I suspect that most people have never heard of the "Bulletin of Atomic Scientists Science and Security Board" who are the people that move the hands of the symbolic doomsday clock, which currently reads at 11:57PM, or just three minutes to midnight and apocalypse. The Board includes seventeen Nobel Laureates, so their scholarly attributes are certainly something to be admired but the doomsday clock which has been in existence since 1947, has never read anything earlier than11:43PM, so for nearly seventy years, we have been minutes away from the final apocalypse, but in fact, we are still here, and so is this planet.
While one can admire the board for perhaps keeping in the mind's eye that we live in a nuclear age to which atomic destruction is literally just a few logistical buttons away at any time, the fact of the matter is, if all you ever do is to put the public at their wit's ends, that the end of the world is just seconds away, but none of that ever happens, you have done a massive disservice to the world at large. In point of fact, if it's almost always midnight, if we are always on the edge of utter annihilation, but year after year, nothing happens, than by definition, the doomsday clock is a false flag and utterly useless other than a pure propaganda tool.
We live in a world that has gotten much smaller over time, to which virtually any point on the planet can be visited by air or by sea, at any time. While there are around 195 sovereign nations in the world, of which some of those nations are warring, there is no World War III, nor is World War III, even likely at this point. What these eminent scholars get so very wrong, is a basic misunderstanding of the power of the world at this time, to which the most vested interest that any world-class leader of any world-class nation has, is to get along with others, because a world that destructs itself, is exceedingly bad for business.
The doomsday clock makes too much of words, but not of actions, too much of speeches and propaganda, but not of deeds. Every country as a matter of course, wants a devil to blame for its troubles, so is it no wonder, that east blames west, or north blames south, and vice versa? What is missing from the doomsday clock scenario is an understanding, a fundamental knowledge, that the most powerful players in the world today are all talking to each other, because at the end of the day, while they may not see things or have philosophies that match the world eye to eye, they do see that there is just one world, and as long as they have some piece of it, they're okay with it.
Had the nuclear age arrived back in the middle ages, or in ancient times, when man often deluded himself into believing that he was a god, or that his country or his people should be the sole master of the world, and that all others therefore were non-believers and should be annihilated for the sake of the chosen people, or as a matter of ideology, than indeed, the doomsday clock would be correct in foreseeing imminent destruction. In those times, certainly, someone may well have pushed that button of no-return, but fortunately we live in times when mankind is actually more civilized and communicates with those it disagrees with.
In reality, the doomsday clock should be set to something like 2:00AM, because that is the actual reality of the situation, and for that we should be thankful.