Doomsday Clock 2018

I am a Millennial. Apparently. 

I was conceived just after the Cold War in 1992 and I was born in 1993. This was when the Doomsday Clock was at it's furthest away from midnight at 17 minutes. It's now at it's closest point at 2 minutes to midnight. Or to put it another way, I was born in quite a safe world. That world has not got safer. It has only got more dangerous. Over the course of my lifetime, I've watched the world get more volatile. I've watched it change. I've seen more terrorist attacks on the news than I'd have liked to. I've watched technology come and go, from floppy disks to flip phones to iPhones and more. 

I was eight when 9/11 happened. I vaguely remember it. So I've always known about the prospect of World War III. 

I was just preparing to enter the job market when the recession happened. I was fourteen/fifteen. The sad thing is that I still don't have a job. 

I remember the rise of Facebook. I remember MySpace. Hell, I remember Bebo. I remember first using the internet. My family got a computer in 1998. I was five. I remember it well. It was big, thick, clumsy, had a huge monitor and a tiny screen. But that was nothing compared to the modem. You had to dial up and it made a horrid whirring staticky and beeping noise. And if someone was using the phone, there was no way you were using the internet. But the sound of a dial up modem brings back a lot of memories. Ah. Memories. Unfortunately, I remember how slow it was as well. I remember trying to access a site (Ask Jeeves-lol) and it took half an hour just to get the message that I couldn't connect. Oh. Those were the days. I think it was around 2004 when I first accessed the internet without a modem-and that was in school. Then when we got broadband the next year, we got a shiny new computer-like the first one, but this one was blue.

I had my first phone when I was nine years old. A sort of hand me down from my mother. I've never not owned a phone since then. I still have it. It was a brick. I'm not joking it was heavy and had a huge antenna on it. It the backlight on it made everything yellow but if you didn't use it, everything was black or grey. As for ringtones, it was a simple 'ring ring' or the Laurel and Hardy theme song in 8Bit or nothing. And I remember almost instinctively knowing how to work it. In fact, I taught my mother how to use it when she got it-I was six. Phones back then came with all kinds of instructions. 

I was nine when my mother got her first flip phone-which is why I got the brick phone. I remember being so fascinated with it. I would flip it up and down like it was a Star Trek communicator. My mother lent me that phone a year later. I was going out with friends and she told me 'kept my phone safe and don't break it. I trust you'. That was when I stopped being a kid. Before that, I used to be a proper kid-I would get in a wheelie bin and race, climb walls, trees, slide through mud, get in fistfights. But I couldn't. Because I had this responsibility to keep this little fragile device safe; safe from falls, safe from the mud. Even though I wouldn't have the phone on other adventures, borrowing that flip phone fundamentally changed me. From then on, I interacted with technology a lot more than I did my friends. I don't actually have any friends any more.

I was ten when I saw my first touch screen. It was on my mother's SatNav. I remember being so fascinated with it. I had never seen anything like it before, except in sci-fi movies set years from now. I just kept touching it. I had my first touch screen eight years after that. And now, I'm using a touch screen to write this. 

I remember the Mororola Razr. They were so thin. I'd never seen a phone that thin before in my life. It was amazing. I remember the BlackBerry phones with the little QWERTY keypad. Then along came the iPhone. There was nothing like it before. I remember the iPod. They were huge, thick things that became more streamlined as time went on. But it wasn't until the iPhone that I truly wanted an Apple device. And you know what? My mother got the iPod, despite me asking for one for months. Win some, lose some. By the time I got an iPod, the iPod Touch was out. And by the time I got an iPod Touch, the iPad was out. 

I remember the PlayStation 1. The graphics were incredible. Because we only had a Sega MegaDrive, I would go to my grandmother's house up the road and play my cousin's PlayStation 1. Then I remember the PlayStation 2. The graphics were incredible. It was the second games console I ever had, all for my own. The first being the GameBoy Advance (the graphics were incredible). I felt a pressure to look after it. And I guess that pressure paid off because it still works today-and so does my GameBoy. Whenever I want to feel like a nine year old kid again, I stick a game in the PlayStation and fire it up. Then again, it also doubles as my DVD player. 

