The US-based Bulletin of Atomic Scientists declared that the world is five minutes away from nuclear Armageddon, as keepers of a symbolic Doomsday clock - world-famous symbol have moved the hands forward last January 17. That the day of reckoning is looming because of the increasing threat of nuclear war and worsening climate change is beyond doubt, borrowing from Al Gore's lecture-documentary, "an inconvenient truth" that mankind will suffer from as consequences of our very own actions.
The Doomsday clock, designed and maintained since 1947 by the Board of Directors of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, had stood at 11:53, seven minutes to midnight, since 2002. It moved by two minutes forward from 1998 amid trepidation about the rapid increase of nuclear, biological and other weapons, amid threat of terrorism in the aftermath of the attacks on September 11, 2001, discovery of terrorists' search for nuclear and biological weapons, and the withdrawal of the US from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
According to the University of Chicago-based scientists, the latest shift is a result of growing concerns about a “Second Nuclear Age.” Our survival is threatened because of the grave threats posed by North Korea's recent test of a nuclear weapon, "the nuclear ambitions in Iran and North Korea, unsecured nuclear materials in Russia and elsewhere, the continuing "launch-ready' status of 2,000 of the 25,000 nuclear weapons held by the US and Russia; escalating terrorism; and new pressure from climate change for expanded civilian nuclear power that could increase proliferation risks'.
This warning by the organization, that we stand at the brink of a Second Nuclear Age, is backed by 18 Nobel laureates including Stephen Hawking, the renowned Cambridge University physicist. He announced that they "foresee great peril if governments and scientists don"t take action now to render nuclear weapons obsolete and prevent further climate change'.
These are warning and declarations from scientists and physicists. They are not the foolhardy alarmists who hid behind text messages to warn us about an impending earthquake that would reach intensity 9 of the Richter scale, and who stupidly announced that it would occur at exactly five in the afternoon. And yet these irresponsible textmongers were successful in causing panic in many parts of the metropolis. Even government offices were hoaxed.
But this time, we must heed these warnings. This is the time to be afraid, to be very afraid because the scale of the problem is recognized by the experts. They have provided scientific studies and evidence. They have recognized that “nuclear weapons still pose the most catastrophic and immediate threat to humanity” and that “climate change and emerging technologies in the life sciences also have the potential to end civilization as we know it.”
Countries that stick to the status quo of super powers, trying to beat each other to the race towards the throne of the biggest nuclear power, must take their political and moral obligation to the world seriously. And the human race must join hands to resuscitate our dying planet. If we will not push ourselves to take action, the Doomsday clock will continue to tick, pushing the world towards the looming doomsday.
Remember, we are now five minutes away from Armageddon.
