Duck and cover

      Man, did you notice? Did you go to sleep and wake up to, well, doomsday?

      The truth is out there. Whoops, still coming down from there being new X-Files on television.

      Anyway, the terrifying truth that is out there is that The Doomsday Clock, a symbolic countdown to the world’s end, stands still at three minutes until midnight, scientists announced Tuesday.

      It remains at the position it moved to one year ago. That the clock moves no closer to midnight, the indicated end of humanity, remains "grave" news, its makers stressed.

      "Unless we change the way we think, humanity remains in serious danger," said Lawrence Krauss of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the nonprofit that sets the clock.

"Action now can reduce these threats," he said at an announcement in Washington, "but only if we recognize them honestly and face them head-on."

      Manhattan Project scientists, concerned about the first atomic weapons, founded the nonprofit Bulletin in 1945. They created the clock two years later, and update its minute hand each year.

      Just how the minute hand moves is determined by the Bulletin’s boards of directors and sponsors, which include environmental scientists, physicists and 18 Nobel Laureates. In other words, a bunch of smart folks get together and vote, apparently.

      Krauss, a physicist who chairs the group's Board of Sponsors, said Tuesday that progress over the past year including America's nuclear deal with Iran and the Parris accord to slow climate change. But that was balanced by negative developments including tension between the U.S. and Russia and North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weaponry.

      The clock remains at the closest its pointed to mankind’s doom since 1984 amid the Cold War. The reasoning for its move there last year: rampant climate change and an ongoing threat of nuclear weapons.

      Anyone remember what the heck happened in 1984? Yeah, thought not.

          “The probability of global catastrophe is very high,” Kennette Benedict, the Bulletin’s publisher at the time, said. “This is about the end of civilization as we know it."

      Well, I would hope so. But my questions are these:

      1) The Iranian deal can be cancelled if Iran is shown to have done more with nuclear weapons, thus making it kind of silly. How does that help.

      2) The climate change accord is not binding and there are no penalties built into it. Again, how does that help?

      3) Crazies with nuclear weapons (North Korea, possibly Iran) make all the progress mute. In other words, two nutty North Koreans trump (lord I hate writing that word) one environmentalist.

      No questions in the third. I just wanted to write that phrase: Crazies with nuclear weapons.

      Look, we have plenty to worry about without getting up in arms about such as these things.

      Looking into scripture, which sure seems to speak to end times, I read this: But no one knows the date and hour when the end will be—not even the angels. No, nor even God’s Son. Only the Father knows.

      That means, uh, NO ONE. NADA. Zip. Zilch. 

      Not even the most brilliant of the nuclear scientists, and by the way, I've never met a nuclear scientist. Are we certain these folks still exist?

      The Bible also is fairly clear about what we need to do as we ponder and lose sleep over the probability of global catastrophe.

      It says: So my (Jesus') counsel is: Don’t worry about things—food, drink, and clothes. For you already have life and a body—and they are far more important than what to eat and wear.      

      We can't prevent nuclear problems; We can't do squat about global warming in the long run; We might never met an Iranian or a North Korean leader, either.

      But what we can do is simply not worry. Collect ourselves. Pray. Receive peace. Be calm (and duck and cover).