During the Recession, my parents took a philosophy-one that's affected me even to this day-spend money on something you really want while you still have it. That's how we ended up getting a Nintendo Wii. The graphics were amazing. It was the first truly interactive game system (though I remember the EyeToy) and it paved the way for things like the Kinect. Truly amazing. And the graphics... don't get me started! They were amazing! 

The Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3... They were the first HD video gaming systems and omg. The graphics were amazing. On the sports games, the characters actually looked like real people. 

And along came the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4. And the graphics-wait, what? They can't all be amazing? Yes, but you have to remember the times. I spent until I was eight years old thinking 16Bit graphics were awesome and realistic. This time, they really were. And just like all the times before, I wonder how the developers are going to make the characters look more realistic. And I know that just like each time before, they will. 

Just five years ago, I had to carry around an entertainment system, my iPod, a phone, a camera and a video camera all in my backpack when I went on holiday. But thanks to technological advancement, it means that today, I only need to carry around my iPad. Because on that, I can play games, take photos, shoot video, take and make video calls (which were mindblowing back when I was fourteen. I honestly couldn't comprehend them) and listen to music. 

And there was a time where I was genuinely optimistic about the future and all the things they would have-self driving cars, commercial flights to space, digital assistants... all that's changed now. Mostly because of how volatile the world has got. I was born during the safest period since the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists started recording. Now it's the most dangerous time and I'm facing a new crisis. 

See, being conceived and born after the Cold War, I never grew up under a looming mushroom cloud. And so I've always been rather disconnected from nuclear weapons. Until 2009, I though they were actual fantasy creations. Not real. Just plot devices for older films and stuff. I had literally no idea what one was. So this is the first I've ever had to deal with the suddenly very real prospect of nuclear war. 

The first major news event I remember was the Good Friday agreement between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Everything was good. Calm. Relatively peaceful. So peaceful, we practically got complacent. Being a very young child, I was unaware of said complacency. 

I remember the millennium very well. Vividly, even. I was six. And it blew my young mind that it could be the year 2000 in Australia, a new millennium, but be 1999 here in the UK. That was just so cool. 

But I also remember the event that pulled the rug out from everyone and caused worldwide mass paranoia. 9/11.

My recollections are vague. I remember teachers talking to each other hushed like. I remember it was pretty subdued. I remember the words 'World War Three'. Now, I knew a lot about World Wars I and II-history was a particular strong point of mine at that age. I remember going home around an hour later and my parents pretty much just sheltered me from 9/11 that I only truly learned what it was in a 2006 history class, five years later. But I've lived with its after effects. 

I remember the start of the Afghanistan war. Heck, I remember playing with my Barbies and Bratz dolls on the floor in front of the TV and the news said about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. I had no idea what that meant then and I actually still don't now, because let's face it, weapons of mass destruction is a pretty vague thing to say. I asked my father whether they did have weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and he replied that they did. He didn't know back then that he and millions of others, had been duped by Tony Blair and George W Bush. 

I was on holiday in Disneyland when 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' took place and Saddam's statue was pulled down, beginning the Iraq war. That moment of 'the world will never be the same'. And it wasn't. 

I remember that same year 'Mission Accomplished'. 

Only a year later would we go to the States and have to deal with all the Post-9/11 security. For me, it's all I've ever known. But I know it didn't always used to be this way. 

I remember 7/7. I was eleven then, just on the cusp of turning twelve. I first hopped on the Tube when I was sixteen and I've been going to London regularly since. So I'd be lying if I said that Tube bombings didn't cross my mind at least once in each station, in each train. Even if that train is headed for Cockfosters. 

I remember the housing bubble collapsed. Just a 'credit crunch' they called it. But instead of getting better, as they said it would, over the next year or so it got worse. So much worse. Banks started collapsing. People lost all their money. Stock markets were crashing. What was even happening any more? Just as I was being primed to take my GCSE exams and dip my toe into the workforce, I was being told I was going to struggle to find work. I'd been told my whole life, get your education and you'll get a good job, all of that suddenly got turned right on its head. 

