So, first off, I love your analysis, @belleyells and @thedreamwalkinwizard. Now, let me offer my two cents on that clock:
Do you see how the larger clock that Aaron posted only has the hours 9-12 marked? That is for a very specific reason, because this is a very special sort of clock. It has only ever shown the last three hours, or more specifically, the last 15 minutes. Also that is not five minutes to midnight. It is seven. And yes, that is midnight, not noon.
Often, only a quarter of this clock has shown, by cutting out the parts of the clock that would show the hours from 1-8. After all, in the past 73 years humanity has never shown any need for that much time.
This is the Doomsday Clock. If you’ve ever heard the phrase “minutes to midnight”, then that phrase originally referred to this very clock. It isn’t some sort of device that’s got a countdown like a bomb. In fact, there could be multiple physical Doomsday Clocks. Rather, it “is a symbol that represents the likelihood of a man-made global catastrophe” and “a metaphor for threats to humanity from unchecked scientific and technical advances”. Midnight is when there is a manmade global catastrophe, whether due to nuclear war, climate change, bioterrorism, or any other potential threat as determined by The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Each January, these scientists meet to discuss whether to leave the clock as-is, move the time closer to midnight (indicating that the state of the world has become worse) or move the time further from midnight (indicating that the state of the world has become better).
The particular clock that Mr. Waltke posted is set to 7 minutes to midnight. I, personally, am not too concerned for our characters now.
As of January 23, 2020, we were stated to be 100 seconds to midnight. Given that Enrique was born in 2016, then the latter parts of Trollhunters, all non-flashback portions of 3Below, and the modern portion of Wizards, would thus all occur in 2017, when the IRL Doomsday Clock was 2.5 minutes away from midnight. The last time the world was 7 minutes from midnight was 2002-2007, and then before that 1980, 1968, 1960 -1963, and of course the initial setting in 1947 up through the second setting in 1949.
Who knows, maybe there’s more time travel 🙃😒 I’m not a time travel fan, this time to one of the years that the world was 7 minutes to midnight. Or maybe there’s a whole ‘nother Doomsday Clock run by the Bulletin of Atomic Wizards or something, and they’re more optimistic on the possibility of the world ending. Perhaps, even, while there are far more supernatural threats in the universe that our characters live in, the governments and corporations are kinder. Less likely to cause nuclear war, climate change, bioterrorism, or any other world-ending threats. Heck, maybe wizards go public in the world and this pushes the clock back to 7 minutes!
But I would be far more concerned if Mr. Waltke had posted a version of the Doomsday Clock never used before, and one I hope never gets used even though it would be very easy to create using an image from Wikipedia and MS Paint. Or, if he just wanted to keep the pretty 7 minutes to midnight clock image, then just change his 11 pm clock emoji to a different emoji:
[Image description: the first image is a pair of tweets from Aaron Waltke. The first one reads “🌎💥🔥🌿❄️🕚🛸⚔️🎸🏰👹” The second one is an image of a clock that only has dots for the hours 9-12. The clock has been set to 11:53, and the face of the clock has been decorated to look like a beige globe showing the Americas as well as Western Europe and Africa.
The second image is the second tweet, but the person taking screencaps must’ve scrolled down to show the full clock.
The third image is just a repost of the clock that Aaron Waltke posted.
The fourth and fifth images are clocks that only show the hours 9-12, these are quarter clocks. The fourth image has the clock set to 2353:, and the fifth image has the clock set to approximately 23:58:20.]
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