Far be it from me to suggest that the mainstream media has a nasty tendency to overhype things, but as you'll have seen if you've read Doomwatch in issue two, they have a nastier tendency to reach for the apocalyptic phrase book when things turn sour, as evidenced by the language used in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
So is it unreasonable for the financial press to avoid “crash,” “panic,” “apocalypse,” “Armageddon,” “meltdown” or “freefall” in news stories?
More to the point, does the speed with which they fall back on apocalyptic imagery alter our behaviour towards such events? If we're conditioned to react instinctively and quickly to such strong language then doesn't using it without just cause make over-reaction more likely? Do such words spark an inherent herd instinct to protect ourselves? What effect did the publishing of images of queues outside Northern Rock have?
How easy is it to describe something as an 'apocalypse' yet how hard to explain precisely how - while many people are suffering from the effects of a global economic downturn, will the world's financial sector crumble to dust, leaving us homeless, destitute and eventually eating each other in the streets? Highly doubtful. Yet frightening images are conjured up by these words and when big financial decisions are being made based on the latest rumour, words and how you use them become very important indeed. Image a president or a prime minister using words like 'apocalypse', 'armageddon' or 'end of the world' - we know they don't, simply because they'd spread panic. So what happens when reporters put such words into people's mouths? For all our tomfoolery at The End is Nigh, in the big wide world the apocalypse is not for toying with.
Tuesday, 23 September 2008
Tuesday, 16 September 2008
"Cheer up, it's not the end of the world!"
Yeah, it wasn’t funny the first hundred times I heard that either …
But doesn't it worry you that, maybe, one of these days someone's going to be right? Hideously, devastatingly right? No, me neither ...
That, apparently, is odd for a man who edits a magazine about that very subject.
Three issues of the official magazine of the apocalypse in and I'm becoming something of an authority on the subject ... a terrible boring authority ... yet you could never exactly call me a believer as such. I don't start to fret when oil prices go up, I remain unconvinced that George W Bush is the anti-Christ, I really think God has better things to do than dole out virgins to trigger-happy idiots. And yes, shock, horror, I don't believe in THE END OF THE WORLD.
Completing this circle of non-belief is 'most people', as it is they who now don't believe me. Chief amongst these is lawyer-turned-acerbic-TV-host and Bee Gee baiter Clive Anderson. I found this out while being interviewed for a BBC Radio Four show called The End is Nigh ... Again last year which, rather festively, was broadcast on New Year's Eve. It purported to examine the latest predictions of the end of the world and included interviews with apocalypticly-minded minds such as Gaia-theorist James Lovelock.
And me.
The questions were benign enough, but when all of my answers tended to slightly mock whatever theory we were talking about, Mr Anderson and his producer were a little bemused.
The problem is that I just don't believe. Sure, mankind isn't going to on forever, whether it's fire, ice, war or plague that wipes us out, but I certainly don't believe the one day I'll wake up and find that all the Christians have been hoovered off to heaven or that global warming will make this place completely uninhabitable. The end will come, but it'll either come before we can do anything about it, or it will be the long, slow twilight every race must suffer – bare in mind that 99% of the species that have ever existed are now extinct. There, that puts it into context, doesn’t it.
So how, asked Anderson, could I say I didn’t believe in the end of the world (other than when our sun gasps its last and destroys whatever is left of our home planet) when I edit and produce a magazine about it? Easy, say I, I just find the concept and its hold on the human psyche utterly, endlessly fascinating. Witness the reams of newsprint, the mountains of books and the endless number of webpages about this most timeless of concepts. Ever since mankind developed a sense of the future, he has had a sense of it coming to an end; as mortal beings we are only too aware of our impending death, yet we are ultimately powerless to change or delay it. Predicting it is a cunning way to try and exert some control, exercise some measure of influence over that dark day that awaits us all. Doesn't work, but that never stops people trying. Whether it's voices in their head, a feeling in your gut, an alignment of stars or the way your dog's entrails sit just so on the makeshift Stonehenge in your back garden, trying to second guess fate has been a favourite past time since time immemorial. But we just can't seem to get it right ...
And that’s where THE END IS NIGH! comes in. We seek to chart and preserve mankind’s on-going fascination with its own demise, examining the claims of those who would see us consumed by solar fire, dashed to pieces by flying rocks, obliterated by nuclear weapons or wiped out by a big bad bug. Where there is a hell-fire preacher predicting perpetual purgatory, you will find us. When a scientist looks up from his microscope or telescope eyepiece in horror, we will be there.
In the end, they cut me out of the programme, preferring instead to concentrate on the scientists and their pet theories.
Just as well really ...
But doesn't it worry you that, maybe, one of these days someone's going to be right? Hideously, devastatingly right? No, me neither ...
