Many people, including many scientists, accept these dates as absolute truth.

They believe that when different radio-dating methods are used on the same rocks, they will all yield the same age.

“Major coastal cities – New York, Shanghai, Mumbai – would find themselves largely under water and the populations of low-lying coastal regions – currently more than a billion people – may need to be relocated.

Every Pole most now get of the off the fence and be counted as a patriot or a traitor." Donald Tusk, Poland's prime minister, has tried to build a pragmatic relationship with the Kremlin despite widespread and vocal calls in Poland for him to cool ties with Moscow.

We are monitoring the exercises to see what has been planned.

Wladyslaw Stasiak, chief of President Lech Kaczynski’s office, and a former head of Poland’s National Security Council, added: “We didn’t like the appearance of the exercises and the name harked back to the days of the Warsaw Pact.” The Russian troop exercises will come as an unwelcome sight to the states nestling on Russia’s western border who have deep-rooted anxieties over any Russian show of strength.

On the risk posed by nuclear weapons, the Global Catastrophic Risks report said since their first use against Japan in 1945 the world “has lived in the shadow of a war unlike any other in history”.

“Although the tension between nuclear states has diminished since the end of the Cold War and disarmament efforts have reduced arsenals, the prospect of a nuclear war remains present and might be closer today that it was a decade ago,” it said.