In response to the nuclear weapons tests conducted by India and Pakistan in May 1998, The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved the hands of their "Doomsday Clock" from 14 minutes to 9 minutes til midnight. Their web page solicits opinions on whether their current setting of the clock is correct. My opinion is that it should be upped to 2 minutes til midnight because of the following new developments:

• Testing of ICBMs by India.

• Testing of ballistic missiles by N. Korea.

• China is being urged to point missiles at India

• Clandestine transfer of nuclear & missile weapons technology to China.

• War in Kosovo causing nuclear saber rattling by Russia.

• Potential Y2K problems in weapons and defense systems.

• Russia now declining to cooperate in Y2K early warning data sharing.

• Potential economic consequences of Y2K could trigger increased militarism.

• Deterioration of Russian economy resulting in rise of black market and speculation that nukes have fallen into terrorist hands.

• Escalation of cyber-terrorism and chemical/biological terrorism concerns.

• Continuing conflict with Iraq and termination of weapons inspections.

Past settings of the clock are shown below:

What is your opinion of where the clock hands should be set?

-- a (a@a.a), April 12, 1999

Answers

I think it should be advanced to 11:58, 12/31/99 (note two-digit year)...

-- Rodin's Thinker (my2sense@whatitsworth.com), April 12, 1999.

- a, I think you'e got the timing about right, but I offer a few more considerations: * Chinese checkers with the Neuton Bomb. * Red Mercury. * Chinese Pirating of Software. * Missing Uraniam - Chernobyl. * Missing Tactical Nuclear Weapons - former USSR * Missing Stinger and other handheld manportable weapons against military and commercial aircraft. * No Aircraft Carrier in Pacific as of next week (1st time in what...60 years!) * Telegraphing our ammo status and intentions to our enemies (cruise missile status/use of ground troops). * GPS turnover, and possible loss of eyes in sky, navigation of cruise missiles, fighter aircraft, any all the other implications. NOT A BRIGHT PICTURE!!!

-- (snowleopard6@webtv.net), April 12, 1999.

Should be - but won't be - this group does not want to embaress Clinton and the current socialist leaders in Europe.

No, they wanted to scare the world about Reagan - who ended the nuclear stand-off, instead of Clinton - who started a greater threat and who armed other nations.

It's all political hype to scare people who know no better - to promote the people who should do better. But who don't want to do better.

-- Robert A Cook, PE (Kennesaw, GA) (Cook.R@csaatl.com), April 12, 1999.

We're doomed.

We will be practically defenseless by the end of next month. We're not replacing ANY of the weaponry we're using over Iraq or Kosovo!

Is it just me, or is Clinton DELIBERATELY setting us up for destruction?

Remember Slick loathed our military and said so not only to Col. Eugene Holmes in '68, but to his Kremlin hosts in Moscow - 1970.

Stranger and stranger.

Got bunkers?

-- INVAR (gundark@sw.net), April 12, 1999.

Have a little more hope INVAR...remember the world is not only stranger than we imagine, but stranger than we can imagine.

Or as my mom said, "Maybe a miracle will occur"...

-- a (a@a.a), April 13, 1999.

INVAR, It won't be pretty but we will come out on top after this (last) one!

-- prophet (prophet@america.preachit), April 13, 1999.

They need to set the clock back to 1972, its not y2k ready and this will be a temp. solution EXCEPT for the leap year thing--Ha! How is India going nuclear anyway? I thought all their brightest people were over here on temp work visas solving our code problems.

-- Tonto (Tonto@silver.com), April 13, 1999.

C'mon guys, you can't possibly be THAT naive.

America is like an adolescent compared to the rest of the world. We think we're invincible. We can't suffer or die. Things will go on like this forever. We've beaten the business cycle, the economic cycles, America will always win!!

This is HUBRIS gone wild.

Did our founders not warn us to remain ever vigillant?

Instead we find the nation asleep and complacent.

We were like the greatest of trees, able to withstand any external attack, but rotten away from within.

Wolves in sheep's coverings among us if you will. Clinton and his ilk being the wolves.

Besides, as a nation, you cannot stand in the face of God and spit arrogantly in His face and declare that YOU know what is right, good and just - and destroy the foundation on which we were founded - and not suffer the consequences of collapse.

Time's up little children. We've been disobedient and arrogant for long-enough. We've ceded our freedoms over time to an immoral and insane ideology that is now wielded by a power-mad tyrant, that forgot history - and started WWIII.

America is about to meet the fate our Founders warned us to be concious and worried of.

To ALL our peril.

And save the notion of hope.

Hope's got nothing to do with it.

The passengers on the Titanic could have hoped fervently to the point they shed feathers, - it didn't make a difference when the reality of the situation was undeniable - they were gonna sink.

Like the Titanic, America has hit the iceberg of complacent hubris. Now it's only a matter of time. Just how much is left is the only variable.

Whether you want to believe it or not, the fact remains that WE ARE VULNERABLE, AND WE SOLD OUT OUR PRECIOUS BIRTHRIGHT - all for emotional rhetoric, empty ideology and the pursuit of pleasure over the truly important things we were given charge to respect, obey and guard.

It's been a slice.....while it lasted these 200+ years.

But the piper is about to demand payment.

-- INVAR (gundark@sw.net), April 13, 1999.

" The light that burns twice as brightly burns but half as long, and oh how brightly you have shown." Blade Runner.

-- Nikoli Krushev (doomsday@y2000.com), April 13, 1999.

"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murder is less to fear." --Marcus Tullius Cicero, 42 B.C.

-- Texan (needrain@ranch.com), April 13, 1999.

Texan,

Prophetic - - 'aint it?

-- INVAR (gundark@sw.net), April 13, 1999.