The world is closer than ever to the apocalypse.
That was the dire assessment issued on Tuesday by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a nonprofit organization and publication whose signature Doomsday Clock has been estimating — in the stark terms of “minutes to midnight” — how close humanity is to annihilation since 1947.
The organization said that it had moved the clock’s hands closer to that dreaded day — from 90 seconds to midnight to 89 seconds to midnight. It cited the threats posed by nuclear weapons, climate change and the potential misuse of biological science and artificial intelligence — existential dangers it said had been exacerbated by the spread of misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories.
“In setting the Clock one second closer to midnight, we send a stark signal: Because the world is already perilously close to the precipice, a move of even a single second should be taken as an indication of extreme danger and an unmistakable warning that every second of delay in reversing course increases the probability of global disaster,” the bulletin said in a statement.
The clock is set by the organization’s Science and Security Board, made up of experts in nuclear technology, global security, climate science and other fields. The clock was created in 1947, when the organization’s concerns revolved around the prospect of nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. The time then was set at seven minutes to midnight.
Since then, the scientists behind the project have broadened their focus to consider other threats like climate change, infectious disease and the spread of misinformation fueled by artificial intelligence. And the clock’s hands have moved back and forth. The last shift was in January 2023, when the clock was changed from 100 seconds to midnight to 90 seconds to midnight, largely because of the war in Ukraine.
The clock was set farthest from midnight in 1991, after the United States and the Soviet Union signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, designed to scale down their stockpiles of long-lange nuclear weapons. In response, the bulletin moved the clock to 17 minutes to midnight.
The clock did not change during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 because “too little was known at the time about the circumstances of the standoff or what the outcome would be,” the bulletin says on its website.
Critics have dismissed the clock as a stunt based on subjective assessments. Others have said that its repeated warnings of total annihilation could end up being dismissed by the public — the public policy equivalent of the boy who cried wolf.
But the scientists who set the clock call it an internationally recognized symbol and “a reminder of the perils we must address if we are to survive on the planet.”
“The purpose of the Doomsday Clock is to start a global conversation about the very real existential threats that keep the world’s top scientists awake at night,” said Daniel Holz, the chairman of the Science and Security Board and the founding director of the Existential Risk Laboratory at University of Chicago.
This year, the bulletin said that global leaders were failing to confront mounting threats to human survival.
It said that the war in Ukraine, now in its third year, “could become nuclear at any moment because of a rash decision or through accident or miscalculation.” It warned that global nuclear arms controls were “collapsing.”
And it said that the impacts of climate change had increased over the past year, which was almost certainly the hottest on record. The growth in solar and wind energy, the bulletin said, “has been impressive but remains insufficient to stabilize the climate.”
In a clear allusion to President Trump, the organization said: “Judging from recent electoral campaigns, climate change is viewed as a low priority in the United States and many other countries.”
Mr. Trump this month signed an executive order to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement, the global pact to fight climate change, as part of a series of actions to promote fossil fuels and to withdraw support for renewable energy.
The bulletin also warned of the spread of bird flu and said that rapid advances in artificial intelligence had “increased the risk that terrorists or countries may attain the capability of designing biological weapons for which countermeasures do not exist.”
Despite the bleak outlook, the bulletin said that there was still an opportunity for the world to move back from the brink of collapse if countries — particularly the United States, China and Russia — work more closely to combat climate change, disease and other threats.
“There is still time to make the right choices to turn back the hands of the Doomsday Clock,” Juan Manuel Santos, the former president of Colombia and a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, said on Tuesday at a news conference. “In Colombia, we say, ‘Cada segundo cuenta.’ Every second counts. Let us use each one wisely.”
