Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has reshaped the world, but not the way Putin wanted. With little to show for its 100,000 dead, Russia is exposed as weak and militarily inadequate. Now Russian interference in Western democracy and dirty oligarch money are under greater scrutiny than ever before. With Western democracies shocked into unity, does the Ukraine War provide an opportunity to make a new, more secure free world?In our season finale, Arthur Snell looks forward to a world after Ukraine and asks: How does Putin fall? How would a wounded Russian psyche react? Will the Russian Federation itself survive? And could we be at the beginning of a new and better era?Doomsday Watch will be back with a new series soon. Support us on Patreon and help us build our next season: www.doomsdaywatch.co.uk “Despite the war Ukrainians are fiercely optimistic… Everyone constantly talks about the future.” – Romeo Kokriatski “Europe has not really stepped up and 2023 needs to be the year it plays more of a leading role in repairing Ukraine.” – Jeremy Cliffe “Ukraine is helping to cure us of an addiction to dirty Russian money.” – Arthur Snell “The outcome of this war will determine the future of liberal democracies.” – Olga Tokariuk “The humiliation that came with the fall of the Soviet Union left a huge wound that was very useable for Putin and the people around him.” – Jade McGlynn Photograph: Getty ImagesWritten and presented by Arthur Snell. Produced by Robin Leeburn. Assistant producer: Jacob Archbold. Original music by Paul Hartnoll – https://www.orbitalofficial.com . Group Editor Andrew Harrison. Doomsday Watch is a Podmasters production. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

COVID tested world health systems to near-destruction and killed more than 6.6 million people. Now new infectious diseases are emerging and the antibiotics we depend on no longer work the way they used to.Arthur Snell meets doctors, epidemiologists, evolutionary biologists and veterans of the Coronavirus battles to discover the mounting threat of new zoonotic diseases which leap from animal to human, how COVID conspiracism is undermining our efforts against future pandemics… and how ill-prepared we are to deal with them,Support Doomsday Watch on Patreon and get every episode a week early and ad-free, plus much more: www.doomsdaywatch.co.uk “We could be looking at the end of modern medicine as we know it.” – Arthur Snell “New pathogens are in an arms race with humans… We were stunned at how fast COVID was able to evolve against our defences.” – Prof Ravi Gupta “Some experts worry that COVID wasn’t the worst-case scenario. The next pandemic could be much more deadly.” – Laura Spinney “It won’t take many mutations to turn bird flu into a human-to-human disease… And then you’ve got a whole new pandemic.” – Prof Christina Pagel “An ordinary trip to hospital could become a high risk journey across a minefield of superbugs.” – Arthur Snell Photograph: Getty ImagesWritten and presented by Arthur Snell. Produced by Robin Leeburn. Assistant producer: Jacob Archbold. Original music by Paul Hartnoll – https://www.orbitalofficial.com . Group Editor Andrew Harrison. Doomsday Watch is a Podmasters production. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Espionage is changing, from George Smiley’s binary Cold War world into a more complex landscape. The CIA employs targeted drone killings while Russia and China’s cyber capabilities interfere in elections, media and industry. How did we get here? And what does the new ambiguity in intelligence mean for global stability?In this edition Arthur Snell talks to veteran intelligence officers to find out how the CIA’s “golden age” of fixing elections and fomenting coups gave way to a post-9/11 world where technology enables new threats – and Putin and the Chinese have the advantage.Support Doomsday Watch on Patreon and get every episode a week early and ad-free, plus much more: www.doomsdaywatch.co.uk “You can do interesting things with chemicals that you can’t do with a knife or a gun. You can send a very clear message.” – Dan Kaszeta “How has regime change actually worked out? It hasn’t worked for the USA or the Russians. Are we safer or not?” – Doug London “People would say, why don’t we just kill the Libyan leader? And the answer was, Because we actually operate within the law. Things were done once that nowadays are not done.” – Lucy Kirk “The CIA went down a path of covert action and counter-terrorism… And I do believe the Agency lost its way.” – Doug London Photograph: Getty ImagesWritten and presented by Arthur Snell. Produced by Robin Leeburn. Assistant producer: Jacob Archbold. Original music by Paul Hartnoll – https://www.orbitalofficial.com . Group Editor Andrew Harrison. Doomsday Watch is a Podmasters production. