After three years it is doomsday clock – the “doomsday clock” – is getting closer to twelve o’clock again. As of today, it stood at 100 seconds to midnight, but the organization behind the clock announced this afternoon that the hands are currently at 90 seconds to 12. This means we are dangerously close to the “end of time.” Every year a new balance is drawn, but the last time the group of scientists moved the clock was 2020. And that was before the war in Ukraine and the corona pandemic.
75 years ago the doomsday clock created by a group of scientists who predicted how close mankind is to the end of the world. The position of the hands has been dictated in recent years by the threat of nuclear war and the consequences of climate change on our planet. Now the corona pandemic has also added to this. Today, humanity is 90 seconds — or just a minute and a half — from midnight. This was announced today by Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the organization behind the clock. “Never have we been so close to a global catastrophe,” says Bulletin. To date, the hands have stood at 100 seconds to twelve o’clock. Before 2020, midnight was closest to two minutes.
“Reflection of Reality”
“We live in a time of unprecedented peril, and the time of doomsday clock reflects this reality. 90 seconds to midnight is the closest time the clock has ever set to midnight, and our experts don’t make that decision lightly. The US government, its NATO allies and Ukraine have a wide range of dialogue options at their disposal; We urge leaders to take full advantage of all of these channels to turn back the clock,” according to Bulletin.
So the future looks bleak if we are to believe the “doomsday clock”. We are fast approaching midnight and we are closer to the “end of time” than ever before. But how realistic is the timestamp of this watch? The good news is that predictions are not an exact science. Above all, the scientists hope that the watch will serve as a warning to the world. It serves as a reminder of the dangers that must be dealt with if we are to survive on our planet. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists writes on its website that it is “a design warning the public of how close we are to destroying our world with dangerous technologies of our own manufacture”.
War Ukraine
Shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Bulletin kept the clock at 100 seconds to midnight. President Vladimir Putin then threatened to use nuclear weapons if NATO intervened to help Ukraine. This is what 100 seconds to midnight looks like. An end to the war does not appear to be in sight for the time being, so the nuclear danger has not yet been averted. Therefore the clock was put forward by 10 seconds. The climate and the pandemic have also led to this adaptation, writes ‘Bulletin’ in a press release.
The clock was furthest from midnight in 1991, shortly after the fall of the Iron Curtain. At the time, the hands were at 17 minutes to 12. Former US President George HW Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev both announced reductions in their nuclear arsenals earlier this year.
Source : HLN