat is they try and find ways of reducing that threat. And what is the best defence? a good offence. Meaning that if a country thinks that another country means to attack them with nuclear weapons they will try and acquire more for themselves. If you set-up a worldwide threat meter like the doomsday clock, everyone looks at it and says, "wow, it's getting bad, time to get some/more of them ourselves and make sure we can all strike back." We saw this effect during the Cold War. Russia and the USA were at a standoff . This in turn would push the time up closer to midnight. This is just me saying it, but it's coming from my experience of human nature, take it or leave it as you will.
The second is a bit more complicated because it involves psychology and that always messes things up. To start with, yes, if nuclear war does eventuate, then it will be effectively mean the end of things on earth. And yes, if someone does start wholesale nuking other countries then everyone else will start nuking back. The rules of engagement for any type of weaponry or warfare are as follows: if you hit me, I'm allowed to hit you back and with nukes, I can start to hit you before you finish hitting me. Then all of my friends will get in on the act and start hitting you and all of your friends will help you out also and starting my friends; nuclear war. This will never happen. Call me an optimist, but I can't see this ever happening.
In the Art of War by SunTzu, the seminal work on anything military, we read "IV:I, The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy." You only fight unless you are assured of winning and in a situation like nuclear warfare, you can't assure your victory will be greater than the enemy's victory. This is the first reason that no leader of a country or military wants nuclear warfare.
Leaders of countries have another reason as well. Say you win, what do you get? a blasted wasteland who's surviving population will hate you until they die and global condemnation for the result. This is not a victory. Militarily you may have won, but in all other facets, you have lost.
The final, and perhaps most convincing reason that I have, is an effect that can be best described in terms of torture. Torture is always the last resort of interrogation because up until then your motivator is fear. During torture, the motivator is pain and the alleviation of it. People can survive pain, they can not survive fear. As soon as the pain starts, people can think, this will be over, and I can deal with it; fear means that they 'know' that they can't. How is this related? People won't start nuclear warfare for fear that it will start. Once it has started, people think, I have to see this to the end.Until then, people won't want to start anything because the certainty of them dying is playing on their minds. This is called a survival instinct and it is hard wired into our brains. People fear death, and will in most cases do anything to avoid it. This means that only someone who either doesn't care if they die (suicidal) or is convinced that they won't die (delusional and idiotic) or doesn't care about the lives of anyone else (psychotic and sociopathic) will be willing to start nuclear warfare.
So you see, I feel optimistic about nuclear warfare, not something that most people will actually do, but something that I think is fair. The doomsday clock is nothing more than a gimmick left over from a time when this was a new technology and people had itchy trigger fingers.
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