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ten thousand years of Arctic pack ice is melting away, opening up a $30 trillion trade route and a dangerous arena for great power confrontation. Putin is determined to make Russia’s slice of the formerly frozen North matter, but China too sees itself as a Polar power. Arthur Snell charts a vast and game-changing development where climate change could upend the global balance of maritime power. Could the struggle to control a newly-navigable Arctic Ocean become the Great Game of the 21st Century?Support Doomsday Watch on Patreon and get every episode a week early and ad-free, plus much more: www.doomsdaywatch.co.uk “It’s an ecological disaster but a geopolitical opportunity, and Russia is determined to take advantage.” – Arthur Snell “Planting a flag on the Arctic sea floor marked a turning point for Putin. Russia was now determined to be a great power on the move.” – Klaus Dodds “We’ve lost three quarters of the Arctic’s pack ice in my lifetime.” – Ben Saunders “The potential is absolutely there for an uncontrollable hot conflict between Russia and NATO in the Arctic.” – Robert Clark “Thanks to climate change the Arctic is effectively a new ocean that China wants to control.” – Arthur Snell Photograph: Getty ImagesWritten and presented by Arthur Snell. Produced by Robin Leeburn. Assistant producer: Jacob Archbold. Original music by Paul Hartnoll – https://www.orbitalofficial.com . Group Editor Andrew Harrison. Doomsday Watch is a Podmasters production. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A crisis in Africa is supercharging the Far Right in Europe – and Russian mercenaries are fighting to make it worse. After Western interventions drove the failing states of the Sahel region into ruin, extremists from Islamic State to Boko Haram stepped into the power vacuum. Civil wars and climate change rendering vast areas of the Sahel uninhabitable have created a refugee crisis which European demagogues can feast upon. And now Putin’s proxies are involved.Arthur Snell finds out how the misery of the Sahel people is generating hard right policy in Britain, neo-fascism in Italy… and a dangerous spin in the global destabilisation game.Support Doomsday Watch on Patreon and get every episode a week early and ad-free, plus much more: www.doomsdaywatch.co.uk “This is a region on Europe’s borders in deep crisis – and most people know nothing about it.” – Arthur Snell “What the radical right populists did in Britain was scare the Conservatives so much over immigration that the Tories shifted right.”– Tarik Abou-Chadi “The beneficiaries are the far right politicians in Europe and the cynical opportunists in Moscow.” – Arthur Snell “One thing you learn quickly is that pressures on one part Europe’s borders rapidly become pressures on other parts.” – Alex Clarkson Photograph: Getty ImagesWritten and presented by Arthur Snell. Produced by Robin Leeburn. Assistant producer: Jacob Archbold. Original music by Paul Hartnoll – https://www.orbitalofficial.com . Group Editor Andrew Harrison. Doomsday Watch is a Podmasters production. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Weaponised drones have revolutionised warfare, enabling governments – and others – to kill at arm’s length without warning. But drones are just part of an arsenal of next-generation weaponry whose very presence gives new impetus to conflict, from canine war droids to autonomous battle systems and beyond.Arthur Snell takes us from the 1991 Gulf War and the Highway of Death to 9/11 and the rise of asymmetric warfare – to discover how we opened a Pandora’s Box of new and lethal technology.Support Doomsday Watch on Patreon and get every episode a week early and ad-free, plus much more: www.doomsdaywatch.co.uk “Anyone can buy a surprisingly powerful drone on Amazon… and they’re being used in warfare now.” – Ulrike Franke “All future conflicts will be drone conflicts. The drone will always get through.” – James Rogers “If you rewrite the rules so that you can strike anyone on a faraway battlefield, you can’t be surprised when others do the same to you.” – Arthur Snell Photograph: Getty ImagesWritten and presented by Arthur Snell. Produced by Robin Leeburn. Assistant producer: Jacob Archbold. Original music by Paul Hartnoll – https://www.orbitalofficial.com . Group Editor Andrew Harrison. Doomsday Watch is a Podmasters production. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We often think of the Middle East as a battleground of Western and Russian influence. In reality, one great rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran drives our world, rather than us shaping theirs. From the Gulf and Iraq Wars through al-Qaeda and Islamic State to our modern energy security crisis, colossal events that determine the fates of millions are decided by an invisible war few of us can even see. Arthur Snell goes back beyond the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, the Iranian Revolution in 1979, and WWII to uncover the hidden conflict that shapes everything.Support Doomsday Watch on Patreon and get every episode a week early and ad-free, plus much more: www.doomsdaywatch.co.uk “We tell ourselves we interfere because we WANT their oil. Instead we’re sucked into a region we don’t