Two minutes to midnight

nexus9 said:

I went on CND matches and visited Upper Heyford and Greenham Common

1. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg15120391-200-greenham-fallout-penetrates-corridors-of-power/
2. https://www.wiseinternational.org/nuclear-monitor/456/1958-accident-greenham-common-covered

I read On the Beach at 17 and had nightmares for months afterwards. I went on CND matches and visited Upper Heyford and Greenham Common. And here we go again. 

I just hope my cats won't suffer too much of this escalates. Why should everything else suffer because humans never manage to evolve beyond a certain point.

I do not know.

But it looks like we are closer.

No?

Are we closer to midnight now?

The hands that threaten doom..........!

I don't think anyone, on either side, likes it. 

I do not like the confrontation between the West and the East.

Sorry, I often go off-context as my brain seems to prefer taking 'side-streets' rather than sticking to the 'main-road' in conversations.

The idea of a biological mutation to help cope with the effects of climate change was one such example but, reading it back now, I think this idea was amply covered in the movie 'Waterworld'.   

Endymion said:

Perhaps radioactive fallout would help with that?!

https://youtu.be/jzsmmD52tcU

Endymion said:

Perhaps radioactive fallout would help with that?!  

...I was about to point out that I did not understand this comment...but only as I write this does it occur to me that you may be suggesting the starting of a "Biological Mutations via Radioactivity"-sub-thread...This is how slow I am in getting "jokes" and "puns" off-context, and it is quite annoying to find something amusing after it is too late, and so not knowing if it is appropriate to join in... (!)

A woman in the next village to us had the same experience as your father, in 2004 - lying in bed looking up at the stars when the roof was blown off her house. She had to be rescued in the middle of the night by the local fire service.

This incident was caused by hurricane force winds which are becoming more prevalent due to climate change and I think we have more to fear / prepare ourselves for re. climate change than we do re. the threat of war.

I'm pretty sure my village won't exist at all in another few decades if sea levels rise as predicted so I guess any preparations I do make will mean nothing unless I also manage to develop gills. Perhaps radioactive fallout would help with that?!  

Well the first report confirms my statement that the protocols are under constant review but what is actually changed may not be what is reported by the press or even falsely reported for security reasons.

The fact that floppy discs are still used is no surprise and it does mean they cannot be hacked into.

Bye the way I own a DongFeng404 compact tractor. :)  Nice basic piece of kit with no electronics/computers aboard except the usual gauges for temp, oil pressure, fuel, RPM etc.

Nothing much to go wrong except mechanical breakdowns which are easily fixed with the right knowledge and technical backup. I like it a lot.

And yes I am still sure:)

Take care, Laddie.

Yes interesting indeed but is there a time lag you are missing with this data? Could be that it takes a year or two for the change to occur after the election?

Here's a chart showing the magnitude and direction of each change to the clock, again coded for the party of the incumbent president. I'm really surprised by this, but the data says that the net change under Democrats was an overall swing of 18 minutes towards midnight , whereas the Republicans saw an overall swing of 11 minutes away from midnight.

If you accept that the party in office actually has any bearing on the global security situation, the data rather implies that right wing US governments make the world a safer place(!) Note however that with so few data points, you could well get the opposite result if you ran the same experiment again - maybe the reality is that, rather like the stock market, no one is really in control at all...

As for what made the scientists alter the clock each time, you can find that information at: https://thebulletin.org/timeline

laddie49 said:

I am sure if the Americans are really changing those protocols we would not know anything about it.

Still sure? 

1. http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/trump-nuclear-posture-review-2018_us_5a4d4773e4b06d1621bce4c5
2. https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/us-nuclear-weapons-modernization
3. https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-nuclear-modernize-specialreport/special-report-in-modernising-nuclear-arsenal-u-s-stokes-new-arms-race-idUKKBN1DL1AK
4. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/05/26/the-real-reason-america-controls-its-nukes-with-ancient-floppy-disks/
5. https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/americas-nuclear-arsenal-requires-floppy-disks-use-secure/

Thanks for the tip, I managed to see a bigger version. The pattern does seem to be similar to your first graph but as I said earlier this might just be a coincidence. I guess the only way to know for sure if there is any political connection is to ask the scientists themselves what influenced them to alter the clock.