“Doomsday Clock” Ticks Closer to Midnight

The hands of the symbolic Doomsday Clock are set at 89 seconds to midnight - closer to global catastrophe than ever before. The Doomsday Clock, or the Nuclear War Clock, represents how close we are veering towards a human-made global catastrophe. According to the “Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists”, a magazine for nuclear scientists, the latest downtick from 90 to 89 seconds before midnight is based on the continued threats of nuclear weapons, climate change and the potential misuse of biological science and new technologies. When it comes to climate change, the researchers have repeatedly criticized the U.S.'s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, which has now been put into effect twice.

The Doomsday Clock was adjusted below the two-minute mark (at "100 seconds" to midnight) for the first time in 2020, citing the covid pandemic, advancing climate change, the spread of fake news and a worsening global political situation. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has since been calculated to have further exacerbated the geopolitical situation, prompting researchers to set the Doomsday Clock forward from 107 to 90 seconds (1.5 minutes) before midnight in early 2023.

As this chart shows, 1953 was also considered a year of heightened tensions among researchers, when the U.S. and the USSR had tested hydrogen bombs. Incidentally, the threat of catastrophe from the so-called Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) is not depicted by the clock. This is likely due to the fact that the issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists published near the time came out in November/December 1962, when the political crisis had already been largely diffused.

Check out the original version of this infographic and article, written in German by Matthias Janson.