“At the end of a Storm” Vol.6
The Doomsday Clock and a Cult of Fear
The Doomsday Clock
We’re all going to die apparently. Who knew?
24th January 2024
My heart goes out to the Doomsday Clock.
For 364 days of the year it sits untouched, unwanted and unloved in a Harry Potter style cupboard under the stairs and then, its big day! It’s wheeled out to the glare of the media, the hubbub and flashbulbs of a worldwide press desperate to propagate yet another story full of fear, death and existential angst to foist upon the plebs and the great unwashed and then, with the task of pumping fear around the world duly completed and everyone fully aware that we’re still 30 seconds to Mars, the poor old thing is wheeled back to its dark dungeon under the stairs for another year.
So my heart goes out to the Doomsday Clock.
Growing up, I always remember this being a throwaway item at the end of the “News at 10” late at night here in the UK. Grave tones were used by the newscaster and that “experts” at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists had moved the arms of the clock closer not to Mars but to Midnight, and our impending doom as a human species.
War. Climate Disasters. AI. Bio Terrorism. The shopping list of doom grows longer with each and every passing year, but even as a kid I knew this to be an oddity and a surreal item of “news” reserved for the graveyard slot normally filled by a feel good item at the end of a barrage of doom and gloom to keep the populace fearful and compliant.
But all these years later this grisly sideshow continues and the carnival of the bizarre never leaves town now.
It’s just another news item full of fear.
It’s just another Tuesday on Planet Starbucks.
“The Doomsday Clock” is the 39th chapter from my recently self-published book entitled “At the end of a Storm”, the first volume in a hat-trick of rambling musings from the end of the first lock down through to early March 2024.
"At the end of a Storm" - available via Amazon
Thanks for reading. I hope this message in a bottle in The Matrix finds you well, prospering, and the right way up in an upside down world.