Until last week, the hands of the famed Doomsday Clock remained steady since 2018: two minutes to midnight
Now, however, the clock reads just 100 seconds from global catastrophe — a determination made by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ Science and Security Board, with the help of the Bulletin’s Board of Sponsors, which features 13 Nobel Laureates. The Bulletin, which first created the clock in 1947, made the change this year after taking into consideration the threats posed by nuclear weapons, climate change, as well as cyber warfare.
Although no longer the sole determining factor of the clock’s proximity to doomsday, nuclear weapons unmistakably stand as an urgent existential danger to the world.
Among the growing dangers cited by the Bulletin was the uncertain future of nuclear arms control between the United States and Russia, by far the world’s two largest nuclear powers.
Read the full op-ed, published Jan. 29, 2020, in Responsible Statecraft.