You can stop a clock from ticking, but it’s a lot harder to figure out how to stop humanity’s relentless march toward self-annihilation.
The keepers of the metaphorical Doomsday Clock have now determined we are closer than ever to catastrophe, and they have moved the second hand forward by one tick.
It now sits 89 seconds away from midnight, aka ‘Doomsday’.
The clock was set by a panel of global leaders on nuclear risk, climate change, and disruptive technologies as part of the non-profit organization The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.
“In setting the Clock one second closer to midnight, we send a stark signal: Because the world is already perilously close to the precipice, a move of even a single second should be taken as an indication of extreme danger and an unmistakable warning that every second of delay in reversing course increases the probability of global disaster,” the panel writes in a press release.
“Blindly continuing on the current path is a form of madness,” they add.
And yet…
The Doomsday Clock was first created by a group formed by Manhattan Project scientists in 1947, who did not want atomic weapons used against people. All those decades ago, the clock was set at 7 minutes to midnight.
By 1949, the threat of nuclear war had ramped up considerably, bringing the clock’s minute hand within three ticks of 12. By 1991, with the Cold War officially over, the clock had reverted back to 11.43 pm.
The respite didn’t last for long.
Since the turn of the century, international conflict, climate change, and disease have pushed the clock’s hands ever closer to 12.
In 2024, the world took a particularly dark turn. Last year was the world’s hottest year on record and the first calendar year in which global temperatures exceeded 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels.
In addition, the war in Ukraine entered its third year, war and conflict in the Middle East escalated, and countries with nuclear weapons invested billions in expanding their civilization-destroying arsenals.
To top it all off, the highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) spread to numerous regions around the world, and began infecting farm animals, dairy products, and even humans, creating “the possibility of a devastating human pandemic,” the Bulletin’s panel warns.
As if that isn’t enough to contend with, the panel argues all of these threats are “greatly exacerbated” by the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories. They say advances in AI are only making it harder to detect truth from falsehood, emboldening leaders who discount science and human rights.
“The United States, China, and Russia have the collective power to destroy civilization,” the panel argues.
“These three countries have the prime responsibility to pull the world back from the brink, and they can do so if their leaders seriously commence good-faith discussions about the global threats outlined here.”
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Some, like cognitive scientist Steven Pinker, think the Doomsday Clock is a political stunt, and others have criticized the seemingly arbitrary way the clock is set.
“I don’t think that using apocalyptic rhetoric helps us to do the hard work of discussing difficult and complicated issues in a democracy,” University of Oklahoma science historian Katherine Pandora told Tia Ghose at Live Science in 2016.
But Pandora also admitted that the extensive reports put out by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists are useful when it comes to spurring conversation, and the organization itself has said its goal is not to inspire fear but to inspire action.
“There is still time to make the right choices to turn back the hands of the Doomsday Clock,” said Juan Manuel Santos, former president of Colombia and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, at the Bulletin’s recent news conference.
“In Colombia, we say: ‘Cada segunda cuenta’ – every second counts. Let us use each one wisely.”
