Doomsday Clock is closer to midnight

NEW DELHI: The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists on Thursday moved its “Doomsday Clock” to 100 seconds to midnight, signalling that the “unprecedentedly high risk” of a nuclear exchange was even greater than in the worst days of the Cold War.

The BAS said the Doomsday Clock was now “the closest to disaster it has ever been in its 73-year history”. Without naming India or Pakistan, experts cited South Asia as a “nuclear tinderbox” where “prospects for mediation and engagement are diminishing”.

“The dramatic move is 20 seconds closer to doomsday and signals that the world faces an unprecedentedly high risk of global existential catastrophe. The clock is now closer to midnight than it was in the worst days of the Cold War, and has moved steadily closer to midnight over the past several years,” it said.

Derek Johnson, executive director of Global Zero, the international movement for elimination of nuclear weapons, said in a statement: “The abdication of global leadership by the United States and our collective failure to take action in the face of mounting dangers has brought us to the brink. At just 100 seconds to midnight, the Doomsday Clock makes clear we are nearly out of time.”

The BAS was founded in 1945 by University of Chicago scientists who helped develop the first atomic weapons, and it created the Doomsday Clock two years later.

According to organisation’s website, the clock uses the “imagery of apocalypse (midnight) and the contemporary idiom of nuclear explosion (countdown to zero) to convey threats to humanity”.