Description
Four Minutes to Midnight is the title of this lecture, given in 1981, by Dr Nicolas Humphrey who, at that time, was Assistant Director of Animal Behaviour at Cambridge University. It was the third annual Bronowski Memorial Lecture named after the Dr Jacob Bronowski who was an eminent mathematician and TV presenter of scientific programmes. This lecture proved so controversial that no more Bronowski lectures were given by the BBC.
The title is taken from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Association which shows how close we are, in their opinion, to extinction by a nuclear war.
Several times the world has come close to a nuclear war, several times only stopped by lower level commanders of nuclear-armed submarines who disobeyed orders. Dr Humphreys gives the statement by Professor George Kennan, former US Ambassador to Russia “ We have gone on piling weapon upon weapon, missile upon missile… like the victims of some sort of hypnotism, like men in a dream, like lemmings heading for the sea”, and he discusses why we behave like lemmings in this lecture.
