Approaching Doomsday

"The Doomsday Clock is sounding an alarm for the whole of humanity. We are on the brink of a precipice."

"But our leaders are not acting at sufficient speed or scale to secure a peaceful and livable planet."

Mary Robinson, former United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights

"Even if nuclear use is avoided in Ukraine, the war has challenged the nuclear order — the system of agreements and understandings that have been constructed over six decades to limit the dangers of nuclear weapons."

Steve Fetter, dean, graduate school and professor of public policy, University of Maryland

 

"We are living in a time of unprecedented danger, and the Doomsday Clock time reflects that reality."

"Ninety seconds to midnight is the closest the clock has ever been set to midnight, and it's a decision our experts do not take lightly."

Bulletin president and CEO Rachel Bronson  

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced that it has moved the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock to 90 seconds to midnight. From left,, Siegfried Hecker, Daniel Holz, Sharon Squassoni, Mary Robinson and Elbegdorj Tsakhia with the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists remove a cloth covering the Doomsday Clock at a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington on Tuesday. Patrick Semansky/AP

There is much to despair over in this world; never-ending regional conflicts, the state of the environment, deadly pathogens cutting a swath through the world in a declared pandemic, faltering economies, terrorism, agricultural disasters leaving populations in dire need of food, rampant wildfires, disastrous floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, burgeoning refugee numbers resulting from conflict, unstoppable waves of economic migrants. These threaten world stability, but do not necessarily augur doom.

And while the scientists and activists engaged with the work of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and its annual reports alerting the world to an ever-increasing  approach of doom, mentioned nuclear weapon proliferation in China, increasing uranium enrichment in Iran, provocatively aggressive missile tests in North Korea, and potential for future disastrous pandemics passing from animal to human in zoonitic disease transmission, "disruptive technologies" and increasing climate change representative of existential threats to humanity, the focus was on the Ukraine-Russian war.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the Russian president's occasional threat pointing to his country's nuclear arsenal and special nuclear military alerts, along with Vladimir Putin's bringing the violent conflict to the doorstep of Europe's largest nuclear station with its six reactors in Zaporizhzhia, the second hand of fate on Earth moved inexorably closer to Armageddon. The advocacy group hoping to influence society to the closer approach of all-consuming danger, moved the 'Doomsday Clock' to 90 seconds before midnight.

"We are really closer to that doomsday", former Mongolian president Elbegdorj Tsakhis said at the annual announcement on Tuesday, emphasizing how close humanity has become to finalizing life on Earth. The existential threats related to the actions and words of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, representing the ultimate threat of annihilation of humanity. "People and scientists are warning us and we have to wake up now", he urged.

The clock was visualized as a motif in 1947 by the advocacy group, symbolic of the potential and possibility of the world community posing a grim risk to its longevity as a race peopling this planet Earth. The clock was moved 10 seconds closer to the dreaded midnight than it had been last year. This is the closest the threat has ever reached to strike midnight. Following the collapse of the Cold War with the disintegration of the Soviet Empire and relaxed tensions worldwide of a cataclysmic encounter with the use of nuclear weapons, the clock was moved to 17 minutes from midnight.

In the years to follow the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists saw a gradual transition from counting down minutes to midnight to exchanging minutes for seconds in an ongoing alert of worldwide danger of the collapse of civilization. For the very first time, the grim announcement was made in both the Russian and Ukrainian languages to emphasize and directly implicate and alert the main antagonists in potential results of an escalating and ever more dangerous conflict with the risks involved of a wider world war.

 

IAEA

The Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant in Ukraine.