Doomsday Clock Moves One Second Closer to Catastrophe

The world is closer than ever to the apocalypse.

That was the dire assessment issued on Tuesday by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a nonprofit organization and publication whose signature Doomsday Clock has been estimating — in the stark terms of “minutes to midnight” — how close humanity is to annihilation since 1947.

The organization said that it had moved the clock’s hands closer to that dreaded day — from 90 seconds to midnight to 89 seconds to midnight. It cited the threats posed by nuclear weapons, climate change and the potential misuse of biological science and artificial intelligence — existential dangers it said had been exacerbated by the spread of misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories.

“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 bulletin said in a statement.

The clock is set by the organization’s Science and Security Board, made up of experts in nuclear technology, global security, climate science and other fields. The clock was created in 1947, when the organization’s concerns revolved around the prospect of nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. The time then was set at seven minutes to midnight.

Since then, the scientists behind the project have broadened their focus to consider other threats like climate change, infectious disease and the spread of misinformation fueled by artificial intelligence. And the clock’s hands have moved back and forth. The last shift was in January 2023, when the clock was changed from 100 seconds to midnight to 90 seconds to midnight, largely because of the war in Ukraine.

The clock was set farthest from midnight in 1991, after the United States and the Soviet Union signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, designed to scale down their stockpiles of long-lange nuclear weapons. In response, the bulletin moved the clock to 17 minutes to midnight.