Doomsday Clock: Earth close to midnight

The world is closer to annihilation than it has ever been since the first nuclear bombs were released at the close of World War II, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists said Tuesday. The time on the Doomsday Clock moved forward from 100 seconds to midnight to 90 seconds to midnight.

It’s a reset of what has come to be known as the Doomsday Clock, a decadeslong project of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists featuring a clock face where midnight represents Armageddon.

“The threats are even more acute, and the failures of leadership even more damning.”

Mary Robinson Former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights

Between Russia’s nuclear brinkmanship in its war on Ukraine, the real threats of climate change becoming increasingly dire and ongoing concerns about more possible pandemics caused by humans encroaching on formerly wild areas, the Bulletin chose to set the clock to the closest midnight yet.

The world is facing a gathering storm of extinction-level consequences, exacerbated by the illegal invasion of Ukraine by Russia. This explains why the latest advance of the clock, said Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

“The threats are even more acute, and the failures of leadership even more damning. We live today in a world of interlocking crises, each illustrating the unwillingness of leaders to act in the true long-term interests of their people,” she said.

The Bulletin was founded in 1945 by Albert Einstein and University of Chicago scientists who helped develop the first atomic weapons at the Manhattan Project. Two years later they launched the clock as a way to warn humanity just how close to nuclear apocalypse the world was.

“It’s a way to remind people of issues that are so big they post a threat to civilization as a whole,” said Steve Fetter, a professor of public policy at the University of Maryland and member of the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board, which sets the clock each year.

The clock has ticked minutes or seconds toward or away from catastrophe over the years. Wars bring it closer, treaties and cooperation further away.

For the past two years, it has been at 100 seconds to midnight.