That, apparently, is odd for a man who edits a magazine about that very subject.
Three issues of the official magazine of the apocalypse in and I'm becoming something of an authority on the subject ... a terrible boring authority ... yet you could never exactly call me a believer as such. I don't start to fret when oil prices go up, I remain unconvinced that George W Bush is the anti-Christ, I really think God has better things to do than dole out virgins to trigger-happy idiots. And yes, shock, horror, I don't believe in THE END OF THE WORLD.
Completing this circle of non-belief is 'most people', as it is they who now don't believe me. Chief amongst these is lawyer-turned-acerbic-TV-host and Bee Gee baiter Clive Anderson. I found this out while being interviewed for a BBC Radio Four show called The End is Nigh ... Again last year which, rather festively, was broadcast on New Year's Eve. It purported to examine the latest predictions of the end of the world and included interviews with apocalypticly-minded minds such as Gaia-theorist James Lovelock.
And me.
The questions were benign enough, but when all of my answers tended to slightly mock whatever theory we were talking about, Mr Anderson and his producer were a little bemused.
The problem is that I just don't believe. Sure, mankind isn't going to on forever, whether it's fire, ice, war or plague that wipes us out, but I certainly don't believe the one day I'll wake up and find that all the Christians have been hoovered off to heaven or that global warming will make this place completely uninhabitable. The end will come, but it'll either come before we can do anything about it, or it will be the long, slow twilight every race must suffer – bare in mind that 99% of the species that have ever existed are now extinct. There, that puts it into context, doesn’t it.
So how, asked Anderson, could I say I didn’t believe in the end of the world (other than when our sun gasps its last and destroys whatever is left of our home planet) when I edit and produce a magazine about it? Easy, say I, I just find the concept and its hold on the human psyche utterly, endlessly fascinating. Witness the reams of newsprint, the mountains of books and the endless number of webpages about this most timeless of concepts. Ever since mankind developed a sense of the future, he has had a sense of it coming to an end; as mortal beings we are only too aware of our impending death, yet we are ultimately powerless to change or delay it. Predicting it is a cunning way to try and exert some control, exercise some measure of influence over that dark day that awaits us all. Doesn't work, but that never stops people trying. Whether it's voices in their head, a feeling in your gut, an alignment of stars or the way your dog's entrails sit just so on the makeshift Stonehenge in your back garden, trying to second guess fate has been a favourite past time since time immemorial. But we just can't seem to get it right ...
And that’s where THE END IS NIGH! comes in. We seek to chart and preserve mankind’s on-going fascination with its own demise, examining the claims of those who would see us consumed by solar fire, dashed to pieces by flying rocks, obliterated by nuclear weapons or wiped out by a big bad bug. Where there is a hell-fire preacher predicting perpetual purgatory, you will find us. When a scientist looks up from his microscope or telescope eyepiece in horror, we will be there.
In the end, they cut me out of the programme, preferring instead to concentrate on the scientists and their pet theories.
Just as well really ...
Monday, 15 September 2008
NEWS: Spanish town still haunted by its brush with Armageddon
Fascinating piece in the International Herald Tribune about the Spanish town that very nearly became ground zero for a nuclear holocaust in 1966, after a B-52 carrying nuclear weapons exploded above it in midair ...
On the morning of Jan. 17, 1966, a U.S. Air Force B-52 bomber returning from a routine Cold War alert mission exploded during airborne refueling, sending its cargo of B28 hydrogen bombs plummeting toward earth.
One went into the azure waters of the Mediterranean and three others fell around this poor farming village, about 200 kilometers, or 125 miles, east of Granada.
Seven crew members on the air force planes perished in the fireball, while four parachuted to safety. No one on the ground was killed. The nuclear warheads, many times more powerful than those that fell on Hiroshima, did not go off - exactly.
On the morning of Jan. 17, 1966, a U.S. Air Force B-52 bomber returning from a routine Cold War alert mission exploded during airborne refueling, sending its cargo of B28 hydrogen bombs plummeting toward earth.
One went into the azure waters of the Mediterranean and three others fell around this poor farming village, about 200 kilometers, or 125 miles, east of Granada.
Seven crew members on the air force planes perished in the fireball, while four parachuted to safety. No one on the ground was killed. The nuclear warheads, many times more powerful than those that fell on Hiroshima, did not go off - exactly.
ANALYSIS: web 'must separate rumour' from science
As a source of apocalyptic rumour and panic, the internet can't be beaten. Once upon a time, doomsayers were confined to preaching, pamphlet/book printing or - in usually quite extreme cases - bagging mainstream media attention to propagate their ideas, but now anybody with a copy of Dreamweaver and a broadband connection can be all over the internet like a rash.
