Doomsday Clock is 85 seconds to midnight

Humanity is now closer to the brink than at any point in its history. On January 27, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists officially moved the hands of the Doomsday Clock forward by four seconds, making it 85 seconds to midnight, citing an unprecedented surge in nuclear instability and climate failure.

The Doomsday clock is a symbolic timepiece that measures how close humanity is to destroying the world with dangerous technologies of our own making. It serves as a scientific metaphor for global vulnerability, where midnight represents total catastrophe and the minutes remaining signify the window for human intervention.

This decision was made by the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board to alert world leaders that the window for securing a habitable future is rapidly closing.