The Third Edit: Doomsday Clock has never been closer to calamity

Jan 31, 2025 07:09 IST First published on: Jan 31, 2025 at 07:09 IST

With parts of the world ravaged by war, nuclear threats and climate change, a device that warns humanity of its proximity to global destruction would be invaluable. A group of 18 researchers at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) at the University of Chicago has indeed maintained such a device since 1947. The bad news is that the Doomsday Clock’s hands have just inched closer to catastrophe. In fact, with 89 seconds to midnight, the BAS has asserted that “continuing on the current path is a form of madness”.

The Doomsday Clock was created by a group of scientists who had previously worked on the Manhattan Project — the American R&D programme led by J Robert Oppenheimer during World War II, which culminated in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They recognised the growing dangers of nuclear weapons in a new era of geopolitical tensions and originally set the clock at seven minutes to midnight. However, since 2007, the BAS began factoring in the deadly risks posed by climate change. It is no surprise, then, that until 2025, the closest the clock had ever been set to midnight — just two minutes away — was in 1953, when the US and the Soviet Union tested thermonuclear weapons, and again in 2018 due to “a breakdown in the international order”. The furthest the Clock has been set was 17 minutes to midnight, in 1991, following the Soviet Union’s collapse and an arms reduction treaty with the US.