I’m sure you’ve all heard of it by now – nuclear/atomic scientists have this publicity stunt tool, where they claim that the “doomsday” clock they maintain is a few minutes from striking midnight, where midnight is a symbolic proxy for nuclear holocaust.

And every year Chomsky tells us not what’s wrong with the world (if anything) in appropriately demonstrated challenges we face, including the possibility of nuclear world war, but rather uses the metaphor of this clock and thus pulls a fast one right before our eyes – the Atomic scientists have calculated that the hour arm of the clock is past 11, and the minute arm of the clock ought to be at 56 minutes, or four minutes from the nuclear holocaust.

Now, multiple chunks of four minutes have lapsed since you got up this morning, or since last night, or even now as you read this, and yet no nuclear winter has been upon us. We all understand what they mean – what Chomsky and what the nuclear scientists mean is in metaphor to bring home the severity of the problem of so many nuclear weapons that can be so destructive to a world so fragile.

Why would I ever oppose something like that? Because it is absurd: the most complex and difficult field of science, reserved only for the most briliant among us, blames the public for some imaginary nuclear holocaust instead of themselves! All they have to do is withdraw their services, and nobody would be able to maintain the bombs or build new ones!