Doomsday clock warns world of catastrophe in 2024

The hands of the Doomsday clock, which is a symbolic device meant to warn the world of how close it is to real disaster, with midnight representing the point at which the Earth becomes uninhabitable by humanity, have come the closest they've ever been to midnight (doomsday).

The clock started ticking in the early days of the Cold War. It was created as an integral feature of a journal called the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and was established in 1947 by those Manhattan Project scientists and engineers who were closely associated with the development of the atomic bomb and were worried about the "destroyer of worlds" they had created. Articles in the Bulletin were largely devoted - as they still are today - to emphasizing the dangers of nuclear weapons.

Already at the beginning of 2023, the hands of the Doomsday Clock were set at only 90 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been to the time of Doomsday. There is no single general reason for this move. Of course, with climate change today being a major factor in the threat to humanity, the watch should reflect this - and it does. 

However, other more immediate factors are the ones that largely caused the clock to move forward. According to an article published in The Conversation, the most significant impact was the war in Ukraine and especially the Russian threat "which could lead to an escalation that would lead to non-escalation". The idea here is that if Russian forces were about to suffer a major defeat in Ukraine, they would use tactical (low-yield) nuclear weapons on the battlefield (i.e. to "escalate" the war). 

This would create a serious break among those Western powers that supported Kyiv. They would, logically, be persuaded to withdraw this support because they would not want to risk a wider war with Russia that might include the use of strategic nuclear weapons. So Moscow will "win" the war against Ukraine, which now lacks Western help and that will lead to the end of the war.

Beyond what might happen on the actual battlefields in Ukraine, the growing tension between Washington and Moscow also contributed to the current position of the clock hands. The bilateral treaties that once halted nuclear weapons developments are now largely gone.

The US itself withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2001 and from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 2019. While the end of these agreements played a part in setting the clock hands at 90 seconds to midnight in early 2023, there were other moves which caused them to move dramatically during 2023.

In February 2023, Russia withdrew from the New Start Treaty (a nuclear arms reduction agreement signed between Russia and the United States) and at the beginning of November, Russia announced that it would also withdraw from the Treaty for the Prevention of Nuclear Tests - which means that all the agreements related to the limitation of nuclear weapons that previously moved the clocks away from midnight are now null and void. 

Since 1947, the alignment of the clock hands has been determined at the beginning of each year by the experts of the bulletin. Originally, the clock dealt with the threat of an actual nuclear war between the Cold War superpowers, the USA and the Soviet Union. 

However, recently the clock also includes and reflects the global threat of climate change, which was first included as a factor in 2007. At various points over the years, the clock has been adjusted to respond to world events. In 1947, its original position was seven minutes to midnight. This rose to just two minutes in 1953 when both the US and the Soviet Union tested their new and more destructive hydrogen bombs.

However, the clock never came close to midnight again during the Cold War. Whenever the hands moved forward, they tended to turn back later to reflect a warming of relations between Washington and Moscow - such as during the détente of the early 1970s or following the signing of various arms limitation agreements. 

After 1991, the hands of the Doomsday Clock moved farther from midnight than at any other point in time since 1947: They stood at a comforting 17 minutes to midnight.

But the situation has changed and in 2023, the world, it seems, is not in a good place. But this clock is only a warning device, albeit a symbolic one. As such, it can hopefully serve as a wake-up call to action that will prevent the disaster (whether nuclear or climatic) that the clock's founders set out to prevent—and turn back the hands.