Scientists set 'Doomsday Clock' at 3 minutes to midnight
Rising tensions between Russia and the United States, nuclear proliferation, and other global challenges have put the world under grave threat, policy experts and former officials behind the metaphorical “Doomsday Clock" have warned.
Managed by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the symbolic clock reflects the possibility of a global cataclysm from conflicts, nuclear weapons, climate change and new technologies.
The clock, created in 1947, remained unchanged this year, at three minutes to midnight, the Bulletin announced on Tuesday.
Midnight represents an apocalyptic disaster and end of humanity.
The scientists behind the Bulletin moved up the Doomsday Clock two minutes closer to destruction last year—from 11:55 to 11:57 pm.
This is the closest the clock has come to midnight since the throes of the Cold War in 1984.
“The clock ticks now at just three minutes to midnight because international leaders are failing to perform their most important duty,” the scientists said.
The group said the US-Russia tensions, conflicts in Syria and Ukraine, a recent nuclear test by North Korea as well as nuclear modernization by the US and others, have offset the positive achievements of the past year, namely the Iran nuclear accord and the Paris climate agreement.
“The danger of a nuclear catastrophe today in my judgment is greater than it was during the Cold War,” former US Secretary of Defense William Perry said in a video conference from Stanford University during the Bulletin’s announcement.
“My judgment about it being more dangerous than the Cold War has been joined by the Doomsday Clock. This three minutes to midnight is a more dangerous, more ominous forecast than two-thirds of the years during the Cold War,” he added.
George Shultz, who served as former President Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state in the 1980s, also offered his bleak assessment of the world.
“We have a world awash in change. There is nowhere you can look and say it’s a world of stable prosperity,” Shultz said in a webcast from Stanford. “It’s a terrible mess.”
The clock has been adjusted 18 times since its inception. In 1991, when the threat of a nuclear catastrophe dissipated with the end of the Cold War, the clock stood at 17 minutes to midnight.
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