I felt safe. My dad and I were often the last people awake in our house at the end of the day. Dad wanted to catch Johnny Carson’s monologue, and I just loved to cuddle up next to Daddy. Feeling his warm arm across my shoulder and hearing his heartbeat in my ear felt like pure love, and contentment, and security. Those moments spoke a perfect “good night” to me even through high school and college.
And yet, every once in a while, Dad would get annoyed at the news broadcast, which ran just before the Tonight Show. Whenever there was talk of superpower saber rattling or other restlessness in the world, Daddy would say, “Cath, if it comes to that, I just want to be under that first bomb.” Having seen enough documentaries about nuclear blast consequences, I knew that being right there offered no respite from the horrors. I’d smack him on the arm and tell him, “Stop that, you’re scaring me.”
Back then, we were well aware of the threat of nuclear war. In my teen years, the Doomsday Clock ticked down from nine minutes to midnight (1974) to four minutes to midnight (1981).
The Doomsday Clock
If you’ve not heard of it, the Doomsday Clock is one indicator for just how scary the world is. Conceptualized in 1947 and initially set at 7 minutes to midnight, the clock’s settings metaphorically represent how close we may be to apocalyptic self-destruction. Every year, the hands move closer to or further away from midnight – the catastrophic point of no return.
The Science and Security Board (SASB) announces the Doomsday Clock setting annually as an urgent reminder of the ongoing dangers we face – the clock’s movement year over year represents progress or backsteps in our work to preserve humanity and the planet we occupy.
The furthest the clock has ever been set back is 17 minutes to midnight, just after the signing of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) in 1991. That setting – a full 14 minutes back from where it had been just four years before, proved that humankind could indeed make progress on minimizing the risk of self-annihilation. However, global attention and cooperation toward mutual safety and flourishing has not been sustained, and indeed the threats are multiplying.
Risks in our current polycrisis
In January of 2026, the Science and Security Board set the hands of the Doomsday Clock at 85 seconds to midnight. And the sad truth is that we’ve been steadily ticking down towards doomsday for more than a decade.
Children in this century have more to worry about than nuclear war. Since 2007, the Science and Security Board has been tracking multiple threats in addition to nuclear proliferation and geopolitical tensions; they also consider the risks of climate change, disruptive technologies (artificial intelligence, information corruption, and cyber warfare), and biological threats (pandemics and weapons).
Children are not only exposed to these existential perils, they have other worries: school shootings, cyber bullying, social media addiction, ICE actions. The kids are not all right. In the face of our current polycrisis, how do we help our children to feel secure? Indeed, what can we do to ensure they are safe and that the world they grow into allows them to thrive?
Towards human flourishing
These days, I worry a lot about what I am to do to change the trajectory we are on, which is decidedly backwards. I deeply despair at the news headlines and feel keenly that action is urgently needed. I want the children in my life – indeed all youth everywhere – to live in a more utopian world, full of joy, security, love, beauty, justice, peace, opportunity, and freedom, and it breaks my heart that they will have to reestablish the advances we had already made toward that end. But what can I do?
In my youth, my dad’s cuddling was my safe place, and he and my mother ensured my siblings and I felt love and support. My parents also helped our extended family and our neighbors in a hundred little ways, and our family welcomed several kids who needed a place to stay for a bit. At the systemic level, my dad did more than yell at the TV. He rallied support for veterans’ causes as a local leader of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and my parents supported specific charities, including actively raising money for them.
Those are examples I am emulating. But while my parents’ efforts tended to be quiet, I think today’s challenges demand more from us. In the future, when my grand nieces and nephews ask me to talk about these times, I want to be proud of what I did to make a difference. Yet I struggle to define what that might look like.
I have become more active in letting my congressional representatives know how I want them to vote and what changes I’d like them to lobby for, and I’m looking to support political leaders at both the local and national level who will actively fight for a better future. I’m taking part in protests and monitoring calls to action from several political action groups to add my voice to the chorus advocating for change.
I know that is not enough, and I need to challenge myself to do more. But I also take heart from influential thinkers who assure us that living a joyous and generous life is also a demonstration of resistance and advocacy when paired with supporting those who are able to be more active and voting for people who will advance change.
Most of us don’t carry around a deep awareness of the existential scale of our troubles, although the last decade has certainly brought many of our problems into the headlines again and again. It’s important to remember that we have proven that we can make progress towards self-preservation and human flourishing. I hope we adults can work together to make a safer world, with more cuddling and less fear – before more children come to harm, and before the Doomsday Clock ticks down to midnight.
*****
I’m publishing this essay in advance the third nationwide No Kings rally, Saturday, March 28, 2026. Against all reason, our current lawless administration is speeding up the coming doomsday by starting an ill-conceived and potentially catastrophic war, destroying worldwide alliances, actively preventing the transition to renewable energy, ignoring the threats of artificial intelligence and related technologies, defunding critical medical and scientific research, making it more difficult to vote, refusing to curb gun violence, and inhumanely deporting immigrants – actions all contrary to what the majority of the American people want.
In contrast, our nation’s founders pledged mutual support toward life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and came together to establish a government that would enable everyone to thrive. We must live up to that grand dream and renew our commitment to support each other and to boldly imagine a sustainable future for our families, our neighbors, our country, and our world.
At the No Kings protest, I will be among those waving the flag in support of a different direction, making it clear that Donald Trump is not our king and his administration’s policies and actions are not what most of us want for our country. I hope you’ll be out there, too. (Find an event near you.) The very least we can do is stand together to preserve our democracy.
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