Now obviously the flap over the LHC was something more than that, since those who launched the biggest legal challenge against the switch-on were scientists themselves, but you don't have to have an intimate understanding of Google's listing system to find websites that put an apocalyptic slant on scientific discoveries or ideas both old and new. Polar shifts, the conjunction of planets, asteroid strikes, shooting stars, even messages in the layout of the pyramids in Egypt - all these ideas and more (worse?) find a home on the World Wide Web. It's a boon for us - since it makes these people all the easier to find - but it also means the mainstream media are more likely to pick up on the latest predictions and by broadcasting them they encourage others to find or believe in them. It's a vicious circle that's not really been addressed by a loony-ignoring scientific community before.
It is therefore a sign of how significant the LHC flap was that Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the man who gave birth to the internet, has said he is "increasingly worried" about the way the web has been used to spread "disinformation".
Speaking to the BBC News website in advance of an announcement about a Foundation he has helped create that he hopes will improve the World Wide Web, Sir Tim has voiced concern about the use of the web to spread fears that flicking the switch on the LHC could create a Black Hole that could swallow up the Earth. He also linked this to general 'scientiphobia' such as the spread of rumours that the MMR vaccine could cause autism.
"On the web the thinking of cults can spread very rapidly and suddenly a cult which was 12 people who had some deep personal issues suddenly find a formula which is very believable," he said. "A sort of conspiracy theory of sorts and which you can imagine spreading to thousands of people and being deeply damaging."
It's obvious why the misguided interest in the LHC should provoke his ire - his pioneering work on the web was done at the collider's home of CERN at Geneva - but it must also be truly galling to see what could be one of the most important experiments in the history of mankind reduced to the status of a freakshow by journalists whose attention helped explode bog-standard apocalyptic scaremongering into a real 'silly season' summer story.
Sir Tim's solution? Systems that would give websites a label for trustworthiness once they had been proved reliable sources. Whether this is in any way workable or not, it's significant that the father of the internet (who thanks to his connections at CERN is also a major figure in the wider scientific community) has chosen to tackle such people head on, rather than ignore them lest the attention almost legitimise their ideas.
But did scientific rebuttals destroy the MMR allegations and lay parents' minds at rest? The downward spiral of uptake rates for the vaccine would suggest otherwise and it can be argued that suspicions of science, and those 'in charge', run much deeper than those behind paternalistic action plans maybe realise.
Apocalyptic ideas are ultimately an expression of our fear of the unknown, of things that come outside the world's received wisdom - they feed on uncertainty and the LHC just proves that no scientist can ever give the 100% guarantee of what will happen in an experiment (otherwise, what's the point of doing it in the first place?)
So bear in mind that Robert J Oppenheimer, who created the world's first atomic bomb, ordered extensive calculations to prove that the detonation wouldn't set off a chain-reaction in the upper atmosphere which would engulf the planet in flame - which may well represent the first quantitative risk assessment of human extinction, something that has continued on and off for almost 70 years.
Now obviously the flap over the LHC was something more than that, since those who launched the biggest legal challenge against the switch-on were scientists themselves, but you don't have to have an intimate understanding of Google's listing system to find websites that put an apocalyptic slant on scientific discoveries or ideas both old and new. Polar shifts, the conjunction of planets, asteroid strikes, shooting stars, even messages in the layout of the pyramids in Egypt - all these ideas and more (worse?) find a home on the World Wide Web. It's a boon for us - since it makes these people all the easier to find - but it also means the mainstream media are more likely to pick up on the latest predictions and by broadcasting them they encourage others to find or believe in them. It's a vicious circle that's not really been addressed by a loony-ignoring scientific community before.
It is therefore a sign of how significant the LHC flap was that Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the man who gave birth to the internet, has said he is "increasingly worried" about the way the web has been used to spread "disinformation".
Speaking to the BBC News website in advance of an announcement about a Foundation he has helped create that he hopes will improve the World Wide Web, Sir Tim has voiced concern about the use of the web to spread fears that flicking the switch on the LHC could create a Black Hole that could swallow up the Earth. He also linked this to general 'scientiphobia' such as the spread of rumours that the MMR vaccine could cause autism.
"On the web the thinking of cults can spread very rapidly and suddenly a cult which was 12 people who had some deep personal issues suddenly find a formula which is very believable," he said. "A sort of conspiracy theory of sorts and which you can imagine spreading to thousands of people and being deeply damaging."
It's obvious why the misguided interest in the LHC should provoke his ire - his pioneering work on the web was done at the collider's home of CERN at Geneva - but it must also be truly galling to see what could be one of the most important experiments in the history of mankind reduced to the status of a freakshow by journalists whose attention helped explode bog-standard apocalyptic scaremongering into a real 'silly season' summer story.
