Threat Level Midnight: A Board Game On the End of the World

Rule Book: Threat Level Midnight Rules

Motivation

Coming into this class I found it difficult to comprehend what the end of the world would look like. I was aware of some of the threats relating to nuclear weapons and climate change, but I could not wrap my head around how a man-made global catastrophe would play out. For my final project, I wanted to use a medium that provided a simplified version of the events we talked about in class. My mind immediately went to boardgames, since they provide some mechanism through which complicated processes may play out. Since the topics we discussed in class may be sensitive and difficult to talk about, I wanted to challenge myself to create a game that would also be suitable for younger children to play. 

Conception of the Game

The first lecture in the class by Dr. Rachel Bronson was especially inspiring for me. I was fascinated by the concept of the Doomsday Clock since it was such a simple mechanism to describe the urgency of the threat we are collectively facing. After reading through a couple of past statements by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, I came across the quote, “In 2017, we find the danger to be even greater, the need for action more urgent. It is two and a half minutes to midnight, the Clock is ticking, global danger looms. Wise public officials should act immediately, guiding humanity away from the brink. If they do not, wise citizens must step forward and lead the way” [1]. Although the Committee is calling upon public official to take action, I decided the board game would call upon any citizens who are concerned about the future of the planet and want to “stop” the Doomsday Clock. Stopping the clock in real life would not necessarily make sense, but in the game, it represents saving the world from a man-made existential threat. 

Main Ideas of Threat Level Midnight

As mentioned earlier, the purpose of the game is to stop the Doomsday clock from striking midnight. For each game, the clock is set one hour before midnight. In order to stop the clock, individuals must make treaties with a certain number and type of countries (the specific rules are outlined in the game rulebook).

In addition to making treaties, I wanted the players to have the ability to move the time around. Players can land on certain squares that can cause the clock to move forward or backward. For instance, if a player lands on one of the two blue clocks, they will choose a card from the blue clock deck. These cards consist of events that would likely decrease the likelihood of an existential threat: “The United States has stopped the production of their GBSD missiles. If produced, it would have the power 20x that of the atomic bomb dropped in Hiroshima”. Move the clock back 5 minutes.” The red card deck consists of events that would likely increase the likelihood of an existential threat: “Frustrated with how greener economic policies are influencing its economy, Brazil has decided to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. Move the clock back 5 minutes.” When trying to develop these scenarios, I tried to recall what our lecturers urged on future policy changes that needed to occur. Governor Brown stressed the necessity of decreasing nuclear weapons within America and the rest of the world. At one point, he even said that tensions were higher than during the Cold War. Essentially, I imagined scenarios where either Governor Brown’s warnings were ignored or were listened to.

The last major component of the game is collecting resources. The resources allow the player to collect diplomat points which can then be used to create treaties with countries. In creating the resource aspect of the game, I thought it would be beneficial to introduce some elements of AI. One resource is called “Technology Intelligence.” Technology intelligence refers to patents of newly developed vaccines/technology or some novel research in AI. During the “Pandemic” week, there were several posts involving the morality of having vaccine patents. This technology intelligence resource is not advocating or either position; rather, it provides some concrete way to understand how scientific concepts may be used in trading.

Full view of the layout of the game.

Specific Relevance to Course Work

The three major topics the game focuses on are Nuclear weapons, climate change, and pandemics. Specifically, each country is assigned a certain toke: red = possess nuclear weapons, black = contributes significantly to climate change, green = affected disproportionately by climate change, and yellow = affected disproportionally by pandemics. In attempting to assign the 19 countries I had chosen to one or more of these categories, I referenced lists like the CCPI (Climate Change Performance Index) which independently monitors a country’s climate change performance by looking at several factors: GHG emissions, renewable energy, energy use, and climate policy [2]. While considering the rankings, I was reminded of the paper by Anil Agarwal and Sunita Narain: “Global Warming in an Unequal World: a case of environmental colonialism. In it, they argued that developing nations should not have to follow the same standards of incorporating greener initiatives since it may impact their economy: “[a]s their [China’s] consumption is bound to increase, the dream of every Chinese to own a refrigerator, is being described as a global curse” [3]. Although I disagreed with their sentiment, in the game, I allowed players to have an option as to how they view developing countries and climate change. In the default setting, Brazil is labeled as both a perpetrator of climate change and disproportionately affected. However, players are allowed to switch around the labels if they disagree. In the end, these labels are merely a way of better-categorizing countries that may need to be more cognizant of their impact on the Earth. As long as there is a discourse on the topic, the labels do inherently matter. I believe allowing players to play around with the gems and countries can help them think critically about how different countries all play out in either helping or harming our existence.

Since heavier topics like nuclear weapons and climate change were incorporated into the game, the pandemic aspect was not a primary contributor to the clock moving forward or backward. However, I thought that it was still essential to include this threat in the game. A lot of our discussion in the class has been framed by living in a pandemic. It has made us more aware that existential threats do not merely exist in movies. Additionally, many of the smaller countries I included were severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, in including the pandemic and forcing players to make treaties with countries who suffered greatly from the pandemic, I incorporated the importance of smaller developing countries in saving the planet.

Aesthetics

Although the game is set on Earth, there is a prominent space theme incorporated. One of the main motivating factors for this aesthetic was Martin Rees’s book “On the Future.” I especially enjoyed his ability to weave through the threats facing Earth and touch on the potentiality of life on other planets. Yet, he was wary of the idea that humans could shift to another planet. Why waste resources on terraforming Mars when we could be focused on saving Earth? I believe this idea of saving Earth since it is the only “home” humans have, is the unifying theme behind each lecture. No matter what threat we are talking about, in the end, we will all perish or survive. From space, there are no singular countries that an individual can see, only one small dot-Earth. Keeping with this idea of surviving or dying together, Threat Level Midnight does not always end with a winner. If the clock reaches midnight and no treaties are made, then the world has essentially ended. Although some games may have a somber ending, they remind us that we cannot start the game again in real life. We only have one chance to save our planet, and the time is ticking.

I believe that a space theme is best able to encapsulate the idea of the world ending.

Two players rushing to make treaties with only 10 minutes left in the game.

The player looks off into the distance realizing the clock has struck midnight.

Citations

[1] Sinclaire, Janice. “Board moves the Clock ahead.” The Bulletin. January 26, 2017. https://thebulletin.org/2017/01/board-moves-the-clock-ahead/

[2] “Ranking.” CCPI. 2021. https://ccpi.org/ranking/

[3] Anil Agarwal and Sunita Narain, “Global Warming in an Unequal World: a case of environmental colonialism. download” Centre for Science and Environment, 1991.