On October 24, 1962, at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, American nuclear chemist Harrison Brown began writing a special editorial for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. He said that never before in history have people and countries come so close to death and destruction on such a large scale. Midnight has come.
In this terrible warning, he was referring to the Doomsday Bell, which has been an iconic motif in the Gazette since the founding of Albert Einstein and some Scientists from the University of Chicago from the Manhattan Project 75 years ago. Their work contributed to the manufacture of the atomic bomb, but many of them were furious when the United States used the atomic bomb against Japanese cities.
The furthest away from midnight was 17 minutes, just at the end of the Cold War. Since then, it has been sliding toward extinction. This is partly due to growing geopolitical instability, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and new existential threats to climate change, which was officially listed as a factor in the 2007 calculations. On January 23, 2020, when the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., issued an announcement, the Atomic Scientists Bulletin decided that the doomsday clock read 100 seconds before midnight, which was the closest to the end of the world in the history of the doomsday clock.
The Clock of Doom is closer to midnight than ever before, and it is now only 100 seconds before 12 o'clock. Thursday, January 23, 2020. The clock, a metaphor for the end of the world, was moved forward by 20 seconds. The announcement by the clock's caretaker means that the threat seen now is more serious than last year and 1953, when it was two minutes before 12 o'clock.
On Thursday, with the apocalyptic clock set to debut for the 75th time, we'll see how the announced team of scientists and security experts will move the minute hand. For the past two years, it has been stuck at a distance of 100 seconds from midnight. With Russia preparing to attack Ukraine, it's hard to imagine going back in time, which means experts assess that we are now in greater danger than ever before.