Doomsday Clock Advances

The doomsday clock, conceived by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (BAS) to illustrate how close mankind is to nuclear disaster, has been advanced two minutes, to read five minutes before midnight—the “figurative end of civilization.” The clock has only been reset 18 times in its 60-year history.

The last change was in February 2002, after the World Trade Center attacks in New York. Continued development and presence of nuclear weapons as well as failure to make nuclear materials secure are “symptomatic of a failure to solve the problems posed by the most destructive technology on Earth,” said a BAS statement. Moreover, it continued, “the dangers posed by climate change are nearly as dire as those posed by nuclear weapons.”

Posted in: Science