Some of us are old enough to remember 1984, when the Doomsday Clock was set at three minutes to midnight, a reflection of the Soviet war in Afghanistan and then-President Ronald Reagan's increasingly bombastic cold war rhetoric. That's as close as we've come to "midnight"— global catastrophe—in the eyes of the editors of The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists since 1949. We're at three minutes to midnight again, because of global warming. But a Donald Trump presidency would force another reset, if not armageddon.

Look at it from the eyes of John Noonan, who was a national security advisor to Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush and who worked for years in a nuclear missile silo, one of the guys who would turn the key after Trump pushed that button.

x 2. Pulled 300 nuclear alerts, 100 ft under the Wyoming turf. Job is serious and full of serious people. — John Noonan (@noonanjo) August 3, 2016

x 5. But the whole idea behind nuclear deterrence is that you don't use the damn things. So I thought the mission credible and worthy. — John Noonan (@noonanjo) August 3, 2016

x 14. But imagine having to turn launch keys not knowing if we were under attack or if it was b/c foreign leader said a mean thing on twitter — John Noonan (@noonanjo) August 3, 2016

His whole thread is below the fold. It’s a sobering—and whole worthwhile—read.