The Doomsday Clock has moved ten seconds forward and now shows a minute and a half to “nuclear midnight.” “We live in a time of unprecedented peril, and the Doomsday Clock reflects that reality. 90 seconds to midnight is the closest time to midnight the watch has ever been set to, and it was not an easy decision for our experts to make.” stated Rachel Bronson, President of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
In a statement celebratedthat the decision to switch arrows was mainly influenced by the Russian “special operation” * in Ukraine, which “raised deep questions about how states interact, undermining the norms of international behavior that underlie successful responses to various global risks.” The project notes that Russia’s “poorly veiled” threats to use nuclear weapons “remind the world that escalation of the conflict – whether by accident, design or miscalculation – is a terrible risk,” and the likelihood of the conflict spiraling out of control is extremely high. .
Among the episodes that moved the hands of the clock, experts called the fighting near the Chernobyl and Zaporozhye nuclear power plants. Another factor is the situation around the Strategic Offensive Arms Treaty (START III) between Moscow and Washington, which was signed in 2011 and extended for five years in 2021. If the parties do not resume negotiations and do not find a basis for further arms reductions, the treaty will simply cease to exist in February 2026, the authors of the draft said. This would “end mutual inspections, increase distrust, spur a nuclear arms race and increase the likelihood of a nuclear exchange,” they warned.
In addition, according to the statement, the new position of the arrows was influenced by the threats associated with the climate crisis, as well as the destruction of “global norms and institutions” that are necessary to reduce the risks associated with the development of technology and biological threats, such as COVID-19.
Bronson urged the US, its NATO allies and Ukraine to use “multiple channels for dialogue <…>to turn back time.” Experts also turned to the United States with a recommendation to “keep the door open for principled engagement with Moscow” in order to reduce the growing risk of a nuclear catastrophe.
The Doomsday Clock first appeared on the cover of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in 1947. The journal was created in 1945 by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Albert Einstein and a group of scientists from the University of Chicago who were involved in the development of nuclear weapons as part of the Manhattan Project. As planned, the Doomsday Clock reflects the tension of the international situation, and midnight means the moment of a nuclear cataclysm. So, the “earliest” time was recorded in 1991, when the Cold War ended and the START-I treaty was concluded. From 2020 to the current year, the hands of the clock have not moved.
*According to the requirement of Roskomnadzor, when preparing materials on a special operation in eastern Ukraine, all Russian media are required to use information only from official sources of the Russian Federation. We cannot publish materials in which the ongoing operation is called an “attack”, “invasion” or “declaration of war”, unless it is a direct quote (Article 57 of the Federal Law on the Media). In case of violation of the requirement, the media may be fined 5 million rubles, and the publication may also be blocked.