For a long time, teachers didn't teach just their subjects. They taught their subjects and how to survive the recession. For example, the maths teacher taught us recession based maths problems. The geography teacher taught us how recessions would affect migrations, urban and suburban environments. The RE teacher taught us how to pray to all the gods that we would get through this. The IT teacher taught us how to keep spreadsheets to calculate what money we had to get us through the month. The citizenship teacher taught us how to use coupons. The French teacher taught us how to discuss the recession in French, just as the Welsh teacher taught us to speak about it in Welsh. The English teacher just taught us what the recession was and what it meant. I remember my fellow classmates' parents losing their jobs. Getting laid off because of the recession. My father nearly lost his job to it too. That's where I learned the 'if you have money, spend it. Who knows what can happen tomorrow' attitude. I'm still paranoid, looking out for the next economic disaster. If you look how high the stock markets are climbing and the collapsing of the cryptocurrencies, it doesn't look too good right now.

I remember first becoming politically active when Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were running for President. I actually cried when Obama won. And he won the Nobel Peace Prize for not being George W Bush (let's face it, that is why he got it). Maybe things would go better now. 

No. In our own, British General Election, there was a hung parliament. Nobody knew quite what to do, but it ended up being the Conservative and the Liberal Democrat parties that aligned. For the worse. 

I remember the killing of Osama Bin Laden (not President Obama). I was seventeen. 

I've lived through austerity, which is essentially kicking people when they're down. The Tories put up uni fees for us young people (my parents' generation got their uni educations free!) to 9k a year. They issued sanctions to the people who lost their jobs in the recession and effectively made them homeless. They began culling the disabled, declaring terminally ill people 'fit to work'. Starving the NHS until it is in crisis. And yet, they gave themselves bigger salaries, higher wages. More money. They made sure their policies robbed from the already poor and lined their pockets. It's been ten years and most regular British people haven't seen any improvement after the recession.

You know what? Let's just admit it was a depression now. Recessions don't usually last for five years. While depressions last anywhere after two years. It was a depression. Then again, they were reluctant to even call it a recession. They called it a 'credit crunch' at the beginning. 

Oh and the Tories still blame it on the previous Labour government, rather than the subprime mortgages of Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac, which is what actually caused it. 

I remember the Arab Spring. At seventeen, I old enough to know. And I was particularly affected by that. I was on holiday in Orlando when Gadaffi died. It was just really shocking. I was eating breakfast when they showed his dead body on TV. I watched as the war in Syria turned into ISIS. ISIL. IS. Daesh. Whatever you want to call it. 

But It's not just politics, wars and technology that have shaped my world. Natural disasters have as well. The Boxing Day Tsunami is the earliest one I remember. I was eleven. Hurricane Katrina would be eight months later and I would be twelve. From then on, I watched all the natural disasters unfold. The hurricanes, the earthquakes, the tsunamis, the heatwaves, the wildfires. Perhaps as a result of global warming. It certainly seems likely based on last year's Atlantic hurricane season. Just look at Irma. I survived Irma. It is the strongest storm ever to exist in the Atlantic with the longest sustained winds and it's the longest sustained Category 5 storm ever. Maria, which would come only the week after (with Jose and Katia in between) would be the second Category 5 hurricane that season and the tenth most intense Atlantic storm on record. Then there's the fact that we in the UK have experienced six extratropical cyclones and a Hurricane (Ophelia, the easternmost hurricane ever)-four of which have been this year alone (Dylan, Eleanor, Fyunn and Georgina) and it's only the 25th of January. Maybe it is Global Warming. It's got to be, right?

My generation have dealt with a lot. Some of my generation remember the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Berlin Wall. And now it seems that we've taken so many steps backwards and made this world a more dangerous place to live in in only twenty-four years. We aren't just back by twenty-four years though. We're back to 1953. 

There's still two minutes left to do something about it. To prevent the global catastrophe represented by midnight and give a better (or an actual) future to the young children of today. Boomers, Gen Xers, iGens and my fellow Millennials. We have to try. If we want to wake up in the morning without being boiled alive in a heatwave or buried alive in a blizzard or looking out the window to see a mushroom cloud in the distance. We need to try. I don't know about you, but I'm not willing to give up all our awesome history, all the secrets we've yet to unravel, everything we haven't discovered yet... I'm not willing to see it all destroyed because I was too selfish or lazy to do anything about it today. I don't care how you vote-if you're proud of your country, whichever country it may be, think of your country's history and use it to fight for a good future. Remember, there'll be nobody left to remember that history if they've all been vaporised in a nuclear war. Or gone extinct from climate change. You have more power than everyone likes to make you think. Time is running out so use it now. Nobody should want the world to end. Nobody should want to go extinct.