Are we all going to die in a nuclear war?

Why we should stop obsessing over the Doomsday Clock

When people talk about the threat of nuclear war, American popular culture inevitably creeps in. More than in almost any other field, the language, imagery and mythology surrounding nuclear apocalypse were created in the United States. Along with the weapons themselves.

One immediately thinks of Billy Joel’s song We Didn’t Start the Fire. In fact, we didn’t start the arms race either. We didn’t invent the logic of global instability, nor did we build the cult that surrounds it. That entire worldview was born in the United States.

It was there, after all, that the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was founded, and it was its editors who invented the Doomsday Clock: the now-famous symbol showing how close humanity supposedly is to nuclear annihilation. They created it immediately after the United States developed the atomic bomb and dropped two of them, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

What is less often mentioned is that when the Doomsday Clock first appeared, humanity was not given much of a chance at all. In 1947, the hands were set to 23:53. Just seven minutes to midnight. This was two years before the Soviet Union tested its first nuclear weapon. When the USSR did so in 1949, American nuclear scientists moved the clock forward to just three minutes before midnight.

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After that came the Cuban Missile Crisis, thermonuclear tests by both superpowers, the Vietnam War, and the emergence of nuclear weapons in China and India. The hands moved back and forth between 23:50 and 23:58 for decades. Then came 1991. The dissolution of the Soviet Union brought a sudden wave of optimism, and the clock was set back to 23:43. Throughout the 1990s, there seemed to be little cause for alarm.

Later, Russia endured and overcame a series of crises. Those were financial, social, governmental and political. It gradually recovered. Its armed forces demonstrated their capabilities, and its scientific and nuclear potential remained intact. Year by year, the hands of the Doomsday Clock crept closer to midnight again.

I mention all this because the clock has once more been moved forward. This time, however, we are no longer talking about minutes, but seconds. Since 2018, the clock has never been set earlier than 23:58. Today it stands at 23:58:35. Each year, a few more seconds are added.

Officially, this is explained by the “aggressive behavior” of the world’s major nuclear powers. What is not said out loud is that this ritual conveniently produces dramatic headlines that feed the global media cycle. We live in an age where people are emotionally tethered to the news. One week, the word “deal” appears everywhere, offering vague and often unjustified hopes of a breakthrough in today’s drawn-out conflicts. The next week, we are warned of nuclear apocalypse, the Doomsday Clock, or the end of civilization.

Modern audiences swing between two extremes: either everything will be fine, or everything is doomed. The human brain, especially under constant information pressure, is perfectly content to consume emotional signals without real substance. Headlines alone are enough.

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Returning to American cultural imagery, it is impossible not to recall Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, released in 1964. In the film, a deranged American general launches a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union for no rational reason. Communication with the bombers is lost. There is no way to stop them. In response, the USSR activates a doomsday device that guarantees the destruction of all life on Earth.

It is a terrifying scenario. Yet Kubrick’s film, true to its title, offers a strange kind of reassurance. It suggests that events of world-ending importance can appear, to ordinary people, as a chain of absurd decisions made by individuals who are foolish, incompetent, unstable, or simply afraid. What can be done about this? Very little. One can only try to live, and enjoy life as best as possible.

Today, the news needs us more than we need the news. Much of what causes anxiety does not actually report anything new or significant. And if people stop clicking, reading and sharing, this noise will simply fade away. Media outlets have their own performance metrics. It is not the news that feeds you; you feed the news with your attention.

The Doomsday Clock sounds ominous, of course. But what really stands behind it? A small group of self-styled experts receiving their annual share of media attention. Not by making the world safer, but by reminding everyone how close we supposedly are to disaster.

Francis Fukuyama once wrote about the “end of history,” arguing that humanity had reached a final stage and that no major cataclysms lay ahead. Five years ago, this idea seemed laughable. It felt as though history had ended – and then restarted in a new, chaotic cycle.

Now, however, it is clear that this is not the case. Yes, there are conflicts, tensions, and political turbulence. Yes, there is Donald Trump. But history itself is not accelerating toward some final abyss. There is no irreversible movement toward catastrophe.

Fortunately, there is nothing to fear.

This article was first published by the online newspaper Gazeta.ru and was translated and edited by the RT team