I was surprised to hear that the Doomsday Clock isn't just a storytelling device Alan Moore made up for Watchmen. The real-life Doomsday Clock is a representation of how close humanity is to global catastrophe, maintained by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists – people who know what they're talking about. The conceit: when the clock strikes midnight, we're all dead. This means moving it forward is a bad thing, and yesterday the clock grew the closest to midnight it's been since it was established in 1947: 89 seconds to midnight. This is probably a bad thing.
The clock had stood at 90 seconds to midnight for the past two years and "when you are at this precipice, the one thing you don't want to do is take a step forward," said Daniel Holz, chair of the group's science and security board.
The group said it's concerned about cooperation between countries such as North Korea, Russia and China in developing nuclear programs. Russian President Vladimir Putin has also talked about using nuclear weapons in his war against Ukraine.
"A lot of the rhetoric is very disturbing," Holz said. "There is this growing sense that … some nation might end up using nuclear weapons, and that's terrifying."
Granted, it's not hard to see why scientists may think we're in a bit of a bad place right now. While climate change is a factor the Bulletin considers, as their name implies, they're growing increasingly nervous about the potential for nuclear exchanges – more so given who now sits in the White House. While some have written this gesture off as purely performative, there's no denying that it represents the very real anxieties facing America and the world at large at the moment.
