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Roger Rabbits with |
5 February 2026
Dear Kids,
It’s not pretty, and hopefully not necessary. I’m on the lounge floor doing Kegels – pelvic exercises – just in case ‘The Doomsday Clock’ scientists are right and I need to be supple enough to kiss my tush goodbye. Tighten, lift, hold, release, repeat. I should be ready for ‘kaboom’ if it happens.
The scientists have reset the clock by four seconds. Last year it was 89 seconds to witching hour. This year just 85 seconds. It’s a metaphor, a symbolic measurement to show how close we are to destroying world. Good to keep abreast of things, but it’s decidedly dicky. We are getting perilously close to oblivion. To nothingness. I thought I would write and explain.
You always give me grief about us Baby Boomers wrecking the property market. And how I single-handedly wrecked your planet by biffing a few dead ‘Heinies’ in my ‘red top, non-recyclable, non-compostable and non-hazardous general household waste rubbish bin’ each week.
I would ponder rewriting my will. But it would be pointless in the context of this letter.
‘Tick-tock, tick-tock…’
I feel a parental responsibility to bring you these bad tiding. Because it’s worse than a white hot property market or the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, that massive soup of plastic waste out in the ocean. In fact a whole lot worse. We’re talking ‘existential’ kids – the end might be nigh.
They say the best inheritance a parent can offer their children is a few minutes of their time each day. Unfortunately, that might only be a few seconds now because The Doomsday Clock is ticking. It’s the closest the world has ever been to ‘KABOOM!’ And that annual rate, we have about 20 years to salvage the planet, pull it back from the brink, or sayonara, auf wiedersehen, adios. There’s time, just not much of it.
So yes, we do have bigger issues than finding a new All Black coach. But I do worry about the impact on wait times at our EDs should the world explode?
‘Tick-tock, tick-tock…’
I am already preparing. I gave the stairs a good vacuum. In the event of a nuclear holocaust, I don’t want to be leaving behind a dirty house. I suppose in this case it would just be dirty ashes. And a dusting of spent plutonium.
‘Tick-tock, tick-tock…’
Now, dear kids, you may find this ‘Doomsday Clock’ talk all cockamamie, fear-mongering nonsense. And moments in history might support you – gloomy talk that has fizzled.
In 1949, radio jock Phil Shone warned Auckland about a 1.60934km wide ‘Great New Zealand Wasp Swarm’ that was headed to town. But it was all old tosh. The swarm did not arrive. Which was probably disappointing for local entomologists. No buzzing and humming of a deadly wasp on the swarm. No worries. Aucklanders are a fickle lot.
Eleven years earlier Orson Welles, the great American actor and film maker, convinced his radio audience that a devastating Martian invasion was imminent, as was the destruction of New York. No-one told the Martians. They didn’t show. Which, again, was probably disappointing for ufologists – those with a bent for UFOs and weird extraterrestrials. If a Martian turned up, I would go see it.
I also seem to recall a tsunami alert down south decades ago. There was high excitement tinged by lack of understanding. Perhaps cold affects common sense. A teacher took her class to the esplanade to watch the tidal wave come ashore. A real time, happening, geography lesson. I always wondered if the teacher’s career was saved by the tsunami’s non-arrival.
Meanwhile, clocks continue to tick over, clockwise of course, one second, one minute, one hour at a time, inexorably. Towards midnight.
‘Tick-tock, tick-tock…’
Because wise ‘The Doomsday Clock’ minds are thinking we’re shagged, screwed, kaput, finished. The signs are up. We have global leaders insisting climate change is bollocks, that fossil fuels are “clean, black and beautiful”. And the big players with the big sticks are more aggressive and adversarial. The brinkmanship is so unsettling I sometimes forego a grandad nap because I don’t want to waste one second of what time might be left.
Then this year the scientists had a cup of uranium infused tea and decided there had been insufficient progress in combating or regulating these global challenges. They adjusted the clock closer, yes closer, to the midnight deadline by four seconds. That made the brain-gut connection kick in. Fear rose in the stomach.
On the other hand kids, the clock can’t definitively measure existential threats. It’s just a tool to trigger deep and meaningful conversations about difficult scientific topics and crises the planet is facing. And, hopefully, solutions.
‘The Doomsday Clock’ dates back to the dawning of the nuclear age when some eggheads working on ‘Little Boy’, the first nuclear bomb used in warfare – were charged with measuring the nuclear threat. They invented the metaphorical Doomsday Clock. Then they wove into their calculations, some other variables like climate crises, biological threats, terrorism.
Over the years, the scientists have annually wound The Doomsday Clock, both back and forward, to reflect how close they believe we are to ‘KABOOM’. It’s an exciting, fun, final game all the family can play.
While you are playing, you can sing along to Iron Maiden.
“2 minutes to midnight, The hands that threaten doom…”
A joyous, lilting little melody.
“2 minutes to midnight, to kill the unborn in the womb.” Lovely! But two minutes? Iron Maiden might have to re-write and re-record for the song to retain currency.
‘Tick-tock, tick-tock…’
But even if The Doomsday Clock edges ominously towards midnight, I see upsides. I could gleefully ditch my tedious and ghastly, nutrient dense, plant focused diet – all those healthy fats and fibre-rich legumes, which are keeping me alive. But for what…?
Instead I will wrap my face around a gazillion calories of burger and fries loaded with mustard, ketchup and pickles. No miso tofu soup – pffft – I will grab 3 litres of coke and confront Doomsday with a burgeoning BMI, a smug smile, a big belly burp and a sauce smeared apocalyptically all over the shirt front.
That’s our reality guys. Maybe.
Lotsa love,
Dad.
