DOOMSDAY CLOCK SAYS WORLD STILL 100 SECONDS FROM DISASTER

Humanity is 100 seconds away from total annihilation. Again.

That is according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a nonprofit organization and publication whose signature Doomsday Clock has been estimating — in the stark terms of “minutes to midnight” — how close the world is to apocalypse since 1947.

“The collective wisdom of our group is that it’s a wildly dangerous time with some incredibly important bright spots,” Rachel Bronson, the executive director and publisher of the bulletin, said Wednesday.

The clock remains set at “100 seconds to midnight” — unchanged from last year, when its hands were moved as close as they had ever been to midnight. At the time, the bulletin said the shift was meant to reflect heightened tensions and deteriorated communication between the United States and other countries, including Russia and Iran.

This year, scientists pointed to the woeful response of world leaders to the pandemic, the erosion of the public’s faith in science and government institutions, the acceleration of nuclear weapons programs, and the persistent threat of climate change.

The time has been inching closer to midnight since 2018, when the clock was set at two minutes to 12.

The last time it was that close was in 1953, after the United States and the Soviet Union tested their first thermonuclear weapons.

The clock is not a scientific instrument, but a symbolic one.