A countdown that marks the end of the human race and the planet as we know it, keeps millions
of people in suspense.
It is not an idea held by some apocalyptic sect or groups, affiliated with this or that
spiritualist current.
It comes from the very scientific community, who are concerned that humanity is on the
verge of extinction.
In this opportunity we will see: "The doomsday clock".
A century full of apocalyptic events The Doomsday Clock is not something objective,
but a symbolism that exists since 1947, after the United States bombarded Japan with atomic
weapons.
It was named by the directors of the magazine "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists", property
of the University of Chicago, as an analogy to the severe threat that they suppose the
technological advances, the extreme contamination, the wars and cataclysms, will pose to life
on Earth.
According to this community of scientists,
we are a few minutes away from midnight, the zero hour, where everything will collapse
and the much announced judgment day will come.
In fact, several times this clock has been advanced, as for example in 2018, motivated
by the extreme ideology of Donald Trump, the then president of the USA.
Since 1947, just when the world was mourning the ravages left by the brutal "Second World
War", the controversial and feared doomsday clock appears on the cover of each edition
of the scientific bulletin, to the present day.
Something very curious, is that on January 26, 2018, the clock was advanced to a terrifying
point: only two minutes to 12 or zero hour, implying that very possibly something very
serious is about to happen.
And according to those responsible for it, this advance was mainly motivated by the threat
situation of nuclear and biological conflicts, as well as the strange climate change facing
the planet.
Will they know something that ordinary people don't?
This clock has already been manipulated and corrected in several occasions, either to
bring it closer to the gloomy hour or to move it away, very influenced by the world political
events.
For example, in 1991, when it was agreed that the Soviet Union would reduce armament together
with the United States, the clock hands were delayed by 17 minutes.
In 1953 it was also about to make the bells of the apocalypse chime, because on that date
the first official experiments with nuclear weapons of great powers took place.
In 1984, at the height of the Cold War, the hands were again placed at 23:58, with two
minutes remaining before the hecatomb.
These decisions are always made when a group of experts has been consulted, among which
there are more than 20 Nobel Prize winners.
Another factor that the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists takes into account is the speeding
technological advance.
According to them, it is duly demonstrated that when there's a leap in technological
advancement, there's a decrease in levels of humanity.
They see the idea of the virtualization of society and the digitization of human tasks
and activities, as well as money, as very dangerous.
This group of experts in all kinds of praiseworthy areas consider that the world is too fragile
and vulnerable, especially as years go by.
The time of the Doomsday Clock at the crudest
moment.
Perhaps the worst moment in which humanity and the whole planet were about to succumb,
was in 1983, when the cold night of September 26 almost explodes an atomic holocaust and
the final World War III.
At that time there was still the fury of the Cold War, which confronted the United States
with the Soviet Union.
On that occasion, a hero named Stanislav Petrov saved everyone from the horrible end of atomic
fire.
Petrov was in charge of running a missile control center in one of the great bunkers
in Moscow.
The objective was to detect any sign of attack by enemy projectiles.
From one moment to the next, on the monitor of this Soviet agent, an American missile
is seen heading towards Russia and the alarms were echoing announcing the apocalypse.
At that moment, the Doomsday Clock marked zero hour for a few minutes, chiming its final
bells, but fear and reason helped Petrov and those who accompanied him remain motionless
without knowing how to react.
The thing got worse when the screen no longer showed a missile, but several, one after another,
launched from North America.
But because Petrov deduced a system failure, he did not press the answer button and today
we live thanks to it.
All the confusion was caused by an error in the satellite.
Once again we came close to that awful zero hour, which not only takes into account the
risk of global conflagration, but also the increasing natural catastrophes and advances
in technology.