Sir Tim's solution? Systems that would give websites a label for trustworthiness once they had been proved reliable sources. Whether this is in any way workable or not, it's significant that the father of the internet (who thanks to his connections at CERN is also a major figure in the wider scientific community) has chosen to tackle such people head on, rather than ignore them lest the attention almost legitimise their ideas.
But did scientific rebuttals destroy the MMR allegations and lay parents' minds at rest? The downward spiral of uptake rates for the vaccine would suggest otherwise and it can be argued that suspicions of science, and those 'in charge', run much deeper than those behind paternalistic action plans maybe realise.
Apocalyptic ideas are ultimately an expression of our fear of the unknown, of things that come outside the world's received wisdom - they feed on uncertainty and the LHC just proves that no scientist can ever give the 100% guarantee of what will happen in an experiment (otherwise, what's the point of doing it in the first place?)
So bear in mind that Robert J Oppenheimer, who created the world's first atomic bomb, ordered extensive calculations to prove that the detonation wouldn't set off a chain-reaction in the upper atmosphere which would engulf the planet in flame - which may well represent the first quantitative risk assessment of human extinction, something that has continued on and off for almost 70 years.
Poll results
The question was 'some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice. But what do you say?' and the results were:
Fire - 20%
Ice - 14%
Something half way between the two. Kinda lukewarm - 8%
Sorry, too busy stocking up on baked beans and shotgun shells - 56%
Good to see you lot didn't let me down ;)
Fire - 20%
Ice - 14%
Something half way between the two. Kinda lukewarm - 8%
Sorry, too busy stocking up on baked beans and shotgun shells - 56%
Good to see you lot didn't let me down ;)
Wednesday, 10 September 2008
And that was The World Tonight
Well, that didn't go too badly.
Appeared on BBC Radio Four's The World Tonight to talk about the apocalyptic kerfuffle over the LHC. Managed to plug the mag and get my points across - couple of sound bites I'd prepared went unused and since the other guest (see below) mentioned the atomic bomb I *should* have said about how Oppenheimer's team wasn't 100% that Gadget (see issue two) wouldn't set off a chain reaction in the upper atmosphere that would engulf the planet in flame.
The other guest was Paul Boyer, a history professor from the University of Wisconsin-Madison whose area of expertise includes prophetic and apocalyptic beliefs in America. His book, When Time Shall Be No More, has now been added to my reading list and I'm probably going to be dropping him a line to say hi.
You should be able to hear it again here once the BBC has uploaded it. I think we were about half an hour into the programme.
Appeared on BBC Radio Four's The World Tonight to talk about the apocalyptic kerfuffle over the LHC. Managed to plug the mag and get my points across - couple of sound bites I'd prepared went unused and since the other guest (see below) mentioned the atomic bomb I *should* have said about how Oppenheimer's team wasn't 100% that Gadget (see issue two) wouldn't set off a chain reaction in the upper atmosphere that would engulf the planet in flame.
The other guest was Paul Boyer, a history professor from the University of Wisconsin-Madison whose area of expertise includes prophetic and apocalyptic beliefs in America. His book, When Time Shall Be No More, has now been added to my reading list and I'm probably going to be dropping him a line to say hi.
You should be able to hear it again here once the BBC has uploaded it. I think we were about half an hour into the programme.
Not with a bang, but with a whimper ...
We still here? Excellent.
Was quite bizarre being interviewed on BBC Radio Solent while a man from a pub in Southampton, appropriately named The World's End, counted down to the switching on of the LHC ... which was then late.
And as reasoned and unflappable as The Doomsayer is, even his heart skipped a beat when the mobile signal went all screwy at 8.32am ...
Was quite bizarre being interviewed on BBC Radio Solent while a man from a pub in Southampton, appropriately named The World's End, counted down to the switching on of the LHC ... which was then late.
And as reasoned and unflappable as The Doomsayer is, even his heart skipped a beat when the mobile signal went all screwy at 8.32am ...
LHC Countdown 00.22BST 10/09/2008
Aah, nothing like a good Armageddon countdown. Here's hoping there's a world to wake up to ;)
Tuesday, 9 September 2008
LHC Countdown 22.00BST 09/09/2008
10.5 hours and counting ...
There is SOME good news, however - I get interviewed about all this by BBC Radio Solent at 8.14am and then I'll be on BBC Radio Four's The World Tonight at 10pm.
(I love how the local radio station does it BEFORE the event, but Radio Four is suitably convinced nothing will happen so they're doing the interview in the evening ...)
There is SOME good news, however - I get interviewed about all this by BBC Radio Solent at 8.14am and then I'll be on BBC Radio Four's The World Tonight at 10pm.
(I love how the local radio station does it BEFORE the event, but Radio Four is suitably convinced nothing will happen so they're doing the interview in the evening ...)
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