understand because we NEED their oil.” – Arthur Snell “These conflicts changed everything… They unleash religion as a dominant factor in culture, in politics, and in militancy.” – Kim Ghattas “When America drew secular nationalist Iraq into an anti-terrorist action, they created a cauldron of chaos that persists to this day.” – Arthur Snell Photograph: Getty ImagesWritten and presented by Arthur Snell. Produced by Robin Leeburn. Assistant producer: Jacob Archbold. Original music by Paul Hartnoll – https://www.orbitalofficial.com . Group Editor Andrew Harrison. Doomsday Watch is a Podmasters production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The nuclear nightmare is back – and just one man gave unstable states across the world access to weapons that could bring down the apocalypse. This is the story of Abdul Qadeer Khan, a gifted scientist who grew to fear India in the chaos and butchery of Partition, then worked to give his new home, Pakistan, the protection of a nuclear arsenal. Disastrously, he would spread this dangerous knowledge.Thus began the Subcontinent’s own arms race, its spillover to North Korea, Iran and beyond… and AQ Khan’s journey to become another Oppenheimer: the father of nuclear nightmares.Support Doomsday Watch on Patreon and get next week’s episode now, plus much more: www.doomsdaywatch.co.uk “Without this one-man proliferation machine, none of North Korea, Pakistan or Iran’s nuclear programmes would have succeeded.” – Arthur Snell “Khan became a zealot. He thought he could save not just Pakistan but the whole Muslim world. And that’s where he went terribly wrong.” – Hassan Abbas “Russia’s war in Ukraine may be disastrous – but it’s taught everyone the value of nukes.” – Arthur Snell Photograph of AQ Khan: Getty ImagesWritten and presented by Arthur Snell. Produced by Robin Leeburn. Assistant producer: Jacob Archbold. Original music by Paul Hartnoll – https://www.orbitalofficial.com . Group Editor Andrew Harrison. Doomsday Watch is a Podmasters production. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What happens when one party in the world’s most powerful democracy no longer believes in democracy? The Republican assault on America’s elections and democratic system has worsened critically since we examined it in Season One. Now bitterly divided and reeling from the Jan 6 attacks, the USA stands on the brink of another Trump presidency. Will it become a democracy in name only?Support Doomsday Watch on Patreon and get every episode a week early and ad-free, plus much more: www.doomsdaywatch.co.uk “Democracy is on life-support in the United States.” – Brian Klaas “We have a predictably conservative court, and it’s out of step with mainstream politics in the US.” – Jamal Greene “American fascism is nothing new, it just wasn’t in the White House before.” – Sarah Churchwell “Neoliberalism is over. There’s a realisation now in the West that we can’t rely on Russia and China for our goods and not pay a political price for it.” – Arthur Snell “Political polarisation and hatred for the other side has reached such a point that one of the parties is willing to countenance the erosion of democracy.” – Idrees Kahloon Written and presented by Arthur Snell. Produced by Robin Leeburn. Assistant producer: Jacob Archbold. Original music by Paul Hartnoll – https://www.orbitalofficial.com . Group Editor Andrew Harrison. Doomsday Watch is a Podmasters production. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

New Series: The global order was already teetering badly before Putin invaded Ukraine. Now democracies are shellshocked by a world suddenly in permanent crisis. In the first of our new series, ex-foreign services diplomat Arthur Snell surveys the dangerous reality of the world after Ukraine – and sees how a string of factors from oil power to the botched Iraq invasion to the rise of the authoritarians has led up to a new global crisis… where no-one is in control.Support Doomsday Watch on Patreon and get every episode a week early and ad-free, plus much more: www.doomsdaywatch.co.uk “The battle between democracy and authoritarianism is going to define the 21st Century.” – Brian Klaas “The West has created a situation where the enduring disorder begets yet more disorder.” – Jason Pack “There’s a joke among Ukrainians that Vladimir Putin is the most successful CIA agent in history…” – Romeo Kokriatski “Starting this war was the end of Putin’s regime.” – Romeo Kokriatski “Hot money from the former Soviet space has influenced our elections… I don’t see the 20th century institutions as fit for purpose for these 21st century challenges.” – Jason Pack “If you’re Putin or Xi Jinping what you want is a disordered West. Trump would accomplish that in a day.” – Brian Klaas Written and presented by Arthur Snell. Produced by Robin Leeburn. Assistant producer: Jacob Archbold. Original music by Paul Hartnoll – https://www.orbitalofficial.com . Group Editor Andrew Harrison. Doomsday Watch is a Podmasters production. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices