It’s Two and a Half Minutes to Midnight
Cosmic horror comes in many forms both in fiction and nonfiction. Every year, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists sets the Doomsday Clock to spark the cosmic debate about the safety of our fragile planet and the dangers to the insignificant carbon based lifeforms that infest it. With the most recent setting of the clock in 2017, it is now the closest to midnight it has been in my lifetime, closer than the height of the cold war in 1984, the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 and the escalated tensions in 1987 between East and West Germany.
The probability of global catastrophe is very high, and the actions needed to reduce the risks of disaster must be taken very soon. In 2017, we find the danger to be even greater, the need for action more urgent. It is two and a half minutes to midnight, the Clock is ticking, global danger looms. — 2017 Doomsday Clock Statement
At the end of 1987, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty was signed by Gorbachev and Reagan and we see for the first time — after it was ratified and put into force — a very real reduction of the world’s nuclear arsenal from its height of approximately 70,000 nuclear warheads. Then the Berlin wall came down and there was hope.
In my lifetime, we have experienced the underlying cosmic dread of the rapid nuclear arsenal buildup, then the pulling back from the peak. Films like Threads, The Day After, Fail-Safe, The New Bedford Incident and On the Beach (based on Nevil Shute’s bestseller) were all consistent reminders of the nightmare horror that lurks beyond everyday life. Younger readers of The Daily Lurker may not quite appreciate the palpable fear we tasted in the previous half century.
So now in this era with so many narcissistic misogynist sociopathic leaders who clearly do not have the skills to lead, I feel like I am living my own On the Beach scenario, “It’s not the end of the world at all. It’s only the end for us. The world will go on just the same, only we shan’t be in it. I dare say it will get along all right without us.”
There are other reasons why we are closer to midnight such as climate change causing much stronger storms, methane seeping out from the Arctic permafrost, and other more Lovecraftian horrors (watch Sound from the Deep in Shorts Block 2 of this year’s H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival).
The continued warming of the world measured in 2016 underscores one clear fact: Nothing is fundamentally amiss with the scientific understanding of climate physics. — 2017 Doomsday Clock Statement
On the bright side, it could always be worse! I for one am certainly happy that we do not live in the alternate history as described in “A Colder War” by Charles Stross were scientists have weaponized the Lovecraftian universe. But still there lingers this silent horror I cannot suppress… the image of Ted Nugent and Kid Rock in the Oval Office with the man with tiny hands who has access to the big red button.
“It is a ghastly but tenable proposition that the world is now ruled by the insane, whose increasing plurality will, in a few more generations, make probable the incarceration of all sane people born among them.” — Clark Ashton Smith
About the Author
Andrew Migliore is author of Lurker in the Lobby: A Guide to the Cinema of H.P. Lovecraft and founder (and the original director for 15 years) of the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival® and CthulhuCon™. During daylight hours he is VP of Engineering at a software startup.
