Risks → War → Nuclear War → Doomsday Clock
Its 90 seconds to armageddon! Should we be worried?
Doomsday Clock 2024 - 90 seconds to midnight!
Source: University of Chicago News. See: https://news.uchicago.edu/2023-doomsday-clock-announcement-seconds-to-midnight
The "Doomsday Clock" was introduced by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in 1947. Its purpose was to give an understanding to politicians and
the general public, of how close
they believed we were, to nuclear Armageddon, i.e., a global nuclear war. In 1947, after the detonation of the
first nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the clock was first set at 7 minutes to midnight. At the end of the "Cold War" in 1991 it was revised backwards to
17 minutes. However, as nuclear arms proliferated during the 1990's (India and Pakistan) and 2000's (North Korea), and other concerns related to impending
global catastrophe were added into its
calculation (eg., bio-weapons and climate change), the clock has been slowly moved forward again, closer to midnight. In 2023, with
the start of the war in Ukraine, and the renewed threat of impending nuclear war, it was moved to 90 seconds to midnight the closest it has been to signalling
impending apocalypse in its 75 year plus history. In 2014, this remains its current position.
References
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Doomsday Clock. See: https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/
This Document
Version 1, 26 July, 2024