The 'doomsday clock' puts humanity closer to the apocalypse than ever

Humanity is only 90 seconds from the end of the world.

As every year, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has released its diagnosis on the risk of extermination facing humanity.

This group of top-level experts, with Nobel laureates among their ranks, started this symbolic clock in 1947, shortly after the first atomic explosions: the closer we get to midnight on the

), the closer we are to the end of the world.

In 2018 the hands were positioned at 23.58, two minutes from the end, which is the closest the clock had gotten to midnight in its 73-year history.

At that same time, 120 seconds away, it was in 1953 when the US and the USSR were accelerating the arms race with thermonuclear bombs.

Since January 2020, before the covid pandemic, atomic scientists have overcome that barrier by placing the hands at just 100 seconds.

Rachel Bronson, president and executive director of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, has justified the approach of the clock to just 90 seconds from midnight due to the continuation of the accumulated threats to humanity in recent years, such as climate change or the threat of new pandemics, and "the illegal invasion of Ukraine by Russia."

Beyond Russia, scientists have pointed to the worsening of relations between Iran and the West or the friction between China and the US in the Taiwan Strait and the modernization of its atomic capabilities.

"All of this has brought the risk of nuclear catastrophe closer today," said Steve Fetter, one of the members of the committee that sets the time on the doomsday clock.

Another reason to set the clock closer to midnight is found in biological threats.

The risks of new pandemics or the potential for biological weapons to be used were mentioned by Suzet McKinney, another board member of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

Dismantling biological weapons programs, investing in early warning systems to prevent pandemics, sharing information between countries or investing in public health were some of the measures mentioned by McKinney to prevent disaster from coming from the biological threat.

As in recent years, climate change was also included among the reasons that, for the organization that manages this symbolic clock, raise fears for the continuity of human civilization.

Sivan Kartha, leader of the sixth report of the sixth report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, pointed out to the step back that there have been some reactions to energy insecurity caused by the war in Ukraine.

The increase in the consumption of coal in some countries like Germany or the search for new sources of fossil fuels make it more difficult to think about the necessary reduction of greenhouse gases.

The torrential rains in Africa or the "monsoon on steroids" that Pakistan experienced last year, with 33 million affected,

The clock and this body of scientific experts in nuclear physics were created shortly after the explosion of the first atomic bombs to make the population aware that, for the first time in history, humanity could completely destroy itself because of this new weaponry.

Since then, other threats have been added to the list, such as bioterrorism, artificial intelligence or climate change, omnipresent since it was included in 2007.

Last year, Bronson insisted on this idea: “The clock continues to remind us how much work needs to be done to ensure a safer and healthier planet.

We must continue to move the clock hands away from midnight.”

1991 is a long way off, the date on which the hands stood at 17 minutes after midnight, when George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty and atomic disarmament was possible.

Today, the derivatives of the Russian invasion of the Ukraine also reopen the most feared scenarios of rearmament, use of nuclear weapons and expansion of the war throughout the planet.

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