Are we steamrolling towards the apocalypse?

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We tend to think of things in terms of the direction in which they’re headed: forward or backwards. These are political terms as much as kinetic ones. To look ‘backwards’ is generally considered to be bad; the enemy of progression and a rejection of the present – its gains and stresses both. I do wonder, though, if this fixation on moving forwards is as ‘progressive’ as it once was. It seems increasingly the case that the answers to our myriad contemporary problems lie in a not particularly distant past that we’ve largely already forgotten.

A lot has happened in the first month of 2025. A combination of dry vegetation and 80mph Santa Ana winds set Los Angeles ablaze, with fast moving wildfires tearing through neighbourhoods and destroying over 16,000 homes. On January 15, with parts of the city still on fire, David Lynch – a once in a lifetime filmmaker who defined and deconstructed LA better than anyone – passed away at the age of 78. A ceasefire deal between Israel-Hamas came into effect on January 19, but that didn’t stop an Israeli sniper shooting a Palestinian child dead in Rafah, nor the Israeli army opening fire on a man trying to retrieve the child’s body. Following a relatively uneventful inauguration on January 20, Donald Trump moved into The White House, his victory reflecting what some members of the new right wing are calling “the first influencer election”.

As if to commemorate these things and more, the Doomsday Clock was moved forward on January 28. Citing the disintegration of nuclear arms control, tensions in the Middle East, the climate crisis, and rapid advances in AI along with its potential military applications as factors, Atomic scientists set the clock to 89 seconds before midnight – the theoretical point of global annihilation. Metaphorically speaking, that brings us closer than ever to the destruction of humanity. Spend more than 45 seconds doomscrolling X and that will feel about right. However, there is an issue with the announcement: the Doomsday Clock is quite literally running out of time. “That problem is something the entire field of existential risk suffers from,” Bryan Walsh writes for Vox. “There are only so many times you can issue a warning before it starts to feel meaningless, especially as we seem to get closer and closer to annihilation without, quite, getting there.”

He makes a good point. The Doomsday Clock represents the estimated likelihood of a human-made global catastrophe. When it was designed in 1947, that mostly meant nuclear war, but the remit has since broadened to incorporate modern technological developments and the climate crisis. Each year seems to bring fresh horrors in both departments, to make no mention of constant war, leaving the seconds nowhere to go but down. It’s easy, then, to feel defeated by the thing that’s intended to galvanise. We see the same phenomenon in climate reporting, with the media reporting a ‘final warning’ from scientists on fossil fuels, meat consumption and other issues every year since they were formally laid out in the 1992 document ‘World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity.’ Simply put: it’s hard to get an accurate read on how bad things actually are while being told they are really bad all the time.

Don’t get me wrong, things are really bad. At the same time, they always have been. These are complex global developments, and most readers of this newsletter will be lucky enough not to experience the blunt end of them directly. Most likely you experience them as I do: through the news. At least for now. The Doomsday Clock is as vibes-based as the news itself, and the shape of our reality often comes down to control of narrative. Negativity drives online news consumption. Given the rolling, 24-hour, almost entirely digital nature of the news in the 2020s, that has brain-pickling consequences that can only be remedied by regularly logging off and/or looking to history for context.

The late ’80s, for instance, was fucked. Exxon Valdez spilled over seven million gallons of crude oil in ecologically sensitive Alaskan waters. An “anti-feminist” gunman shot and killed 14 young women at École Polytechnique in Montreal. Medical debris including syringes feared to be infected with AIDS washed up on the beaches of New York and New Jersey (most of it turned out to be sewage). Slobodan Milosevic was elected and exploited Serbian ultra-nationalism at home and in neighbouring then-Yugoslavian republics, which would become a catalyst for the Bosnian genocide. The Cold War ended and the Berlin Wall fell. Meanwhile, a research paper published in 1985 led to the discovery of a massive hole in the ozone layer. An international agreement to begin repairing it called the Montreal Protocol was adopted in 1987 and came into effect in 1989, leading to stabilisation and gradual atmospheric recovery. Though we have some way to go until the hole is completely “sealed,” it’s considered one of the most successful environmental agreements of all time.

All of which is to say: change can come swiftly and unexpectedly from all directions. Most of it bad, but occasionally some good. Not everyone will find a barrage of cataclysmic events from the late ’80s comforting, but it can be grounding to know that we’re living through the rule, not the exception. That’s as true on an individual level as much as a global one. When I feel brow-beaten because I’m broke and my bedroom is covered in black mould and I’ve spent too much time on my phone, which contains nothing but holocaust headlines and Reels of gym girls with crazy arses, I think of this quote from Norm Mcdonald. Shortly before he died following a nine-year battle with acute leukaemia, which he told no one about, he was asked in an interview with Vulture about art’s relationship to trauma. He says: “I’ve heard people go onstage and talk about cancer or some shit, and I go, ‘Isn’t this what happens to everybody?’ They seem to think they’re singular in their story when their story is the most common story that could possibly be, which is suffering and pain.”

Hysteria is not fortifying. By all means be concerned about the state of the world, as well you should, but also don’t underestimate small daily actions in the face of seemingly insurmountable horrors. Remember what five, 10, 20 (if you’re old enough) years ago felt like and apply it to the present. Find out your neighbours’ names. Learn to get about your postcode, at least, without relying on an online map. Read a book. Put your phone in your pocket and look around you when you walk. Donate to, help out with, or start your own local aid groups. Carve the words “delay,” “deny,” “depose” into some bullet casings* and- [muffled sounds of struggle as author is physically removed from laptop].

*For legal reasons this is a joke.

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