It’s now 89 Seconds to Midnight on the Doomsday Clock

In its nearly 80-year history, the Clock has never been this close to striking midnight.  

In the Doomsday Clock statement, the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board reported that humanity edged ever closer to catastrophe in 2024 and that “blindly continuing on the current path is a form of madness.” The world-renowned leaders on the board shared crucial developments in 2024 that contributed to the Clock’s setting:  

• The countries that possess nuclear weapons are increasing the size and role of their arsenals, investing hundreds of billions of dollars in weapons that can destroy civilization. 

• The long-term prognosis for the world’s attempts to deal with climate change remains poor, as most governments fail to enact the financing and policy initiatives necessary to halt global warming. 

• Emerging and re-emerging diseases continue to threaten the economy, society, and security of the world. 

• An array of disruptive technologies in fields such as artificial intelligence and space flight advanced last year in ways that make the world more dangerous.  

• The dangers listed above are greatly exacerbated by a potent threat multiplier: the spread of misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theories that degrade the communication ecosystem and increasingly blur the line between truth and falsehood.
  

The board’s suggestion for correcting this abysmal reality is for the leaders of the United States, China, and Russia to commence good-faith discussions on global threats. These countries’ citizens play a pivotal role in whether or not that happens.

With the Doomsday Clock at 89 seconds to midnight, CCNS’s work to protect all living beings and the environment from the effects of radioactive and other hazardous materials is absolutely necessary.  

At CCNS, we believe that humanity deserves freedom and safety from all nuclear threats, both now and in the future. 

Learn more about, and support, our work by reading our weekly updates here on our website, following us on Facebook, Twitter (X), and Instagram, and subscribing to our weekly newsletter.

Let’s set the clock back, together!

Join us to pivot from Doom to Peace and disarm the world from nuclear weapons. Sign the Manifesto!

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, with the advice of Albert Einstein and other scientists from the Manhattan Project who developed the atomic bomb, established a Doomsday Clock, in 1947, to illustrate the annihilating danger the earth is facing since the creation of the diabolical nuclear bomb. At that time, the clock was set at 7 minutes to midnight, their estimate of how much time we had left before nuclear war would wreak catastrophic devastation on our planet and all living things in existence.

Over the years, the hands of the clock have been reset, forward and backward, as scientists and policy makers estimated how immediate the nuclear danger loomed, based on the perils faced by other countries obtaining nuclear weapons as well as new arms control measures, weapons limitations, and agreements, particularly between the US and Russia for disarmament measures. At its most optimistic, the Doomsday hands were moved to 17 minutes to midnight in 1991 when the US and USSR announced the complete cessation of nuclear testing.

Shockingly, despite years of nuclear arms control measures, resulting in arsenals down from a high of 70,000 bombs at the peak of the world’s nuclear insanity, to about 12,000 today, 11,000 of which are in the US and Russia with nearly 4,000 poised and ready to go, with another 1000 held by the six other nuclear weapons states—UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea– the clock has never been set closer to Doomsday than it is today—At 89 seconds to midnight!

It’s time to transform the clock and change the conversation! Dire warnings about Doomsday have done little to increase our world’s safety these 77 years. It’s time to pivot our focus from doom to the many small necessary steps we each need to engage in to create peace. The fear of doom encourages compromise with those who are only interested in building Empire and the war economy. This never brings us to our goal of peace. We must stop giving our blessing and consent to endless steps to “control” arms that lead to ever more danger as illustrated by the aging Doomsday clock.

Instead, we must demand their abolition, as we move to a nuclear free world at peace unthreatened by catastrophic annihilation and the ultimate climate change; a nuclear winter.

Let us deemphasize procedural steps that keep up stuck, which scholars have already named: ‘anti-preneurism’ steps towards illusory progress.

We are at a turning point in history. It is time to change the conversation with bold new proposals. Proposals that are guaranteed to bring us a respite from the growing terror. Proposals that will bring a shift in planetary consciousness allowing us to respond cooperatively to the impending cataclysmic climate disaster down the road! Proposals that will usher in a rising dawn and change our focus from Doom to Peace. Mother Earth grows impatient with the folly of humankind.

We will take steps that lead to peace on earth and mobilize, expose and render powerless the MICIMATT (Military, Industrial, Congressional, Intelligence, Media, Academic Think Tank complex) in our work for peace. Bringing about:

• US acceptance of Russian and Chinese proposals for treaties to ban weapons in space and cyberwar
• The reinstatement of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia and removal of US missiles from Romania and Poland
• Removal of US nuclear weapons from five NATO states in a deal for Russia removing its recently placed nuclear weapons in Belarus
• All nuclear weapons off high alert and separate the warheads from their delivery systems as China does – following the wisdom of the East
• The dissolution of NATO and respect of a reformed United Nations empowering global democracy, where all countries have decision-making power, not just imperial powers.
• US, China, Russia, India, Pakistan, UK, France, North Korea, and Israel completely disarm.

Russia and China have offered to be willing partners in these initiatives. They have been proposing them to the United States and voting on them in the UN for more than ten years. Let us together make this real for the people and the planet.

SIGN THE TREATY – https://www.codepink.org/pcmanifesto

Tags: 89 seconds to midnight, Doomsday Clock, Science and Security Board