Let’s discuss a few issues concerning nuclear war and Iran today. On January 27, the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set the Doomsday Clock at 85 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been. In their summarization, they note that:
A year ago, we warned that the world was perilously close to global disaster and that any delay in reversing course increased the probability of catastrophe. Rather than heed this warning, Russia, China, the United States, and other major countries have instead become increasingly aggressive, adversarial, and nationalistic. Hard-won global understandings are collapsing, accelerating a winner-takes-all great power competition and undermining the international cooperation critical to reducing the risks of nuclear war, climate change, the misuse of biotechnology, the potential threat of artificial intelligence, and other apocalyptic dangers.
I hold both agreement and disapproval with their analysis.
Like I have explained to you previously, end-of-the-world scenarios have been in my life since I was eight years old, when my babysitter let me watch a documentary of a nuclear war. When my mother arrived home later that evening, I was naturally shocked to the core. I remember having nightmares about nuclear war for weeks. The same happened after Alien, which I watched as a preteen when my mother was in a late-evening meeting. Some years later, as a teenager, I saw The Terminator, which naturally played into the nuclear holocaust scenario, and in 1995 (or 1996), the Outbreak. Many watched these movies as entertainment, but not me. Only much later did I understand my profound interest in these movies. I considered them as likely to be signs or warnings of things to come. However, I do think that the Terminator scenario is quite far still and I don’t really believe in any kind of climate emergency anymore.1 In them, I disagree with the scientists of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, but they also have a point. The risk of a nuclear war erupting continues to grow.
Some days ago, I noted in X that I warned about the current and deepening chaos for several years, and now there was really nothing more for me to do than “eat popcorn” (emoji). I ended by noting that “Maybe you’ll listen to me more carefully next time.” The surging prices of gold and silver indicate that we are closing in on this (the “next time”). I think that the surge is caused by three converging trends:
