Software
Doomsday Clock Monitor
Doomsday Clock MonitorSince 1947, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has evaluated the global political situation to estimate how close the world is to nuclear war. Their estimate is represented in the form of a clock, called the Doomsday Clock, with the number of minutes before midnight. Every few years, the Bulletin updates the clock in response to global events.
The Doomsday Clock Monitor is a small Windows application that runs in your system tray, showing the current Doomsday Clock time.
There is no formal installation procedure for the Doomsday Clock Monitor. Download the zip file, unzip either all its contents or just the doomsday.exe program file, and run it. You may want to create a shortcut in your Startup program group so the application starts whenever you start your computer.
→ Download doomsday-1.0.zip (file size: about xxk; md5 ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff)
→ changes.txt (changes in recent versions)
When the Doomsday Clock Monitor is running, you may right-click on its icon in the tray to active a menu of commands. The menu is divided into two sections. The top section shows the current number of minutes before midnight (sometimes it is hard to tell from the icon). The lower section of the menu contains the following commands:
When the Doomsday Clock time changes, the icon in the tray will blink. This is to let you know that the Bulletin has changed the doomsday time. When you click on the icon, a message will be shown that informs you of the new doomsday time.
While running, the Doomsday Clock Monitor checks the current theat level status on the hewgill.com web server about once a day, whenever the application is started, or whenever the "Update now" command is selected. If you use a dial-up connection, and it is time for a scheduled update and you are not connected to the Internet, the application will wait until you do connect to perform an update. The application will never request that an automatic connection be made just to check the doomsday time.
Whenever the application is started, it automatically makes a connection to the hewgill.com web server to check for a new configuration file. This configuration file contains the current doomsday time. The current configuration file can be viewed here (it is an XML file).
The Doomsday Clock Monitor saves the current doomsday time, and the time an update was last performed, in the Windows registry. This information is saved under the following key:
This is the only section of the registry that is modified by the application.
This effort is an offshoot of the Homeland Security Threat Monitor, and was first suggested by Cath Perry. Thanks!
The source code for Doomsday Clock Monitor is available for download.
→ Download doomsday-1.0-source.zip (file size: about xxxk; md5 ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff)
Okay, I admit, this is a totally silly and pointless piece of software. If you live so much in a box that you don't read, watch, or listen to any news at least once every couple of months, perhaps this application will help keep you in touch with reality. If you do try to keep up with world events, you will probably hear about a significant nuclear threat through some other means before this program gets around to letting you know about it. This program is just for fun, despite its serious theme.
Finally, a disclaimer: This program does not present official information. The information provided by this program must never be used in making actual decisions. Please contact an official source or your local authorities if you are ever unsure what to do in case of the threat of nuclear attack.