Two minutes to midnight

I don't think it will happen, the whole doomsday clock is just a political tool, nothing more than a joke really.

Still, there are two "assets" that will be inherently valuable in an apocalypse should one happen, the skills to survive and the will to kill other people. You'll need to be able to at the very least hunt and forage for food and will almost certainly have to kill other people to keep what's yours, and perhaps even take what's theirs to survive and protect your family. I know I can survive on my own. I've hunted, gutted and cooked rabbits, pigeons and pheasants before and I have an air rifle and crossbow (which it's illegal to hunt with, but then if civilisation has collapsed law won't really matter), I know what plants in the wild I can and can't eat, I have reasonable medical knowledge etc. What I don't know is if I'm capable of killing to protect friends and family. I suspect I probably am, just because I suspect that we all are when push comes to shove, it wouldn't be pleasant, but for most of human history most people have been capable of killing and I very much doubt we're deep down, in an us or them situation, any different.

I don't think it will happen

I am hoping that the whole thing is to keep NK on a war-footing without actually fighting, until they are all exhausted and/or run out of money... That would appear to be the one option which no one actually mentions, but would nevertheless fit what we have been seeing.

Unfortunately, I am not sure the Americans (or at least some of the ones that matter in this case) are quite that smart.

www.youtube.com/watch

I don't think it will happen

I am hoping that the whole thing is to keep NK on a war-footing without actually fighting, until they are all exhausted and/or run out of money... That would appear to be the one option which no one actually mentions, but would nevertheless fit what we have been seeing.

Unfortunately, I am not sure the Americans (or at least some of the ones that matter in this case) are quite that smart.

www.youtube.com/watch

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwasong-15

"The end" is not necessarily near, but these are dangerous times. 

Arguably NK already has the range. 

Trump has threatened that Kim won't be around much longer. Some in the American government have been threatening a preemptive strike on NK. China has warned that if it thinks the US is attempting regime change, it will intervene to prevent it; the Chinese don't want US troops right up against their border. China's DF-5 yields somewhere between 3 and 5 megatons. If China gets sucked into a fight, we can all forget about surviving anyway.

Putin is probably just out for himself, but they too share a border with NK. 

There are many ways this could go spectacularly wrong.

As far as I've understood it, we're nowhere near in range of N.K's missiles and those who do have us in range (Russia for instance) are nowhere near considering it. 

I don't think 'The End Is Near' re. war / mass destruction / total societal breakdown but I do think it's to be expected that, in the long term, localised infrastructures will temporarily break down as resources either run low temporarily (electricity, water, imported foods) or become too expensive to use / waste in the way that we do now. 

What makes you say that?

The accuracy part I can understand, but it looks to me like they already have the range? 

However, I wasn't prepared to bet that Nork guidance systems would inadvertently hit France (or wherever) instead, hence the basic prep and indeed this thread. 

I sincerely hope I'm wrong about the likelihood, and I can handle being an object of fun for the folk here.

No real harm done, and the stuff I have slowly amassed can be put to use equally well in the event of some other major interruption to the grid, such as a major CME event. As far as possible I think I have a need to know I don't have to rely on anyone else, but perhaps that's something that life has taught me as a consequence of ASD.

On the other hand, I don't think I would handle things actually kicking off and knowing I'd lost my chance to prepare for the sake of the family. So I guess it all boils down to anxiety really (which of course surprises me because as I've previously stated, I was generally unaware of my feelings, and never thought of myself as the anxious type).

I have been turning nuclear war over in my mind since the 1980s, and in the 1990s had the view that humanity might survive until about 2012, by which time somebody, probably Iran or North Korea, would have chucked a warhead about, and things would then kick-off. I felt more of a grim determination than anxiety.  

I was very happy to be proved wrong by the arrival of 2013, but I am also keenly aware that I am quite often about 2-5 years too pessimistic about things.

If it was just me, I would probably be getting those Jaffa cakes in, but of course I have a little lad now. I had thought we were safe to have him, but global politics has now gone South. It wasn't supposed to turn out like this. I hate being right.

I don't think it will happen for a whole host of reasons, least not that the Norks are a long way of getting a missile that could hit the UK, either in terms of range or accuracy.