Enlarge image
Closer to midnight than ever before: the »Doomsday Clock«
PHOTO: LEAH MILLIS / REUTERS
In the face of blatant nuclear threats from Russian President Vladimir Putin, the hands of the so-called "doomsday clock" have been advanced to 90 seconds to midnight - as far as never before.
Unlike in the previous two years, the hands of the symbolic clock moved and moved ten seconds closer to midnight, as the organization "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists" announced.
"Nuclear risks have increased significantly over the past year, largely due to Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine," said Professor Steve Fetter of the University of Maryland in Washington, DC.
Putin has repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons to prevent the United States and its NATO allies from intervening in the Ukraine war.
"That's not a bluff," Fetter is convinced.
Dangers of the climate crisis
The organization also points to "persistent threats from the climate crisis" and a "collapse of global norms and institutions needed to mitigate risks related to advancing technologies and biological threats like Covid-19."
"We live in a time of unprecedented peril, and the doomsday clock reflects that reality," said Bulletin editor Rachel Bronson.
The experts would not have taken the decision lightly to bring the clock hands closer to midnight than ever before.
The symbolic status of the clock is communicated once a year.
In 2018 and 2019, the clock showed two minutes to twelve.
In 2020, the clock was symbolically put forward to 100 seconds before midnight for the first time.
In the following two years the clock remained unchanged.
The risk of humanity wiping itself out as a result of nuclear war or climate change is greater than at any time since the clock was invented in 1947.
In the founding year 1947 seven minutes away from the end of the world
The decision as to what time the hands of the doomsday clock will be set each year is made by board members of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists - an organization that publishes a journal of the same name founded in 1945 by physicist Albert Einstein and scientists from the University of Chicago had been.
In 1947, the year it was founded, the clock was set at seven minutes to midnight.
After the end of the Cold War, researchers set the hands to the farthest time before midnight: 11:43 p.m., which is 17 minutes to midnight.
tfb/dpa/AFP