How close is humanity to self-destruction? Doomsday Clock will reveal how bad things are.
Each year for the past 78 years, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has published a new Doomsday Clock, suggesting just how close – or far – humanity is to destroying itself.
The next edition of the Clock will be revealed Tuesday, Jan. 28 at 10 a.m. EST on a live webcast. It will be a closely held secret until then.
The clock is meant as a metaphor for how close humanity is to self-annihilation, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which has maintained it since 1947. The group was founded two years earlier by University of Chicago scientists who had helped develop the first nuclear weapons for the Manhattan Project.
Historically, the ominous clock measured the danger of nuclear disaster. In the past two decades three other areas of concern have been added: climate change, artificial Intelligence and mis- and disinformation.
Each year, the members of the Science and Security Board are asked two questions:
- Is humanity safer or at greater risk this year than last year?
- Is humanity safer or at greater risk compared to the 78 years the clock has been set?
Their answers set the clock for the coming year.
How did the Doomsday Clock start?
In 1945, on the anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, scientists who had worked on the Manhattan Project, which built the world's first atomic bombs, began publishing a mimeographed newsletter called The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
Two years later, as those same scientists contemplated a world in which two atomic weapons had been used in Japan, they gathered to discuss the threat to humanity posed by nuclear war.
"They were worried the public wasn't really aware of how close we were to the end of life as we knew it," said Rachel Bronson, current president and CEO of the Bulletin.
Martyl Langsdorf, an artist and wife of Manhattan Project physicist Alexander Langsdorf Jr., came up with the idea of a clock showing just how close things were.
It was called the Doomsday Clock.
"It gave the sense that if we did nothing, it would tick on toward midnight and we could experience the apocalypse," Bronson said.
Where does the Doomsday Clock stand now?
In 2024, the experts who maintain the Doomsday Clock said humanity was as close as ever to global catastrophe. The time on the symbolic clock was set at 90 seconds to midnight, the same as in 2023.
Prior to that it had stood at 100 seconds to midnight, closer to destruction than at any point since it was created in 1947.
Who decides where the Doomsday Clock is set?
The Doomsday Clock is set each year by the members of the Bulletin's Science and Security Board in consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which includes nine Nobel laureates. This year's board included 18 members.
The group is given dense reading material over the course of the year to keep up on trends and threats. They meet virtually multiple times and twice in person in Chicago where the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is based. These meetings also include briefings on new, emerging or changing technologies such as Artificial Intelligence.
Neither the U.S. government, nor any other government, is involved in the setting of the clock – it is entirely the work of scientists and world experts.
What does midnight represent on the Doomsday Clock?
The clock only looks at things humanity could do to itself. A meteor hurtling towards earth wouldn't count, while tinkering with viruses to make them more dangerous would.
From the 1950s through the 1980s the threat of nuclear war felt imminent. Though it feels less real now, the risk hasn't gone away, said Robert Socolow, a environmental scientist, theoretical physicist, and professor emeritus of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University who is on the board.
"The nuclear threat is one that young people can’t believe their grandparents and parents lived with but now their working assumption is 'I don’t need to worry about it.' But they do," he said.
Today's dangers are somewhat different, than they were when the threat was mainly from the Soviet Union, because we have non-state actors such as terrorists, and countries like North Korea that are not part of the global order, who might have access to dangerous weapons and pathogens.
"We have hair trigger alerts, many nuclear weapons around the globe and a nuclear doctrine that if someone attacks us, we must reciprocate," Socolow said.
Does the Doomsday Clock always move closer to midnight?
The setting of the clock has jumped forward and back over the past 78 years, depending on world events.
The furthest from midnight it has ever been was in 1991, when it was set at 17 minutes to midnight after the U.S. and the Soviet Union signed the first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, followed by the dissolution of the USSR.
The most pessimistic years have been the last two, when it was set at 90 seconds to midnight, in part because of global nuclear and political tensions, COVID-19, climate change and the threat of biological weapons.
"It was because something qualitatively new had happened," said Socolow. "Putin was threatening to use nuclear weapons [in Ukraine.]"
The first clock, announced in 1947, was set a full 7 minutes to midnight.