Image: Jamie Christiani/Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists/Reproduction
The doomsday clock, also known as the doomsday clock, has just reached its point closest to midnight. This Tuesday (24th), the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists at the University of Chicago, USA, announced that there were only 90 seconds left for total chaos.
Between 2019 and 2022 the clock hand stopped 100 seconds before midnight. The reason for the short distance was climate change, misinformation and, since 2020, the Covid 19 pandemic. Now he’s come a step further.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine added to the factors already mentioned, in addition to other possible biological threats that could trigger new pandemics. The decision to introduce the watch was made by the Science and Safety Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, with support from the Bulletin Board of Sponsors, which includes 10 Nobel Prize winners.
The Doomsday Clock was created in 1947 with the aim of raising public awareness of the growing nuclear threat that accompanies the increasing tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. The imminent atomic bomb brought the world 7 minutes from its end.
Now the hands are even closer to midnight than they were during the Cold War. In 1953, after the US successfully tested its first hydrogen bomb, the clock was set to two minutes to go.
We weren’t always that close to the end. The clock was turned back in 1991 when the US and EU signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. At that time we were 17 minutes away from the collapse.