In 2023, the Doomsday Clock moved to 90 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been, reflecting heightened risks from climate change, nuclear threats (exacerbated by the Ukraine war), and other global instability. Separately, the actual Climate Clock (Projected 1.5°C deadline) showed a much shorter timeframe, indicating we were rapidly approaching the critical 1.5°C warming threshold, with projections in late 2023 pointing towards a potential deadline around 2030, showing we had only a few years of emissions left at current rates.
The clock will continue to run down until it hits zero, at which time our carbon budget would be depleted and the likelihood of even more devastating global climate impacts would be very high.
On September 20, 2021, the clock was delayed to July 28, 2028, likely because of the COP26 Conference and the land protection by indigenous peoples. As of July 17, 2025, the clock counts down to July 21, 2029 at 12:00 PM.
The Doomsday Clock is set every year by the Bulletin's Science and Security Board in consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which includes nine Nobel laureates. The Clock has become a universally recognized indicator of the world's vulnerability to global catastrophe caused by man-made technologies.
When the Doomsday Clock hits midnight, it symbolizes humanity reaching the point of "global catastrophe," meaning civilization as we know it ends due to self-inflicted threats like nuclear war, climate collapse, or disruptive technologies, though it's a metaphor, not a prediction, meant to spur action by showing we've crossed a critical threshold. It signifies a point of no return where the lights go out and we've essentially destroyed the world with our own dangerous tech, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
In setting the Clock one second closer to midnight, the Science and Security Board sends a stark signal: Because the world is already perilously close to the precipice, a move of even a single second should be taken as an indication of extreme danger and an unmistakable warning that every second of delay in reversing ...
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The Doomsday Clock is set once a year by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
Clocks may have to skip a second — called a "negative leap second" — around 2029, a study in the journal Nature said Wednesday. "This is an unprecedented situation and a big deal," said study lead author Duncan Agnew, a geophysicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego.
It basically is an app where you feed in all your health information, personal information, social information — any fact about you — and it promises to tell you your death date." Ethicist Art Caplan discusses the potential accuracy of a death clock app and the need for related health counseling.
This will destabilize the climate and lead to a surge in heatwaves, which are expected to affect nearly everyone on Earth – some 9.2 billion people – by 2050. Almost no corner of the planet will remain untouched by extreme heat.
Global Risks 2035: The point of no return.
Our chief goal should be to prevent suffering, particularly for those in the toughest conditions who live in the world's poorest countries. Although climate change will hurt poor people more than anyone else, for the vast majority of them it will not be the only or even the biggest threat to their lives and welfare.
On September 11, 2025, Warp News estimated a 20% chance of global catastrophe and a 6% chance of human extinction by 2100. They also estimated a 100% chance of global catastrophe and a 30% chance of human extinction by 2500.
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We are uncertain because it depends on our own choices. Each day, our steering towards a more sustainable environment pushes the deadline back, and each molecule of CO2 we release into the air draws it closer. Here is why now is not a good time to give up.
On April 13, 2029 (which happens to be Friday the 13th), something unsettling will happen. A decent-sized asteroid, the 1,100-foot-wide Apophis, will pass so close to Earth it'll be visible in the sky from certain places. Crucially, the giant rock will not strike our humble planet.
We don't feel it because everything spins together, a motion that has lasted for 4.5 billion years. NASA says there's almost no chance Earth will stop spinning in the next few billion years.
A 300m-wide asteroid will not hit the Earth in 2036, US astronomers say. It was thought there was a one-in-200,000 chance that it could strike on 13 April 2036, but revised calculations have now ruled this out. Instead, Nasa scientists said it would not get closer than 31,000km as it flies past on this date.
While the clock being close to midnight might make it seem that the world is headed toward a global catastrophe, this result isn't considered inevitable. The Doomsday Clock is not a typical clock because it can also move backward, so there is still time to change the countdown to midnight.
Until recently, the closest it had ever been set was at two minutes to midnight—first in 1953, when the U.S. and Soviet Union both tested thermonuclear weapons, and then in 2018, citing “a breakdown in the international order” of nuclear actors, as well as the continuing lack of action on climate change.
Doomsday means utter catastrophe, in both religious and secular contexts. Many faiths believe in a literal doomsday, when life as we know it will come to an end. For centuries people have attempted to predict when this will occur, with the most recent guesses including 2011, 2012, and 2021.
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Research reveals over 90% of the things we worry about never happen. Studies show that people who worry a lot are generally less effective than those who don't; they get less work done and are often less happy.
Superman, Wonder Woman, Steel, and the Justice League struggle to defeat it, even calling on the aid of Lex Luthor; in the end, Superman drags Doomsday's body to the planet Venus and incinerates it.