What is especially unnerving is this doomsday prediction was made prior to Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine and Putin’s thinly veiled threats of nuclear attack.

The Doomsday Clock, originally developed to identify how close the world was to nuclear annihilation, has been updated recently to include additional threats beyond just nuclear. It now includes climate change threats as well as other threats driving us ever closer to extinction.

Of course, the Doomsday Clock only predicts the collective threat we pose to our own self-extinction, predictable things that we can and should control as responsible humans; it fails to account for those things we cannot control; the things that nature throws at us and that the heavens rain down.

At 100 seconds to midnight, the Doomsday Clock warns us that we are hurtling dangerously close to our annihilation. And while we may yet be able to save ourselves in the last 100 seconds, it is only reasonable to conclude that these same apocalyptic threats turning the hands ever closer to midnight are the same threats driving us closer toward a Black Sky event.

In fact, the chances of a Black Sky occurring are far greater than the threat of global annihilation predicted by the Doomsday clock precisely because a Black Sky occurs at a much lower threshold than global annihilation and because those other threats, the ones the Doomsday clock fails to account for, including solar storms, high-magnitude earthquakes, super-volcanoes, and unprecedented weather events can and will at some point trigger a collapse of the electric grid and bring down with it the all of the other supporting critical infrastructure needed to sustain our world, one of the most important being our emergency communication.

While we cannot control the geopolitical events moving us ever closer to doomsday, we can take action over the things we do control. This will ensure that we are prepared to respond effectively to a Black Sky and forestall the cascading failures of critical infrastructure that ultimately lead to incomprehensible levels of human suffering and death.

What is within our power of control is taking immediate action to put in place the plans, policies, procedures, and equipment needed for effective communication in a Black Sky event – the essential predictor of Black Sky survivability. Want to learn more? Check out our events page to learn from our experts about preparing for the worst. 

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