Doomsday Clock moves closer to midnight

USA Today - Jan 17 5:52 AM

The Doomsday Clock's minute hand is expected to tick "closer to the clock's symbolic, apocalyptic 'midnight,' reflecting the 'most perilous period since Hiroshima and Nagasaki,'" the Chicago Tribune reports this morning.

The 60-year-old gauge, designed to illustrate the risk of nuclear holocaust, has been set at seven minutes before midnight since 2002.

When the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists changes the time at 9:30 a.m. ET, it will include "the threat of global warming, the genetic engineering of diseases and other 'threats to global survival'" in addition to the decades-old potential for nuclear holocaust.

The Associated Press has some background on the clock: When it was launched in 1947, the clock was initially set at seven minutes to midnight. It was as close as two minutes to midnight in 1953 in the wake of U.S. and Soviet hydrogen bomb tests, and as far away as 17 minutes to midnight in 1991, when the Cold War era ended.

The Carnegie Reporter asks whether the clock is still relevant.

Update at 9:45 a.m. ET: The minute hand on the Doomsday Clock is now set at five minutes from midnight.

Here's what the board had to say when it moved the clock closer to doomsday:

We stand at the brink of a second nuclear age. Not since the first atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki has the world faced such perilous choices. North Korea’s recent test of a nuclear weapon, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, a renewed U.S. emphasis on the military utility of nuclear weapons, the failure to adequately secure nuclear materials, and the continued presence of some 26,000 nuclear weapons in the United States and Russia are symptomatic of a larger failure to solve the problems posed by the most destructive technology on Earth.

Update at 11:55 a.m. ET: There's an Associated Press report on the news here